It looks as though shop customers are being counted as clients, so
whilst at uni, I spent quite a bit of time working at the St Albans branch of Bhs.
One particularly quiet morning (not many customers, me the only staff on menswear), I'm confronted by a rather well presented, middle-aged man, who is very keen to engage me in conversation. Not having anything better to do, I let him bend my ear.
He proceeds to expain to me that he is a good friend of Sir Terence Conran. This is wonderful, especially as, by this time, Sir Terence has nothing at all to do with Bhs or Storehouse Plc. I grin and nod and say "hmm, yes" a lot, wondering where this is going.
Eventually, I discover that the man wants to buy some underpants, but that he will not buy underpants that have been manufactured under communist regimes (or, indeed, in any other country that he has taking a dislike to). Suffice to say, after reading the packing on three-packs of briefs and grilling me on the countries of origin, he decides not to buy any. But he still wants to talk to me (I begin to suspect that he is simply lonely).
By now I have switched off, and he is jabbering on about his time in the army, serving in Africa or something - he was talking about being in a country populated by black people, I had ceased to care...
Until I hear him say "Of course, it all went wrong when we taught the natives how to read..." At this point, I decided that I was needed urgently by my manager, made an apology and fled to the stockroom.

I miss the general public...
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 2 Jan 2004, 14:11, Reply)