I love shopping. It gives me a warm feeling inside, which is always nice. So I thought – just for the hell of it – that I’d bring you my list of the top and bottom 5 shops in Birmingham in terms of service quality, value for money, and general pleasantness. Let’s do the shitty ones first.
In reverse order…
5) HMV
I hate HMV, with its ‘at least a pound more than anywhere else’ pricing policy on DVDs and its crap ’sales’ where the same stock that no one wants gets pulled out again. I swear that they’re storing 20 trillion copies of Muriel’s Wedding in the Arizona desert.
4) Subway (Upper Bull Street)
Ask me for a third time if I want ‘cheese and toasted?’ and I’ll rip your ears off.
3) The Post Office
I’m sending a jiffy-bag parcel. I need to have it weighed, stamped and taken off my hands so I don’t look like I’m couriering drugs. So don’t ask me if I’m ‘all OK for insurance?’ when we’ve finished the transaction. Because it cheapens that nice small-talk we had about knife-crime, and I’ll leave thinking you only wanted me for my money. Bastard.
2) Currys
If you ever want a real-life simulation of PacMan, just go to Currys in the Bullring. If you’re just browsing and want to be left alone, ALL the assistants will seek you out like those pesky ghosts. But go in with an actual query, or with the intention of buying something, and it’s like you’ve eaten a blue power-pill, sending assistants scattering across the store to hide in staffrooms, toilets and crouch down behind small desks. Next time I go in, I’m going to walk round the aisles going ‘wacca wacca wacca’ before pulling out the security cord on all the laptops.
1) WHSmith
The only store to send its staff on courses for surliness. Stuck in a long queue? After 20 minutes, someone might press a bell. Or they might not. Either way, that supervisor standing behind the lone cashier STILL won’t get off the phone and start serving. And no, I don’t want half-priced Haribo or a fucking Toblerone with my magazine. I just want you to smile. Is that so hard?
Aaaaah, I feel better for that. So now to the cream of the crop. If crops do actually produce cream. Which I doubt because they’d be a bugger to milk.
5) Gap
What does it mean when staff have their mouths turned up at the corners when they speak to you? Well, whatever it means, it’s quite nice and they do it a lot in Gap.
4) Subway (Smallbrook Queensway)
This branch has introduced the innovative sales technique of listening to customers when they say their orders. And they’re happy and talk to you and everything. Plus they’re generous with their olives. And you can’t argue with that.
3) Marks and Spencer Food (Colmore Row)
I find the customers very stuck-up in Marks and Spencers. God knows why – it’s hardly Harrods is it? But the staff are always very polite, which means I go back again and again to pay £7.80 for a yogurt.
2) Sportsworld
Your clothes probably aren’t ethically sourced (£3 for a tracksuit anyone?), your shop often looks like its been selected by the IRA for the resumption of hostilities, and you never have my size. But quite a few of your staff are drop dead gorgeous, so who gives a crap about quality?
1) Borders
With more magazines to choose from than the waiting room of a dentist with OCD, Borders is bookworm-heaven. None of your Toblerone-pushing tactics here, just good, honest, helpful staff, an in-store Starbucks, Paperchase and some nice comfy seats here and there for the poor people who can’t afford to buy. And kudos to the (female) assistant who was openly perving over the cover of Gay Times last time I was in there. It doesn’t take THAT long to find the barcode…
