I had to go out...

...just to get away from the stresses and strains of the last two weeks.

I still had a bad headache.

I went to a new store opening of The Range today. Loads people.

Plenty of staff to help. But a slight problem, none of them were English native speakers. So, when I asked for something they didn’t have a clue. But they went and got a male store manager who was English born and bred. But that male manager was still no help, useless. Then he proceeded to give the young girl store helper a lecture.

I left them to wander around the aisles in my mobility scooter to try and find what I needed. Then about ten minutes later I located what I was looking for, and just at that moment the same girl helper rushed up to me. “So sorry, so sorry, he was talking to me. I wanted to help you look.”

So the male manager thought it more important to give the young girl assistant a lecture than actually help me. I had seen her looking at me as I drove away on my mobility scooter, as though she wanted to come after me and help me.

I showed her the item I was looking for, and she reached and got them off the shelf for me. So I thanked her very much. She would have stayed with me and helped me more, but I wanted to wander around myself and go in the lift upstairs. So she took me to the lift.

But many people waiting at the lift. Then the male manager comes along telling us the lift is broken. And is ushering us all, wheelchair users, mothers with babies in prams and a toddler in tow, and me on my mobility scooter to the escalators. But it is step kind of escalators not the travellators or whatever you can wheel a pram or trolley or even a mobility scooter.

Bottom marks to clueless male manager...

By this time I have had enough. Also my cochlear speech processor kept cutting out, and I noticed people looking around. So I asked another customer. “It’s the fire alarm, can’t you hear it?” I had to lipread her.

No, I can’t actually because this cochlear speech processor I have cuts out loud sounds and doesn’t restore the sound for a few minutes until it is sure the sound has finished.

I am going out I think. I wanna go home to my bed. This is not a good morning out.

The tills were undermanned. It’s an opening day for goodness sake. Finally an older woman manager opens a customer service till. She is flustered. She is also yelling instructions to customers to go to a particular till, and trying to get extra staff on the tills...

And she is not sure what she is doing trying to operate the till she is on. Very flustered. And all I want to do is go home.

Finally I manage to get out of the store, but there are so many customer people at the other tills, I cannot get through to get out.

Badly designed store. Bad design of the conventional step escalators, they should have been those sloping travellator type escalators which can still be used by disabled customers if there was a fire etc. Bad the stupid incompetent male manager. Bad the fact the very young girls (not the girls themselves) who looked they had been employed just from school with little/no training.

Will I be going back to that particular store again? No...

I had a splitting headache by the time I got out. I had promised myself a meal before I went home, but was in no mood to go to the Italian place I had planned. I was in a mood for more like comfort food by now.

So I went to the American Diner as you can see from my Blip. I had a breakfast with fried bread...bliss (and don’t tell my dietician!)

And guess what, my headache had gone by the time I came out...and it has stayed away all day despite having to pass the apocalypse before I can get the car in my driveway.

I won’t be going out for nearly a week. I will leave my curtains shut so I don’t have to view the arid desolate plains of the apocalypse next door....

I am a hermit for a week, and don’t you dare ring my doorbell. I won’t be answering...it’s at the bottom of my laundry basket so I cannot see the blue flashing light...

Take care x