The Bank Manager and the Bathroom
Collect Win-a-Mini stand.
Fill up Mini.
Collect bathroom shelves.
… and , of course, talk to six…
If you’ve got one of these Win-a-Mini exhibition stands, you’ll know they’re murder to put together. Take my advice and get your local engineering company to put longer bolts on the upper rods.
And then, when you pay the bill, ask the receptionist: “Shall I tell you what it’s for?”
And there was the first…
After I’d filled up the Mini at Sainsburys and was just about to drive off a Mazda MX5 pulled up. Now there are certain people I always give a card to – and sports car driver are one category. So, quick as a flash, I flipped off the seatbelt, hopped out and: “Hi, I always give one of these to sports car drivers… if you like I could tell you what it’s about. Takes me one minutes and 45 seconds…”
“All right,” he said. “I’m only standing here while I fill up…”
Then into the store to the homewares department for the shelves. There was some confusion over these. Now that I’m an efficient person who doesn’t waste a second, I had phoned ahead to make sure they were in stock.
“You’ll need to ask someone to get them out from the back. The bathroom section is being re-organised,” said the voice on Customer Service.
“Who told you that,” demanded the man doing the re-organising. “They shouldn’t have told you that. They had no right to tell you that. I’ve got 20 rollers of stuff out the back – how am I supposed to find shelves?”
Now that I am a patient person who smiles in times of difficulty (infuriating, aren’t I?) I smiled patiently and we went and asked Customer Service – who, of course suggested that if the shelves were out the back, they could fetched and brought to the front.
And sure enough my new friend said: “Wait here – er, please wait here… um, if you don’t mind.”
Five minutes later he returned with my shelves and so I was able to say: “Thank you very much, you’ve been very helpful… tell you what, I always give one of these to helpful people – because helpful people can make a lot of money.”
Then I looked at him: In his 50’s, smiling now and not so harassed. I asked him: “This isn’t your first job is it? What did you do before?”
“I was a bank manager for 20 years.”
In the next two minutes I discovered that when he went into banking he thought he would be doing it until he was 65. He had no idea he was going to have to spend the last 15 years of his working life doing a menial job in a supermarket. Also that although Sainsburys pay well, you have to work for it. The hours are long. It was not the way he’d planned his life.”
He now has a DVD and I have his email address and phone number and we’re going to talk again on Monday.
After all this, I almost forgot to pay for the shelves. I’ve a feeling that because they’re “homewares” rather than “grocery” I don’t get 5% back on my Cashback card. But I used it anyway. I like to think that one day the computer will make a mistake.
Maybe the computer understood this because the Card didn’t work. The checkout assistant had to swipe it through her machine.
“I’ve never seen one like this before,” she said.
Now I know I’m not supposed to promote the card inside Sainsburys (why should they want to give a discount to customers they’ve got already?) But she had asked.
“It’s great,” I told her. “I get 5% cashback.”
This time the card worked. She peered at her screen: “It hasn’t given you any cashback.”
“No, I get that later, on my utility bill. Here, have one of these, that explains all about it.”
“Oo, that’s good. I’ll look at that.”
Of course, if you’re going to put up shelves in your new en-suite bathroom, you need “medium weight plasterboard fixings” available, on this occasion not from Homebase with another 5% but from Focus.
And there I met a couple wandering round the bathroom section: “Here, have one of these, it helps pay for your bathroom.”
“Really, now?”
I suddenly realised I was up to five already. One to go.
Out in the car park a kitchen fitter was getting out of his van.
“Are you a kitchen fitter?” I asked him (of course he was. Was he likely to be an insurance salesman who liked to drive around in a kitchen fitter’s van?) “Tell me, would you like to earn an extra income alongside the kitchen business? It sort of bolts onto what you’re doing already. It takes me about one minutes and 45 seconds to tell you…”
And there you are: Six and job done.