First of all, stores aren’t allowed, by law, to sell anything until after 1pm. I do not know if this is a UK thing or an NI thing, but I actually like it. It means you can hang out at home on Sunday morning either doing nothing or doing whatever and not feel like you have to be out and doing. Yes, I realize it is this way so people can go to church. I must remind my readers here that I am Jewish. Even if I went to a religious institution on the weekends, it wouldn’t be on Sunday mornings.
However, the shopping tends to suck, as there are no deliveries on Sunday mornings. Why they don’t just get double deliveries on Saturday, I don’t know. But could you imagine half empty shelves in a store in the US? Never gonna happen, not even in the Deep South. Here it is a regular Sunday occurrence.
This, to me, is, once again, bad customer service. Even people who go to church might go shopping after. And what do they find? Very little on the shelves.
Northern Ireland really needs to come into the 21st C. And soon.
It is a NI thing. In England and Wales (not sure about Scotland, they tend to have different laws) big stores are only allowed to be open for 6 hours, so depending on the area you get 10-4, 10.30-4.30 or 11-5. Some shops open half an hour early for ‘browsing’ – especially at busy times near bank holidays, but the anti-Sunday shopping crowd really don’t like that.