Posh People's Shop Pearoast
Many years ago I worked in the china department in Harrods.

First day of the Sale, we all got in early, manned the barricades, heard the mission control-type countdown over the tannoy that told us the doors were about to be opened, followed by a distant rumble that became increasingly louder until a herd of shoppers stampeded into the department.

A bull wouldn't have stood a chance in this china shop, it was carnage. I even saw one gent pick up a vegetable dish, look around surreptitiously, then stick it in his bag and hotfoot it away towards the table linens department. Perhaps he had a set of napkins on his swag list too?

There was even a story among the staff - perhaps apocraphyl, but I'm inclined to believe it - that in these pre-computer days, with the shop full of friends of staff helping out for the day, some bloke wandered in off the street and set up his own till in the menswear department, ringing up sale after sale after sale, no-one questioning him, before he left a couple of hours later, sans cash register but with pockets bulging.

I digress.

Back in the china department, amid the chaos, a lady of a certain age purposefully made her way towards the till and announced in an accent that could have cut glass - sorry, the crystal department is that way, madame - "I demand to see the manager!"

We explained that the manager was rather busy at the moment, but she wasn't having any of it. "I am a Harrods account card holder," she exclaimed - this was in the days when plastic was harder to come than even in these post-credit crunch, cash-straitened times, "and I demand to see the manager!"

So off I scurried to find the boss, who indeed was rather up to her neck in it, with her boss on one phone wanting to know how it was going, and the warehouse on the other line as she tried to make sure we could get more stock up of one pattern that was selling particularly quickly. She took some persuasion to come out of her office, but reluctantly she did, to be greeted by the account customer and her complaint.

"Tell me," she demanded, "Why does Harrods always insist on having the first day of its Sale on a day when there are so many people in the store?"
(Capo, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 23:39, 1 reply)

I am so stealing this story
to tell to undergrads when trying to explain the idea of getting cause and effect around the right way. It's brilliant! And it will help me weed out the _really_ dumb ones :)
(xanthine, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 12:36, closed)