Earlier this month, Tesco's shares slumped to a 14-year low as Lewis admitted the cost of cleaning up dealings with suppliers and bringing in extra shop-floor staff to improve service would slash £500m from annual profits.
"We got 90 minutes extra shopping after a decade's debate, or nine minutes a year.
Do some extra shopping, even buying prepared food you can reheat from a restaurant if need be.
Then there are the extra shopping trips that Costco customers must make, because many items aren't sold there.
So, once again, there are extra shopping days, as well as endless consumption opportunities online — and reason to doubt that they will mean much for the economy.
That number — which does not include sales of automobiles and gasoline — was helped this year by an extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"With an extra shopping day this year in this final week before Christmas, we've witnessed consistently high footfall figures across our centres in the UK.
Philip Clarke, who was ousted as chief executive last week, was trying to reinvent its nearly 250 Extra shops, which can be as big as 120,000 sq ft, as shopping destinations.
Because of where Christmas falls – delivering two extra shopping days on last year, please don't ask me how they figure this out – this means they're expecting toy sales to top £400m in just these three weeks.
Once it has final approval from the CMA, the acquisition of 99p Stores, announced in February, would add 250 extra shops to Poundland's estate of nearly 600 UK outlets, accelerating its progress towards a target of 1,000 stores here.
