Extra Extraneous Errands!

Here is the next installment of
Robin’s Weird Errands,
Joyless Jacked-up Jaunts,
Soul-sucking Supplementary Shit-shows;

For a mini-DIY project I’d been planning for a while,
I went to the DIY shop, but the piece of wood I wanted was out of stock,
I came back, went on-line,
And noticed it was available for click-and-collect;

Hmm, ok! Let’s try that,
Maybe they have one out the back?
An hour later, the order was ready,
I drove back to the shop and walked up to the desk;

But alas the piece of wood they gave me was not the correct size,
—15mm thick, not 21mm, I knew it!

I asked for a refund but the young girl made it a bit more complicated,
Seemed reluctant to issue it and suggested I come back on Tuesday,
There’ll be a new delivery, so it should be in stock and I can simply replace it;

I said OK, didn’t want to make a hassle,
Drove back home knowingly with the wrong piece of wood 😆;

Went back on Tuesday, walked round the shop,
Found the piece of wood I wanted but the queue was extremely long;

OK, fuck that, I’ll just go to the returns desk and return the wood…
Ahuh—
The returns desk with just two people ahead of me in the queue,

But the first old man, with his absent-minded son in low-slung pyjama bottoms 😏,
He was another ‘hassler’!
One of those people who spends forever and ever talking and looking at bits of paper and going backwards and forwards with the desk person, seemingly in some kind of endless loop doing absolutely god knows what and going nowhere;
Their address was asked for on three separate occasions,
On three separate occasions they gave the address—
With the son repeating it, twice each time;

Again I stood there just amazed and intrigued to see where this was going—
Just how long could I stand in a queue with only three people in it?

Well…the second old man eventually began his proceedings,
(And also took fucking forever),
Only, this one was a bit more sociable—
“Long time to spend waiting for one piece of wood! 😆”
He said to me sympathetically, apologetically,

“Oh I know! But this always seems to happen whenever I go to an information desk or something”,
I replied,

And then I told him the story of the time I spent an hour in a queue (of three!) at Tesco just to pick up my lost bank card,

“So now I just expect it!”, I finished,

And he told me how he’d bought all these pieces of wood back in October, but his wife had now decided that she didn’t like them, and he was getting a refund (of over £200)! Typical, eh?!

Nutter!

Total time spent on this (totally pointless) errand: 40 minutes in queue, 90 mins in total 🤦‍♂️.

🌪