It is hard to believe that Princess Diana left
us twenty years ago. She was loved, admired and respected by many people, but
she was also criticized and ridiculed by others, and she has become an
everlasting cash machine like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley as book after
book of unseen photographs and unheard gossip are published and conspiracy
theories trickle out into the public domain. In Royal Family history and
amongst us commoners, she will never be forgotten, whatever side opinions take.
Instead of this piece of writing being morbid, I would like to share a true
story that happened on the day of Diana’s funeral. I will get to it shortly but
first some background to my understanding of the human condition.
I was in retail management for a long, long
time, longer than some criminals get for major crimes and the general public
never let me down with their weird and wonderful ways. I cut my shop-keeping
teeth with an after school job at the Mace supermarket on the Glen Road,
Belfast in the days when customers could come in and ask for two ounces of
cheese, a couple of rashers and ‘two of them thin wee sausages, son’. I was not
yet a teenager but I was let loose on the bacon slicer. Health and safety was
far into the future. I remember wearing out my fingernails removing stubborn
sticky price labels off tins of Master McGrath dog food, a sign that working in
shops is not all laughs and excitement. My first full-time retail job was with
Stewarts on the Newtownards Road and then at their hypermarket partnership with
Penney’s out near Dunmurry. (Gloria Hunniford was a customer. I was in love
with her!) I was learning the retail ropes and slowly realizing that the
customer is far from being always right.
British Home Stores, Belfast was my next career
move and probably the best fun I can remember in more than thirty-five years in
and around shops. We encountered more than our fair share of characters and
chancers, especially where ladies’ hats were concerned. Sales surged on
Fridays, as did refunds on Mondays. “It wasn’t suitable, and that make-up on
the inside rim was there when I got it home.” Yeah, we thought, let’s see the
wedding photos. I moved around the UK with BHS, then on to Makro and Asda. I
went from being a greenhorn to a grizzled veteran in what seemed like the blink
of an eye. I was in an industry that could be defined as the university of life.
We experienced just about every human specimen and temperament possible, mostly
good people, to borrow marketing parlance, legal, decent, honest and truthful.
But at the other end of the spectrum, the blockheads and ignoramuses who tried
it on to get some goodwill cash or freebies.
I could tell you the stories of the young woman who complained
that parts of a tree were in her curry ready meal and describe her ‘redner’
when I pointed out it was some bay leaves; or the guy with a slurring voice who
claimed that a bottle of bleach had jumped off the shelf and attacked him,
ruining his leather jacket; or the man who was horrified to find glass in his
tinned salmon only to feel rather silly when I pointed out it was rock salt; or
the eejit in the chin-to-boot thick overcoat on a sweltering day who couldn’t
for the life of him explain why he had pockets full of unpaid for food and
drink; or the gentleman (me, always polite) who demanded that each individual
item be wrapped in a separate carrier bag; or the jack-the-lad who said he
found a piece in metal in his bread and wanted an apology, some gift vouchers……
and a set of garden furniture. Oh, the public. What a carry on! And, no, yer
man didn’t get his patio refurnished. But, on this anniversary of the death of
Princess Diana, this true story is a peach. I have stretched it a bit for
entertainment purposes but at its core, it happened .
It is not often I can remember the exact dates of customer
complaints but Saturday, 6 September 1997 stands out because it was the day of
Diana’s funeral and a quite bizarre incident occurred. In order to
give everybody a chance to watch the funeral on TV, most shops closed on that
morning. Later, at two o’clock, we reopened and within ten minutes, I was
called to see a customer. As I got closer, I noticed red mist around her
head, cheeks a-flush, hands on hips and a trace of steam coming out of her
ears. As a sharp personality analyser, I detected she was annoyed about
something. (Now bear in mind the sadness of the day.)
"I am furious,” she began. “I have just driven my new
car into your car park and I drove over a McDonald’s milkshake carton, causing
the contents to splash out all over my new tyres. What are you going to
do about it?”
I stood staring at her like a rabbit locking onto the full beams
of a juggernaut, my face frozen, and wondering if I had just heard what I
thought I heard.
She looked at me and said, with menace, not unlike Bette Davis in
that Baby Jane film, “Well?”
My head was searching for the number of a psychiatrist or a hit
man. Eventually my mouth uttered an apology and an offer of a free car
wash. She demanded the full wax and polish and I thought but didn’t say,
“Yeah, first the car and then you, baby.”
I agreed to her demands and she stomped out of the shop. (This is
where I really stretch the tale.) As it was raining, I was doubly cheesed
off but I went out in my big mac to retrieve the milkshake carton that had
caused the mcflurry. The woman who had made an unhappy meal of it had gone. It
had been a burger of a day.
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