Primark Fear

Okay: am not incredibly proud of this....but the other week, I actually returned something to Primark.

Why am I ashamed? Well the place is so cheap, it's beyond belief why anyone would go through the rigmarole of returning anything there, as opposed to simply just buying a replacement. But yet, I did it. It's the second lowest point in my life (the first was that time I drank a mug of three-day old coffee for a bet).

In my defence, it wasn't that I had regretted buying the product (a shirt), it was merely a case of the product being too small. Fair enough, I hear you say.

Primark is invariably a terrifying experience. You could be Sir David Attenborough, documenting all aspects of life on the Serengeti, and you would still not witness a fraction of the savagery that ensues at Primark.

I watched the last T-shirt fall out of one of the bargain bins, and four women immediately descended on it like hyenas on a maimed gazelle. Eventually, one of the women snatched the T-shirt up in her mouth, growled at the others, and they slowly backed off.

I would at this point like to point out that I have only recently become aware of Primark's controversial past and accusations of exploitative child labour (is there any other kind?), but as far as I can tell, the company has attempted to make amends for this. I mentioned this to my colleague Alison, who scoffed "Oh yeah? Well why are the clothes still so cheap then?" I replied, presumably because the clothing items change shape, change colour, or completely melt after about three washes. Fair point, she conceded.

However, for reasons of personal safety, I will nevertheless be rarely (if ever) revisiting the shop.

The day I was returning the shirt, I slowly made my way to the sales desk. I say slowly, because my progess was considerably impeded by an extremely large woman who was moving with all the speed of a particularly laconic glacier. Worst of all, she seemed to predict the exact route I was taking to the sales desk and blocked me every step of the way.

I arrived at the sales desk about half an hour after entering the shop, and explained the situation to a rather uninterested teenager sitting behind the counter.

'No bruv,' he advised. 'This is the Sales till, you need the Customer Services counter.'

'Feck. Where's that exactly?'

'Right bruv...well, you go around the corner, follow the curve around to the suit section, then go down past the underwear section. Take a left, then go across and take the second...no, the first, right. Then take a left at the escalators. Then go straight, down past the rest of menswear, take a left and then another right. Follow the path down towards the lifts then take a right. Customers Services counter is on the left.'

I replied that I was merely looking for the Customer Services, not directions to the Land of feckin Mordor. I then hurried off, hoping I'd make it there before the shop closed.

I eventually made it to my destination, only to find the MOTHER of all queues, moving ever so slowly. Somebody could bring John Lennon and George Harrison back to life for a Beatles reunion concert, and the queue for tickets would still be smaller than the queue I faced in Primark that day. There were actually people in the queue who were wearing bell-bottoms- not as a fashion statement, but presumably because bell-bottoms were in style when they started queueing back in 1976.

So what did I do that fateful day?

Well let's just I left the shop without queueing and now occasionaly wear an incredibly small, ill-fitting shirt. C'est la vie,

CB

PS Interesting fact about Primark: it does not sell dressing gowns. Presumably because no one ever actually buys dressing gowns- they just rob them from hotels.