In the Kensington M&S where I get my lunch – the delicatessen has a very decent pork pie or Scotch egg – the business of queuing is a matter for snap judgments…if there’s an empty till going with a human being on it (do I need to say why automated tills are a pain?) then you make for it before someone with a trolley does. So when I heard about the customer in a ‘central London’ M&S who got asked by the woman on the till to wait for someone else to serve her because of the champagne in her shopping, well, I had a kind of fellow feeling. What, start queuing again, if you’ve just managed to get served? The assistant was ‘very apologetic’ apparently, but it would take more than apologies to unruffle your feathers if you’re not served for having something in your shopping that the shop actually sells.
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James Walton
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The fault of course lies with the retailer.
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