One
of the mysteries of retail is the way people gather at street corners until
there is a crowd, then all rush together so they pile into the smallest of
shops en masse in order to fluster the shop staff. Okay, call me paranoid, and
maybe they don’t actually do that, but
it really would be a lot easier if customers would organise themselves so they
enter the shop at regular intervals and then arrange themselves in different
areas to browse.
That way, we wouldn’t get undignified squabbling over the Baby
Knitting Patterns and the Ladies Spring & Summer Designs file wouldn’t come
apart so often through rough handling. The times I find myself crawling
underneath the pull-out pattern shelves between peoples’ legs to retrieve baby
wool for other customers are becoming far too frequent for a lady of my
delicate years and it’s not a pretty sight, I can tell you.
I
feel I am losing my touch. When I was Deputy Practice Manager of a medical
centre in a not very salubrious area of Preston, I developed a certain
assurance that, in the event of a riot, I would be able to react accordingly
and implement crowd control procedures. That would usually involve placing the
Receptionists in the front line then I could retreat to a place of safety – it worked
well.
I even encouraged Daughter #2 into
the glamorous world of medical reception and she too gained a well-practised,
qualified Rottweiler-impersonating ability to keep control of the front desk
and the patients at bay. I’m so proud!
In
a shop situation though, however much one would like a bit of organisation, it doesn’t do to discourage people by
telling them to ‘go away if you don’t have an appointment’ because that rather
defeats the object of putting things on display to entice them in, so it’s a quandary.
I'll admit, it's been a bit of a challenge to retrain Daughter #2 to smile and welcome
people and avoid fixing them with ‘the look’ that all doctor’s receptionists
develop. Putting the customers down gently and not leaving teeth marks is
proving a bit of a sticking point but she’s coming along nicely.
Fortunately
for me, Daughter #2 was with me in the shop a couple of weeks ago when we had a
bit of drama. I’d had a persistent pain in my side for a few weeks, (no, not
the daughter), and had been informed by the GP, once I’d got past the Rottweiler
on the front desk, that it was kidney stones but probably the gravel type which
would take a while to pass through my system.
I
kept going and figured that that if I could produce four babies with only the
odd twinge of pain(!), I could soldier on and do my duty to the shoppers of
Garstang. However, on this particular market day, my kidney gravel waited until
I was in the furthest corner of the stock room upstairs looking for camels, (see
previous post) no …. I wasn’t. Everything in my stock room is in plastic bags
so periodically build up to small avalanches which then slowly and gracefully
slide to the floor or hit me on the back of the head whenever I’m up there. I was
sorting out the unruly 4 ply wool when a massive pain shot through me. Unable to
move without further pain I called to Daughter #2 to close the shop door and
turn the key then come and rescue me.
The
priority was to try and get downstairs to safety and possibly an ambulance, but
I can tell you, 18th century staircases in stone cottages were not
designed to allow for two people to manoeuvre at a time. I’m not quite sure how
we managed it, but to cut a long story short, I got a blue light ride to Royal
Preston and priority admission via A & E. We won’t dwell on the attitude of the young
doctor, about whom Mr PDP remarked in his best diplomatic manner that he ‘looked
like he was on study leave for his GCSEs’.
Many
hours later I was invited to partake of the NHS hospitality for a couple of
days and they moved me to a surgical ward. They’ve upgraded the beds nowadays
to electronic gismos that raise/lower/adjust various bits of you at a touch of
a button, if you get the right button, that is. You could end up catapulted off
the end altogether with very little effort if you weren’t careful. You just
have to make sure you’re not near an open window when you’re fiddling with the
controls.
But,
I was kept very happy and high during my stay, on just about every painkiller
known to modern man which they thrust at me with amazing regularity and offered
extra if needed. Even so, I definitely do not recommend kidney stones as a
means to some time off work, and hopefully the experience will not be repeated.
