I walked into WH Smiths in The Metro Centre with my eight year old grandson Hugo this evening, a boy who could spend hours and hours in every shop examining the merchandise !
There was only one employee in the vastness and THOUSANDS of overpriced items begging to be stolen !
There wasn't even an assistant on a till as it's yet another of those self-service places which always trip me up or need an adult to come and check my age when I scan a 'dangerous' item like correction fluid which apparently schoolchildren used to buy to sniff themselves high on !
Hugo picked up every one of the several hundred pens in open containers and tried them on a pad, remarking to me how much each one was his favourite but at £3:99 per pen I wasn't buying !
What he got was the cheapest item in the shop, a pencil with all the times tables printed on it, perfect for cheating eight year olds to hide up their sleeves during a test, which I was SO tempted to nick but restrained myself as I didn't want to risk getting nicked as I had purposefully left my mobile phone at home because I WILL NOT BE TRACKED so couldn't have phoned to get someone to pick up the child !
Anyway £1:50 didn't seem TOO much and we made our way to the checkout where I failed to press, 'NO BAGS' and also failed to inform the machine that I would be paying with cash for my purchase and so stood there looking like the old twerp I refuse not to look like ! Even my £1:50 which I had payed into the cash slot was returned to me because of that omission !
Thank Goodness I had Hugo with me !
There were no other customers in the shop, not even that row of seedy looking people who stand reading the magazines for free and I'm left wondering how a business can survive without customers when the rent and overheads must be sky high and the prices are ridiculous ?
I bet WH Smith don't survive another five years !
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