Picture this...
A buyer comes steaming into a Woolworths store, brandishing a can of Glen 20.
BUYER: Service! I say, service!
Behind the customer service desk is a sleekly coiffed young woman with improbable eyelashes.
CUSTOMER SERVICE REP: No, sir, we're in Toorak.
BUYER: What? Er - Jodie, is it?
Buyer squints at CS rep's name tag.
CS REP: Yes, Jodie, sir. This is the Toorak Woolworths, not Surfers Paradise.
Buyer does a double-take.
BUYER: I said service, not Surfers.
CS REP: Ah. Sir's forceful timbre made it difficult to tell. How may I assist sir?
BUYER: It's about this can of Glen 20.
CS REP: Which I behold sir holding in a most eloquent fashion. Yet I cannot yet enfathom sir's intended import.
BUYER: My import? My import? That, Jodie - to put it pithily - is precisely the point!
CS REP: No doubt it is my as yet untutored ability to unwind the tagliatelle of sir's mind, but I remain to this second unsauced by sir's point. May I ask sir to elucidate?
BUYER: I'll bally well elucidate, Jodie. I'll elucidate with all the clarity of a really good consommé
CS REP: Aisle 7.
BUYER: What?
CS REP: Consommé is in aisle 7.
BUYER: I don't want to buy any bally consommé. I'll be having carpaccio of Maldivian long line caught yellow fin tuna fanning an island of Rio Grande Valley avocado crème fraîche topped with young coconut, accompanied by a compôte of succulent spinach and onion besottedly served with morels stuffed with chicken farce and mixed herb-smoked mashed potatoes, followed by a Batlow Jazz apple and sorrel sorbet veiled like a virgin bride with Batlow apple blossom, the whole surrounded passionately by a Turkish caramelised hazelnut crumble. And don't start telling me in what aisle I can buy apples. I'm not buying apples. I'm not here for apples.
CS REP: Sir has made himself most plain with respect to the apple situation.
BUYER: Good. I don't want to leave a soupçon of doubt.
CS REP: None left on the apple front, sir.
BUYER: So let me get right to the point. It's this can.
CS REP: I behold with pleated gaze the can which sir raises as though paid a most obscene amount to endorse it on a commercial.
BUYER: I bally well do not endorse it. I won't be having that. Not for one second. Here! Is anyone filming this?
CS REP: I can assure sir that no official cameras are memorialising sir's visage and behaviours, although there may be some smart phone activity taking in sir's lustrous words.
BUYER: I want all smart phone cameras to be stopped immediately, and the perpetrators to be taken and most rudely pummelled.
CS REP: I apologise with all the truffle-sprinkled grief of an uncalved French sow, sir; we do not carry pummelling in this store.
BUYER: No, that's all right - my personal pummellers will take care of it.
Sounds of angry shouts and screams and pummelling heard.
BUYER: Yes, I never go anywhere without my personal pummellers. But to get back to this Glen 20, Jodie, can you confirm for me that this is priced at $8.00?
CS REP: Of course, sir. One moment, sir, while I complete sir's request.
CS REP speaks into tannoy.
CS REP: Price check at the service desk, please. One 300g can original Glen 20. Please expedite price check for many and varied reasons, none of which I can convey over the tannoy. Urgent price check...
PRICE CHECKING EMPLOYEE OVER A DISTANT TANNOY: Price check information for Jodie, expedited urgently. One can 300g original Glen 20 is $8.00. Repeat, eight dollars. Hopefully this information will allay service desk situation.
CS REP: Information received, thank you.
CS REP puts down tannoy.
CS REP: Sir will be pleased to know that his tentative suggestion of a price of $8.00 is confirmed.
BUYER: Sir is bally well not pleased. I was charged $708.82 for this can of Glen 20! Tell me how that happened, if you can!
CS REP: That's certainly quite a discrepancy. Did sir purchase, perchance, 97 cans of Glen 20?
BUYER: No, I did not. I specifically ordered one can. One can! I'm most particular about that. Why would I need 97 cans? I wouldn't.
CS REP: Is it possible that sir also took cash out when making the purchase? A cash withdrawal of seven hundred dollars and 82 cents?
BUYER: Most definitely not. I wasn't even here; it was an online purchase. Clearly I have been overcharged and I most emphatically and robustly demand a refund for the overpayment!
CS REP: Sir does indeed have a robustness in his speech which is as relentless as the sweet crooning of an unlicensed sawmill erected next to one's bedroom overnight. Perhaps sir has his receipt with him, so that I may sally forth to redress any fiscal injustice.
BUYER: I make it my business to carry receipts with me within scrolls from my well-stocked library, for there is nothing, I say nothing, quite like reading over one's past purchases in receipt form for engaging the mind. Some people speak of Proust - merde! say I to Proust. Some people speak of Shakespeare - a pox on him, I say! Give me a good rousing charge-me-up filibuster of a catalogue of receipts, and nothing is more certain to content, excite, and tantalise to an almost indecent extent. Here, volume MXVI - the exact receipt is precisely 39 and a half feet from the top.
Buyer unrolls long scroll.
CS rep solemnly reads the appropriate receipt after locating it in the scroll, and a faint muffled sound is heard from the rep. It may be incredulous laughter; it may be a despairing moan.
CS REP: Sir is pleased to jest with me, I see.
BUYER: No jest, no jest at all. I keep all of my humorous receipts in another volume entirely. Well? Well?
CS REP: Sir would have to have the brain of a plain vanilla custard not to have realised what the additional cost comprised. The truth of sir's misapprehension rises like a vigorous and most unwholesome odour, akin to that of a very putrid yellow fin caught some matter of a week ago by a gap-toothed fisherman and left since then in front of a heater. This is in contrast to the freshness with which we - Woolworths the Fresh Food People at Toorak - provided the relevant information viz-à-viz the aforementioned receipt. Perhaps sir will cast his orbs upon this line here, where is detailed the small matter of the delivery charge.
BUYER: Delivery charge? What noisome trick is this? Surely you cannot be telling me that I paid seven hundred dollars or so for delivering an eight dollar can of Glen 20?
CS REP: Sir did state that the delivery address was Como Parrot Cay in sir's private villa there... and sir did request next day delivery...
BUYER: Oh. Well, still, seven hundred dollars delivery. I'll bally well get the butler to buy it locally next time - and I hope that'll teach the whole bally lot of you!
Please note: this is for entertainment purposes although it addresses the topic in a humorous way. It is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the poster's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
