choclatièr retrouvé

They're back...

Just in time for Nicky's birthday tomorrow.

Although thanks to the keen but save-it-for-when-there-are-two-assistants-on-duty talky-shenanigans of the American lady in front of me I barely had time to buy anything before steaming off to purchase the primary gift-item. After an extended period of harassing the poor girl behind the counter with loudspeak (preventing her from getting on with preparing the purchases) the customer then either forgot her PIN or otherwise failed to be able to pay with her card and had to shuffle off to "the nuirst ATM". I was growing mildly perturbed as I still had another shop to get to before it closed but also felt a little sad for the shop; it's only just re-opened in its new premises after a period of financial disruption of some sort and during the period when this one customer was tying up the counter-staff three other customers wandered in but wandered out again who might have stayed to buy had they had a chance of being served before the shop shut. I finally got my nice little bag of randomstuff and a couple of pictures (the light in there (whilst pleasantly greenishly moody) isn't the best for non-tripod pictures) and was away (with a successful debit card payment proving it wasn't the shop's machine which was the problem with the talkycustomer) within two minutes. In previous christmastimes they've had pre-prepared random selections all boxed and ready to go so that when a member of staff finally escaped from taking payment from people paying for their caféstuff at the previous location it didn't take very long to serve people who were just in to buy a box of random selection but it still always takes a few minutes to get anything. Hopefully the smell of paint will wear off soon so that people get to smell chocolate whilst they wait instead.