I was horrid to the Oxfam man...

So, I'm a little slow moving but seriously, not that slow! Not yet...

I'd just finished my tea nad was reclining on the sofa in the hopes of avoiding indigestion when there was an aggressive knock at the door. To be fair, with our door knocker, it is quite hard to do anything but an aggressive knock. I pulled myself off the sofa, already wondering why I was bothering as it wasn't going to be anyone of interest and toddled towards the door. At which point it was knocked aggressively again. I picked up my keys, went into the hall, the person knocked again...

I opened the inner door while they were still fiddling with the knock, perhaps considering a fourth attempt...

On opening the door and seeing it was an Oxfam man...my irritation did not subside. It perhaps increased and I opened with "I heard you the first time". I paused briefly before continuing with "And we already support you". The man, who was not getting the hint said "Ah, but which project?" to which I replied, "I don't know, I don't really care and I'm so much not in the mood." He'd left our front yard before I shut the door.

I feel bad because he had to pull himself together from the shouting pregnant lady and move on to the next house but...I'm not exactly calm yet.

The thing is, although he riled me with his triple knocking impatience and although I generally find people at the door selling things/asking for money pretty irritating, it was actually my final customer at work today who really got me started...

Twenty minutes before I was due to leave, the phone rang. Normally a lengthy call with us is about five minutes long, ten max so I didn't fob the call off on someone else. I really should have.

It started with "My name is Mrs Blah, I'm actually really rather a regular customer in your shop." Right. Not a good start. If you are regular, you don't need to tell us, we know you. She followed it up by telling me that they live pretty much the length of the country from our store. Very regular.
However, they would be coming next week and wanted to be sure that we had everything they wanted to look at. She proceeded to give a comprehensive list and I was able to find everything she wanted. She then passed me on to her husband. How I wish I had passed the phone on too.
Foolishly, I assumed he would be as organised as her...
He began to waffle on through about half the stock we have, not specifying a colour. Or, indeed a size.
I asked him when we discussed the first garment what size he would like and he said "Hmm, it goes from S-XXL, so I imagine XL, possibly XXL." I told him we had a few in XL but XXL was harder to find and we would be unlikely to have any in but could order them for him. We moved on to the next item. Some trousers. I asked for his waist size and he suggested I was being difficult and asking questions too hard for him. I had to simply reply "ok, we've got a reasonable range of sizes, there should be something..." Back to tops. He told me an item and I said "Ah, we're a bit limited at the moment, we don't have any in in extra-large."
"Extra large? I'm not extra large! Dear me, I never said that, I would never say that."
I paused. Took a deep breath. "What size were you interested in then?"
"XL. Or possibly the one down from that. Never extra-large."

I forced myself to physically smile for the rest of the conversation. It was the only way I could hope that I sounded even vaguely interested or polite. Sadly, I will be in store when they come next week. It might of course be fun to point out what S, M, L and XL stand for...someone suggested he might've thought XL meant extremely luxurious...