Why can I never find the Marmite in Tesco?

You know what I hate? Never being able to find the Marmite in Tesco.

(Actually it happens in all supermarkets, but Tesco just happens to be my closest. And I like shopping there. Certainly don't have a problem with the deli counter or the beer section... but it's little things like this that sour the whole experience, so I thought I'd write about it. Culture of continuous improvement, that's what I say.)

I mean, it's hard enough for a punctuation mark to reach the shelf in the first place, let alone find out the Marmite's not where you expect it to be when you get there.

But Marmite's a bit of a special case, isn't it?

Even though it works best on toast, it's not in the "spreads" section. You know, all those vegetable fat and margarine-type things (along with actual butter, but who buys that these days?) For some reason, Tesco's marketing boffins don't think Marmite and butter belong on the same shelf.

Well, that's fair enough I suppose. (Some weirdos do other things with Marmite, like stirring it into hot water. I mean, nobody does that with butter. Nobody who isn't Mongolian, anyway.) But it's never in the non-buttery spreads section either. You can grope your way along the mayonnaise and mustard shelves as far as you want, but you'll never reach the yellow-lidded jar of desire, oh dear me no. And that's when I start to get a little agitated.

(Watch most men in your local Tesco superstore - you'll see them check the butter section, then the "things in glass jars" section, and finally walk around with furrowed brows for a few minutes before giving up. Trust me, they're looking for the Marmite. (Men never ask for help in these situations.) My sister Rave never seems to have a problem; maybe it's just a man thing.

Usually, the last part of my Marmite quest involves a foray into the Bread section. Given Marmite's deep and meaningful relationship with toast, you'd expect the Tesco people to at least have put the two within an aisle's reach of each other. But no. The dark brown stuff always seems to be at least one shelf-stack removed from the tasty breakfast ingredients that make it sing. And that's plain silly.

So you might think I'm short of Marmite, but no. In fact, I have about eight jars of Marmite in my kitchen. Because Marmite is so hard to find, I grab a jar whenever and wherever I see it. And that's not very "customer-facing" on Tesco's part, now is it? I'm annoyed.