Panda to your Every Desire (6 page)

More Scots than ever are of course buying goods online. But you just don’t get the same rapport as when you venture out into the stores, as these stories prove.

SKIN treatment clinic Destination Skin has recently opened in Frasers in Glasgow. One of the staff tells us about treating a lady and asking her what her makeup removal routine was in the evening. The lady simply replied: “Pillow.”

JUDE HUNTER was in Primark in Glasgow when the girls behind him in the queue were talking about dogs, and asked him if he had any.

He told them he had two mini dachshunds, but that didn’t seem to register with the girls, as one asked: “Is that like a greyhound?” So Jude explained that they were also popularly known as sausage dogs.

“What, square?” asked the bemused girl.

A SHOPKEEPER phones to tell us about the latest must-have toy for Christmas. “Nintendo has brought out a game where you run after a ten-year-old boy on your TV screen around the streets of Glasgow after he has smashed a window of your car.

“It’s called the Wii Bastirt.”

AN ELDERLY reader getting her prescription in Partick tells us the girl in front of her asked the assistant for a pregnancy testing kit. The assistant pointed to two or three different makes and asked which type she would like.

“A negative one, please,” the girl replied.

PET FOOD company Whiskas sells Cat Milk for owners who know that ordinary cows’ milk can upset their pets’ stomachs. A reader in a Newton Mearns supermarket watched the young girl in front of him point at it and tell her friend: “Look. Cat Milk.”

“That’s disgusting. Milking the wee things,” replied her perplexed pal.

A READER’S failure to find sparkling water at a Paisley burger van reminds Allan Boyd in Clarkston of a colleague being told by his wife to pick up a star fruit on the way home for a dinner party.

Says Allan: “As he was driving through Bridgeton, he spied a fruiterer’s and pulled over.

“He asked the wee wummin serving him if she had a star fruit. She looked at him for a minute, then said, ‘A star fruit? Listen son, this is Brigton. We only got bananas here two years ago.”’

OUR TALES of being unable to find exotic fruit and veg in certain parts of Scotland reminds Angus Black of the valuable advice his wife was given when trying to buy kumquats in Paisley. The fruit shop did not stock them, and the fruiterer explained: “Kumquats! Hen, this is Paisley. If they cannae spell it, they’ll no eat it.”

A BEARSDEN reader heard his daughter announce, “That’s disgusting!” while filling out her online shopping order with Sainsbury’s. When he inquired what had agitated her she pointed out the webpage for toilet rolls listed for each brand “cost per sht”.

“It’s just an abbreviation for sheet,” he reassured her.

SPOTTED in Tesco, Springburn, by Carmen Wood – a large display of Scottish goods at the end of one aisle including shortbread, oatmeal and haggis, plus Chinese curry powder. When Carmen queried why it was in a Scottish display, an assistant explained: “Look at the packaging. It’s manufactured in Coatbridge.”

A READER shopping at a Sauchiehall Street store heard an alarm go off at the door where a woman just leaving stopped as she wondered if she had set it off.

A security guard asked her: “Have you bought something in another store? Primark perhaps?”

“How dare you,” the woman replied.

STEPHEN DOYLE visited a Chinese supermarket in Swansea, where he spent a while buying some spices, noodles and one or two large pieces of hardware.

As he was paying at the till, the man behind the counter took a look at what Stephen had bought and said: “Do you have a wok?”

“No,” said Stephen, “the car is just across the road.”

READER Charlie Bell was in a Dunoon charity shop where he was admiring a miniature model of the famous Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, complete with its equally famous fissure. When he asked the lady in the shop how much it was she said: “A pound.”

Then after looking at it further, she added: “Sorry son, it’s got a crack in it. I’ll only charge you 50p.”

A READER swears he was in a Glasgow Asda where an old chap using the self-service checkout couldn’t find the right bit to press to have his bag of potatoes weighed. A member of staff, seeing his dilemma, went over, found the right spot, pressed it, and told him: “The vegetables are listed alphabetically. P for potatoes.”

“Ah, I was lookin under T for tatties, son,” the old fella replied.

WE MENTIONED the senior citizen in Asda trying to look up potatoes on the self-scanner under T “for tatties”. A Hyndland reader reckons many old guys in supermarkets just like a laugh to keep themselves going. He saw one chap with his wife buying a large bag of ice cubes, presumably for a party, and the old fella turned to the bemused checkout girl and asked: “Now are these fresh? I don’t like buying the frozen rubbish.”

JIM LAUGHLAN in Fife went into his local convenience store where he asked if they had any Bird’s Custard. The look of puzzlement on the assistant’s face finally disappeared when he asked Jim: “Do you mean Trill?”

GOOD to see the healthy living message is finally hitting home in Glasgow. Suzanne Wards was waiting for a prescription at her local chemist when a chap with a heroin addiction – in common parlance, a junkie – came in.

“You in for your methadone?” asked the pharmacist, referring to the commonly prescribed heroin substitute.

“Aye,” the chap replied, before adding: “Mind, mine’s sugar-free.”

“I’M SLEEPING on the couch again tonight,” announced the chap in the pub.

After one or two mutterings of sympathy from his fellow topers, he then added: “I have to tell you, it’s great being the night watchman at the DFS showroom.”

GREGGS, the fast-food chain much favoured by Glaswegians, has been told to change the name of its big selling Cornish Pasties as under EU law the name can now only refer to such delicacies made in Cornwall. Greggs is asking customers what to rename them, with the favourite being “the pasty formerly known as Cornish”.

However, as many people dispute the Greggs offering is anything like the real thing, we prefer the suggestion “Cornish Pastiche”.

WE’VE mentioned the tanks of garra rufa fish at Glasgow’s Silverburn shopping centre where weary shoppers plunk their feet in to have a soothing massage from the tiny fish nibbling at their hard skin.

Carol Foote, who was there the other day, tells us: “As I went over to take a look at the fish, a couple in their late sixties came walking up purposefully. The woman had her purse out – obviously intending to have a wee dip of her tootsies. Before she could say anything to the assistant, the husband said in a loud voice, ‘Can she have the tank with the piranhas?”’

A WEST END socialite saw her local dry cleaners had a three for two offer on cleaning dresses and took a few along. Unfortunately, the small print said it did not apply to evening dresses, and she and the cleaning assistant got into an argument about what constituted an evening dress.

As the assistant said her dresses did not qualify for the special offer as they looked like evening dresses, our reader indignantly asked how the assistant would define what dresses the offer applied to.

In a convincing example of Glasgow logic, the assistant replied: “Dresses you would wear to Asda.”

ANNIE McQUISTON, in the snowy wasteland of Glasgow’s south side during the worst of the winter weather, heard a woman coming out of a corner shop declaring: “I’m on the snow diet. Nae breid!”

A READER claims he was in his corner shop when a fellow customer picked up a bag of coffee, peered at it, then asked: “When is this ‘best before’?” The shopkeeper replied: “Well, for me, it’s best before coming to work in the morning.”

CAROL KNIGHT tells us that a neighbour in Partick was Christmas shopping and trying to find a T-shirt of the American rap artist Lil Wayne for her teenage son, but drew a blank.

As she passed a skate shop, her eleven-year-old daughter suggested they try in there, so she went in with her daughter and asked: “Do you have a Lil Wayne T-shirt?”

“No, they start at adult sizes,” said the assistant.

GORDON PHILLIPS tells us about a regular in the Chestnuts Hotel in Ayr explaining that he was given a demonstration of a 3D television when he visited an electrical store, and was handed a pair of 3D glasses by the assistant.

When the assistant came back to ask him what he thought of it, the chap said no way was he prepared to sit just two feet away from the telly.

It was then gently explained to him that he could watch from a lot further back, once the security chain had been removed from the specs.

THE PROBLEMS of delivery drivers on the frozen roads of Scotland reminded a Paisley reader of when he ran a shop in the town, and a German delivery driver came in to ask for directions to Clydebank. “For goodness sake, son,” said the customer behind him, “your faither found it easily enough in the dark.”

CHRISTMAS sales buying can be a fraught business in miserable weather. One frustrated chap was heard explaining his annoyance at trekking around the shops to his girlfriend: “So how would you like it if I took you into eight pubs one after the other and didn’t buy you a drink in any of them, before finally going back to the first one we were in and getting a drink there?”

AND A shopper heading to Silverburn on Glasgow’s south side claimed: “I was stuck in traffic for so long even the sat nav was asking, ‘Are we nearly there yet?”’

A READER sees the BBC headline “Swine flu vaccine stock released” and tells us: “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll just stick to my usual beef or vegetable ones.”

AFTER our story about the B&Q customer bamboozling the Polish member of staff by asking for “a hing tae hing hings oan” readers recall other such feats of linguistics.

There was the foreign tourist asking for the bus to Ayr at Buchanan Bus Station and the driver pointing to another stance and replying: “’Err Ayr ower err.”

And of course the customer in Aberdeen buying ski boots and not being sure which was the left and right one. Or, as she asked: “Fit fits fit fit?”

A SALES assistant in a Glasgow fashion store tells us of the best riposte she has heard when an undecided customer came out of the changing rooms in a dress she had tried on, and asked her waiting partner: “Does this dress make me look fat?” He thought about this for a moment before replying: “Does this tie make me look stupid?”

IT’S NOT just Scottish accents that can be puzzling. Duncan Bradon tells us his Lancastrian daughter-in-law was in a Borders supermarket where, wishing to freshen her mouth, she asked a member of staff where she might find some mints.

“Fresh or frozen?” he asked.

BEFORE Valentine’s Day, Hugh Paton was much taken with the card on sale in Morrison’s which showed a little boy, dressed as a grown-up, carrying a rose and leaning forward to kiss a little girl. Above them the card stated: “For The One I Love”.

And on top of that was a sticker stating: “Buy One. Get One Free”.

DO WOMEN think differently from men? We only ask as Andy Cumming tells us that his wife returned home to say she was walking through Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square when she saw a miscreant running out of a handbag shop with half-a-dozen handbags while a shop assistant gave chase.