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“There’s one on the beds,” she points out.
“There’s a notice telling people not tolieon the beds.” Jonathan’s trying hard to keep his voice this side of civil. “We haven’t felt the need to put up a sign telling people not to, well—on the beds.”
“Well, beds and toilets are different, aren’t they?” The customer always being right is a rule in brick-and-mortar retail to this day but this customer is, in my view, stretching it. “You’ve only got yourself to blame.”
The kid, who from where I’m standing looks like he makes crapping on things a point of personal pride, smiles up at Jonathan smugly.
I get a nasty sense that Jonathan’s feeling the pressure here, so I step in, trying not to remember how badly that went last time. “Is everything alright?” I ask, letting my accent get just that little bit stronger.
“I was telling the manager here that these thingswill happenif they don’t have clear signs saying that people should stay away from the display lavatories.”
There’s a second half of the customer always being right that a lot of people forget. They’re always righteven when they’re wrong. So I nod and smile. “No, you’re right, that’s a very fair point. I will say that there is a little sign there”—I point it out, it quite clearly readsfor display purposes only—“but perhaps it could be a bit more prominent”—it couldn’t—“and at the end of the day, lads will be lads, won’t they?”
The lad in question looks up at me. “You’ve got a stupid scarf.”
“Thanks, it belonged to my mam.”
“Why’re you wearing a girl’s scarf?” asks the obnoxious little twerp who is, unfortunately, always right.
“Keeps my neck warm,” I tell him. Then I look straight to his mother. “So, what were you looking for today and how can we help you find it?”
Turns out she is, in fact, in the market for a new bathroom suite, although this one now has negative connotations for her. So I pass her over to New Enthusiastic Chris, who strikes me as the person present least liable to let a little thing like a lingering association with human excrement put him off a sale.
When she and her demon child have gone, Jonathan gives me an almost grateful look. “You handled that well,” he said. Then he follows up with, “How did you know about the sign?”
Fuck. “I think things are just coming back to me, y’know, from being here. Plus itisactually quite prominently displayed.”
To my relief, it’s enough of an explanation for him. “Right,” he says. “If that’s dealt with, I should probably speak to the rest of the team. Can you gather everybody in the staff room?”
“No,” I say far too quickly and far too insistently. “I mean—there’s no sense in rushing folk, is there? And we don’t want to pull people away from customers while we’re busy.” And wearebusy, which helps.
“Plus,” says Brian, “there’s all those decorations in there.”
Thankfully, Claire comes in with the save. “Oh yes, from when there was that confusion about the delivery so we got no lots and then two lots and had to bung half in the staff room because there wasn’t space in stock.”
“I hope we didn’t get double-charged,” says Jonathan, very much back in calling-his-lawyer-first mode.
“No.” Claire’s much quicker at this than I would have been. “It was their mistake and if they want them back they can have them. They just need to arrange the pickup.”
“But—” Brian is about to say something but a matched pair of stares from me and Claire shut him down.
“How about,” Claire says, taking Jonathan quite naturally by the arm, “we have another once around the floor and I show you the job our team did with putting the displays up? And then if there’s anything else you want to talk about, you can run it by me and I can pass it on when things are a bit less hectic?”
Shockingly Jonathan goes for it, even though it wasn’t his idea. And I am feeling a bit tired what with the trip up and the constant low-key panic, so I let Brian lead me back to the staff room where I sit down next to a box filled with tasteful sprigs of holly tied up with little red bows. Tiff and Amjad have gone back to work, so it’s just the two of us, and he makes me a tea while I’m waiting.
“Well, I must say,” he tells me, “I’m very confused about who’s what and what’s where now.”
“It’s all right, Brian,” I reassure him. “I think things are coming together. Claire seems to know what she’s doing.”
“Oh yes.” Brian nods like a plastic dog on a car dashboard. “She’s done a bang-up job since you’ve been out. Better than ever really.” He looks sheepish. “Not that you were bad. Just that, well, she’s good too. In different ways. Also I think folks are a bit more scared of her than they were of you.”
Not quite sure how to take that, I decide to just not. “I’m not sure I wanted people to be scared of me.”
“Well, that’s good.” He looks sage. “Because we really weren’t. All I mean to say is that you shouldn’t worry too much about it if you need to take a bit longer because Claire’s been brill.”
“Oh,” I say. Then I echo back: “Brill.”
“She had this great idea that I shouldn’t carry coffee through the show room.”
