What’s really killing business

Late in the evening six months ago, my wife and I were driving back to our hotel in the dark when we came upon what looked like an abandoned service station. Since it was entirely dark, we assumed it was closed. This was annoying as we needed milk and some other groceries and it was getting late.

I was also confused. I had stopped there often before, and remembered shopping at the very same service station on Christmas Day a few years ago. How likely was it, I wondered, that a place which opened on Christmas Day would close at 8 p.m.? So, disregarding the abundant evidence that it was shut I took the off-ramp anyway and drove through the lorry park to see if there was any chance of finding some cheesy comestibles.

Sure enough, beyond the dark and forbidding lorry park, we came upon a 24-hour Asda, which sold everything we needed. Predictably, given the lack of welcoming illumination outside, we were the only customers in the place. I rather got the impression that they hadn’t sold a litre of petrol since nightfall.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked the young man behind the till. I faintly wondered at that point whether the lights had been sabotaged by a gang of criminals who hoped to carry out some nefarious raid while undisturbed by other customers, and that we might have stumbled into a crime scene. ‘Why are all the lights off on the road?’ ‘Oh, I think the last guy forgot to turn them on at the end of his shift.’

That was it. There was no urgent rush to rectify the problem, no hurried dash for the light switch. In fact, when we left, the place was still in darkness.