UPMARKET Waitrose has been left red-faced after customers spotted grammatical howlers – on labels promoting gifts for school teachers.
Shoppers were encouraged to buy end-of-school term presents for teachers with a label which read: “3 for 2. Gift’s For Teacher’s.”
As any English teacher would tell Waitrose staff, neither apostrophe is necessary because the words are not being used as possessives.
Jane Bremner spotted one of the offending labels and wrote: “They’ll definitely need a gift after seeing this notice. #apostrophecrime.”
Emmy Williams spotted one of the signs placed bizarrely in front of women’s shavers and wrote: “Really Waitrose? For Teacher’s what? And only for one particular teacher; capital T?
“If those are what your ‘partners’ used to gift their teachers, punctuation marks are the least of your worries.”
Ed Szram II spotted one of the tags in his local Waitrose store and wrote: “Please fix the apostrophe usage found in your Canary Wharf and other stores.”
Whilst Katya Lightbody also shared an image of one of the erroneous signs and wrote: “I’m not sure I would be buying my child’s teacher any presents if he used apostrophes like this, three for two or not.”
Waitrose have responded online to the concerned customers to let them know that they’re aware of the errors and are working to fix them.
Responding to the posts, they replied tersely – and with a correctly-used apostrophe: “We’re aware of this. Thanks.”
It is not the first time people have been left outraged by the misuse of apostrophes.
In Bristol, one local has become so frustrated by poor grammar that he’s taken to going around the city to correct it.
The ‘apostrophe vigilante’, also known as the ‘Banksy of punctuation’ goes out in the dead of night to correct street and shop signs, inserting apostrophes, moving them, or removing superfluous ones.
A spokeswoman for Waitrose said: “”We’re in the process of changing this in our stores. Our report card says ‘must try harder’.”
