Wednesday 1 September 2010

Retail Hell.

Today was not the best day in history.

Okay, no one died. No one found out they have to go and get any limbs hacked off. No one needed a life-saving operation...but it still sucked baring all that in mind.

I had this innocent point of view over the weekend just past. I actually believed that this week, since it was a new month and all, would be good. How wrong I was.

I can't remember where it all went wrong...but let's start with my experience today. At Currys. 

Yes, Currys the place where they sell electrical appliances. Yes the same Currys that has joined forces with PC World. Yes the very same Currys where it seems a prerequisite of the job to be a total and complete arse. 

I went there to look at MS Office stuff so I actually have access to a decent word processing/outlook/whathaveyou package and they didn't give us a second glance. It wasn't as though they were short staffed - they had people standing about, looking glakit as per usual and pretending to be oh so busy on their little computers (I bet they were on Facebook). 

I think they have a basic rule of thumb in there; if the customer is under 30, give them a look that you're superior to them/as though they're only in here to calculate the value of the electrical goods they've stolen from peoples homes. Or as though you're shoplifter, in here to see what you can grab that's not nailed down so you can sell it on for drugs.

You catch my drift here. Plus, we had Roman with us (well of course we did, he's not going to be babysitting himself) and he's started doing this really cute but quite threatening growl noise...so perhaps he intimidated them a little? I hope so, anyway.

I felt really pissed off not even five minutes into our shop and gave up, even when we did find the MS Office software. My heart wasn't in it any more and being treated so brashly I just didn't want to be in there. I started getting those "why don't they like me?" thoughts.

The kind of thoughts I had when I got picked last in P.E in High School (true story) and no I wasn't the "smelly kid", well at least not to my knowledge, people just didn't like me. I was kind of an anti-bully. I stood up against the bullies. Which resulted in getting a shoe thrown in my face, pushed down the stairs and chewing gum thrown in my hair. All in all, High School was a bad experience I would never wish to repeat. Ever. And it's given me this teenage girl mindset from time to time. Whenever someone doesn't immediately like me I do question why, even if I don't really like or respect the person who doesn't like me in the first place.

I'm tricky like that.

I remember, when I was pregnant, a million few people were totally insensitive towards me. And I had the same questions rattling around in my brain;


Why don't they get it? Why are they such arses? You're a guy, what the hell do you know about being pregnant?


And so on. People's insensitivity made me feel like they didn't like me. As if they wanted to treat me like crap because they didn't like me.

And today, the experience refreshed my memory as to why I have hated Currys for a long time now. The staff they employ are arrogant and their heads are so far up their own rectums that they are only aware of their own bowel movements. Not because they don't like me. Not because they are looking at my clothes, my hair, my baby, the fact I can't get my wedding ring on my ring finger and judging me. They are just arrogant butt heads. Just like those nasty people at High School.

As we were leaving, I made sure to walk past one of the Currys staff and say in a really loud voice;

"I'm not spending my money here. The staff are really rude and unhelpful."*


*may have contained expletives.