Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Gift vouchers for Halfords

While taking Anna to work this morning it was raining and the passenger-side windscreen wiper suddenly just flew off the wiper arm. I duly stopped at the side of the road and fixed it back on. Two minutes later, I’m fixing it again. One side of the clip had broken and couldn’t hold the wiper on properly, and excessive use was making it loose. I left the wipers on intermittent mode, dropped Anna off at work, and drove to the nearest Halfords.

I picked up a maintenance book because the heater needs fixing and requires taking panels off and draining the radiator – all good fun (!) Not sure how to do it though, hence the book! While doing this, a guy in a suit with a clipboard asked me if I came here a lot.
"Is that a pick up line?" I asked.
"No, no," he laughed, "I’m telling people about a Halfords credit card and wondered if you come here a lot and would find it useful to have."
I do my whole ‘nodding and slowly backing up’ thing which he sees coming a mile off.
"Now before you say ‘no’," he continued, "it’s a low transfer rate, you don’t have to pay for it, and you can get store credit and gift vouchers."
"Gift vouchers?" I repeat.
"Yeah!" he says enthusiastically.
"You do gift vouchers for a car maintenance store?"
"Uhm…"
"I dunno about you, but if someone gave me Halfords gift vouchers for Christmas, I’d be rather disappointed."
"Right," he said, as if he’d never thought about it that way before. "So that’s a ‘no’ then?"
I nodded with a look that said ‘Well, duh!’ but also of sympathy which said ‘Sorry you have this stupid job’.
"Er, can I help you with anything else then?" he asked.
"Well, I need windscreen wipers…"

He was off like a shot, looking up my car (which he guessed from the maintenance book I was holding) and the wipers I needed, and explaining the difference between all the brands. I nodded like I already didn’t know out of sympathy. It was rather cute actually. And if he wasn’t a salesman I might have asked for a date.

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