Tesco to beat its staff with a shitty stick

Supermarket giant Tesco is said to be taking the unusual step of beating its staff to within an inch of their lives using a shitty stick in order to get to the bottom of how its projected half year profits were overstated by £250 million.

Tesco CEO Dave lewis told us “We’ve tried paying our staff the minimum wage. We’ve tried ensuring all our staff have no idea of the origins of any of the food when asked by customers. And we’ve tried making sure that as much of our food as possible is made of chopped and shaped mechanically recovered meat, sometimes including horse. But still we’ve managed to incorrectly predict our half year profits to the tune of 250 big ones. It’s clear that we need to punish our shop floor staff by way of a poo covered cane, walking stick or shepherd’s crook.”

The news has seen a number of senior executives called to account in an emergency meeting but the company ruled out dismissing or suspending any.

“We need our top financial controllers in place to work out how many shitty sticks we need to purchase for each store, the cost involved and whether shitty sticks are tax deductible.” Mr Lewis explained.

Top end grocery suppliers Waitrose are thought to have met their projected targets and it is seen as no coincidence that they have been using the shitty stick model for some years. However, a spokesman for parent company the John Lewis Partnership explained that the situation was far more complex.”We don’t have staff, we have partners. And we beat them lightly with a beautiful hand crafted stick that has a light coating of faecal matter from a Madagascan lemur.”