A Bit about Sales Assistants

Okay, don’t get me wrong here, I am not going to spend the next few paragraphs ‘dissing’ sales assistants. In fact, I used to be one! Sales assistants have a tough job at times and can get some really obnoxious customers. No, today’s gripe is about how some of them of them seem to spring from nowhere and ask if you want any help.

‘Can I help you?’

I don’t mind this practice in big electrical stores, or when I am after a sofa. But recently I have been getting this in shops such as Game! I enter the shop and out props a sales assistant and asks:

‘Can I help you?’ Good god! I just want to look at the prices of games and stuff… Christmas is coming… I am after a few ideas. ‘No, I am fine, thanks…’

‘Okay,’ sales the smiling sales assistant. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’ Yes… okay.

But is doesn’t really end there. The sales assistant remains fixed to where he is stood, that smile still on his face, watching me walk over to a stack of second hand PS3 games. This is very bad as I don’t even own a PS3. I have no intention of owning a PS3. I might one day, but I don’t yet. I walk over to the DS section. I try to act cool, but I can feel shop assistant’s eyes boring into me. Always eager, always keen. It is quite spooky really.

‘Do you need any help yet?’ No...

‘How about now?’ No...

‘Now?’ No...

‘Did I say to give me a shout if you need help? Did I? Did I say that?’

So, I leave… But the next time I go in, the same thing happens. I have got into the practice of dodging these shop assistants, by fixing a meaningful expression on my face, as if to say, ‘I am fine… I know exactly where I want to look and what I want to look at. I do not need help.’ On other occasions I enter the shop as though I am playing a game of Chess, and anticipating the sales assistants’ next move. Sometimes I will outmanoeuvre the assistant, other times I will not.

I know they are touting for business, and we are amid a big recession. But I know that come Christmas time, when these shops are really busy and I definitely do need help, I will not see a sales assistant for love or money…

A Bit of an update about Slugs

Following on from my last blog, here is a quick update…

The other night I went up to bed and read for an hour. I realised I had left something downstairs in the kitchen. When I went downstairs I saw a big massive yellow slug in the middle of the dining room. It was yellow. It was big. Okay, it wasn’t gigantic… it was big massive, that is a phrase we use here, big massive. Not big, not massive, big massive. Might I just say that Big Massive need not be really big, and can be used as an exaggeration, such as in this context. It was about three inches long. Yes, I know: big massive.

I picked it up and ate it. No… I picked it up with a tissue and chucked it out back. Since then, there have been no more slugs.

Question: How did this big massive slug get in in the first place and where had it been hiding?

New blog entry, not about slugs, to follow soon…