[1] https://www.studentmoneysaver.co.uk/article/things-waitrose-...
[1] https://www.studentmoneysaver.co.uk/article/things-waitrose-...
Ironing water is pure water and is needed in order to not destroy your iron in areas with very hard water, which is a lot of the southern UK where Waitrose has most of its customer base. No need for the scare quotes.
'Ironing water' is a marketing term designed to get people to pay far more for something than they need to. If it was sold as 'perfumed distilled water for ironing' I'd take much less issue with it.
I am genuinely surprised to see someone astroturfing for Comfort on HN. :)
I just thought it was a bit snobby to have a pop at old ladies in Waitrose who just want to keep their iron working well and possibly aren't regularly in a car shop to pick up a bottle of de-ionised water. And they like things to smell nice - what terrible people!
I think calling it 'ironing water' is pretty frank and consumer friendly really. It's water. And it's for ironing. I wish more things were named like that.
For about 6 pence a litre bottle?
And boiling in a pot or kettle wouldn't help - that would concentrate the minerals you don't want!
The original poll was apparently representative, as others have pointed out, but in any case, would that really be so surprising?
Over-60s have been advised to stay at home entirely for much of this year. Many working age adults have also been working from home mostly or entirely for several months having either never done so before or done so only rarely. Lots of people have been sitting around very bored with plenty of time to do online shopping.
Meanwhile, there were queues outside physical supermarkets that could last for an hour or more if you turned up at the wrong time, often starting from early in the morning well before a store actually opened its doors during the early panic-buying phase. Today, happily, the worst of the queues seem to be a fading memory, but where did all those people go? They presumably haven't stopped needing bread and milk and toilet rolls. And you can still have to wait to go in at relatively busy times, and then it's not a particularly pleasant experience trying to keep a reasonable distance from everyone and wondering who's previously handled whatever you're about to buy off the shelves.
It seems entirely plausible to me that 75% of all supermarket customers do at least some online shopping now. Frankly, I'm surprised it's so low under the circumstances.
https://waitrose.pressarea.com/pressrelease/details/78/NEWS_...