shopworld

A woman, at the behest of her son, came into the shop and asked: ‘Have you got any autobiographies on business studies or popworld?’ I felt like saying: ‘There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I’m afraid I’m going to have to get someone else to help me deal with your request.’ But of course I knew what she meant and I couldn’t very well pretend otherwise, though I wanted to. She meant did we have any autobiographies by business people or pop stars. And we did, so there it was. She got away with it.

Another woman, bringing back a present purchased by her mother, moaned because we wouldn’t give her a cash refund on a credit card purchase, which - rightly or wrongly - is the policy at Waterstone’s. We couldn’t refund to the card because it was her Mum’s card, so we offered her Waterstone’s vouchers. Then she got very shrill, saying that we were ‘drawing her back into our organisation’, that she ‘couldn’t escape’ from it. It was like she had this whole paranoid conspiracy theory worked out, that Waterstone’s were going to suck her in to their universe and then - no doubt - take over the world by means of these sinister ‘vouchers’.

Of course, far from wanting to suck her in, we actually couldn’t wait to get her out the door. In order to achieve this, Paula granted the cash refund. ‘They do it in Sainsbury’s’, the woman said smugly. ‘No questions asked.’ Yeah, they probably let you run naked down the aisles in Sainsbury’s too. We have standards. However pointless and petty.