Shopping Nightmare

Unable to get the nitrile gloves we have been wearing when shopping, Hubby thought outside the box and placed an on-line order with a supplier for order and collect.
No problem, and we ordered 10 pairs paying for them on line. Just as the payment was accepted, the screen went dead.
Trying to phone their help line was an absolute joke and when we eventually got through to the right department, the recorded message was that all enquiries should be made on their website.
We tried again, found our order and proceeded to the outpost supplier twenty miles away.
When we got there, no-one is allowed inside the shop, and orders are retrieved from the back and handed over as they have already been paid for.
Except ours wasn’t there. No record of it either, and when given the number to call for ghostbusters their helpline, we had the same recorded message. The guy on the door was apologetic, but there was nothing he could do as there was no order in the system.
Having no smartphone (as assumed) , it was lucky Hubby had thought to bring his laptop, so we parked up outside a bank and piggybacked on their free WiFi.
Hurrah, we found our order, checked it and changed it from delivery (which we hadn’t asked for) to collect, then noticed the payment had been rejected, so put the details in again. Everything went swimmingly, accepted and off we went back to the supplier.
All smiles and having an order number now, he went trotting off…… and didn’t come back.
Eventually and again apologetic, he said he had found the order but it had been processed for delivery. He’d rung his manager who was going to contact the warehouse to get it changed to collect, but didn’t know how long it would take.
I walked the dog.
Twenty frustrating minutes later, he came back with a bag containing our order and we thanked him profusely.

From there, we made the mistake of trying to do some shopping for the root veg we couldn’t get the other day.
The car park was sparsely occupied and there was no queue. Hubby went inside and I got nervous.
Two guys came out each with a six pack and made their way to the bus station opposite where we were parked. Five minutes later, another couple of guys came out and joined them. There was a lot of hugging and loud ‘banter’. I locked the car door.
A woman came out with a large bottle of cider and two huge mulit packs of crisps. She joined them, and cans were opened. A single guy came out who seemed to be talking to himself and gave me a dirty look, and was approached by one of the 4 guys, hugged, and a packet exchanged. The six then started to ‘party’ and I was hoping Hubby wouldn’t be long.
He wasn’t and had managed to get onions but nothing else.
We tried TESCO, but the queue was snaking round the car park, so we did a 180 and went to another supermarket which had the PCSO on the door. No queue here when we arrived and Hubby was able to enter straight away.
The queue started to mount and there were about 10 people waiting when he came out. He’d got potatoes and gravy granules plus a chocolate bunny for me for Easter and a danish pastry as I was fighting off a headache and needed a sugar fix.

We wanted to go home. Things were not going well and we were not only hungry and thirsty, but feeling very uncomfortable in our surroundings.
There was a clicking noise coming from one of the back tyres and on inspection, we’d picked up a nail, most likely from the supplier where we’d got our alternative gloves!
It was nearly 1pm, and we knew our friendly guys in the opposite direction to where we were closed at midday on a Saturday. We were in a strange town, so checked out garages and tyre fitters on the satnav. The ones they gave us were 14 to 19 miles away.
We remembered passing a garage on previous trips so did another 180 and went there. It was closed.
Kwik Fit was open though and we pulled up on their drive to be told they were only open for essential workers. I asked if there was any chance they could fix our tyre, and he looked round and said
‘Sure, I’ll have a look and see if we can repair it’.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We had to stay in the car park so again I walked the dog to grass.
Twenty five quid later we were all done and on our way home when the phone pinged.
It was a text to say our order was ready for collection.

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