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A visit to Sports Direct today.

Yttrium

This was the third time ever that I had bought my own footwear. SO MANY PEOPLE IN A CONFINED SPACE! The plan was to find any pair of trainers in size 11.5, pay for them and get out of there! I think I did okay. They were £37.99 which is about £10 more than I was expecting. Reduced from £26,000.99 though, what a deal! The area near the tills was especially chaotic. One queue, which I avoided, had eight people in it. But then it turned out that all eight were buying one item between them so there was a sudden rush of people to that till when they all walked off together. There was some pushing and shouting. I stuck with my chosen queue and concentrated on my breathing.

End of part one. This exciting tale will continue after I've had some dinner.

  • It seems that a lot of places are busier than usual these days due to holiday shopping/ holiday sales. I don't like it either. 

    I sometimes use google maps before going (for some places it gives an estimate of how busy it is throughout the day) then I pick a quieter time to go. 

    Also, if it is possible to take a morning off work or something, normally weekdays during working hours are quieter.

  • Former Member
    Former Member in reply to Yttrium

    The whole shopping thing is funny.  I grew up in Bristol and when I was a youngling we used to spend a lot of time in Bristol town centre (before there was the out-of-town-stuff).   It was often very very very busy, so I'm OK with busy shopping centres.  If I want to get stuff I tend to have a good idea what I'm looking for before I go, and I'm like a laser guided bomb - find what I want and then blow out of there.  Where I find things difficult is busy supermarkets.

    My O/H on the other hand grew up in sleepy Weybridge, but she used to work in the Waitrose there which got very busy.  She finds busy supermarkets a lot easier than I do, but she can't cope with the business of shopping centres/areas that I can.

  • To be honest with you I stopped my story earlier than expected because I started remembering how awful i had felt in the shop and needed to take a break from writing about it.

  • Former Member
    Former Member in reply to Yttrium

    I'd love to be able to say it was down to being smart, but mostly it's down to previous experience...

    In one of the YouTube videos I watched by Sarah Smart (I think) who was formerly a Linux maintainer before she quit because of the toxic environment she says "Process is scar tissue from previous bad experiences..."

  • in reply to Yttrium

    Karrimor Mount Mid Black (outdoor)

  • in reply to Former Member

    Windscale. You were smart and got there early. According to my receipt I paid for the trainers at 15:53. Probably maximum crowd time!

  • Former Member
    Former Member in reply to Former Member

    Technically Reading IKEA is closer to us, but people tend to die horrible deaths before they are able to get out of the car park to flee.  This means Wembley is still the better bet for us :-).

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    We went to Wembley IKEA today.  We arrived before 10 when there were still plenty of parking spaces in the open area.  I already knew what desk and small bookshelf I wanted.  We looked at the desk lamps and we picked one we both liked.  My partner also got some frames for her Vulcan bomber picture cards that she wanted.  We were all done and heading west on the A406 just as the place was starting to get busy and the vultures were hovering round the car park for spaces close to the doors.

    Mission success!