Matalan, how you annoy me...

1) A couple of months ago, I bought a pair of jeans from Matalan. This worked quite well, until it came to pass that the assistant couldn't put through the sale until I signed up for their stupid customer card. I found this mildly annoying, but annoying all the same. After all, shouldn't one be able to just pay for things? Or is that too much to hope for?

2) Anyway, I signed up for their stupid card. Since then, they've taken to sending me a periodic update about what's new in their ranges. Hurrah!

Quite aside from the annoyance of receiving yet more junk mail that I can't recycle (since it contains name and address details), there's the annoyance that the mailing is clearly and obviously not intended for me - virtually the entire is filled with women's clothing. Which rather makes sense... but then perhaps they shouldn't send it to me! Even just having a "Don't send me your stupid mailings" option on the form would have been ideal, but no...

3) Anyway, I decided the time had come to go and buy another pair of jeans. It seemed the thing to do. So, despite not having been informed that they still sold such things (their mailing was remarkably silent on that issue), I decided to risk it, and went back to the store where I had previously bought jeans. And, behold! they still had a big rack of jeans.

Astonished as I was by this miraculous event, I went searching for the jeans I actually wanted. This was an adventure in itself, as the jeans were carefully labelled such that the size could only be read from above... and the jeans then racked above head height! Still, I persevered... and discovered that they had every single size in stock, except for the one I actually wanted!

(You know, it would be really nice if I could say this was the first time this sort of thing had happened, but no. It seems whenever I seek out trousers of any sort they never have the right size in stock. And it's not like I'm seeking a strange or obscure size. On the contrary, I wear one of the most common sizes. And yet no shop seems to bother stocking such things.)

4) Having been rebuffed by their actual store, I then struck upon another cunning scheme - I could order online! After all, surely they must have a web presence, complete with online store?

So, about two seconds of Googling, and there I was. I went into the store, had a look, and found that the store didn't list the entire range, simple as that would be. Instead, they had a small taster of their "huge range", and an entreaty to go visit one of their stores to get the thing that was actually wanted.

Of course, the small taster did not include the item I actually wanted to purchase. Gaaaaah!

Conclusion:

When I was in the Matalan store, between me and the rack of jeans, there was a man shuffling in a zombified manner, purchases in hand. At the time, I inwardly cursed him for his incredible annoyance, but now I wonder instead if I should have pitied him. Was he some previous shopper, stuck there for all eternity, his spirit broken by their nonsensical policies? Did his family know where he was, or had they given him up for dead? Just how long had he been trapped there, doomed to shamble through the store without surcease? I thought about going back, to see if he could be saved, but I feared for my own safety. Some risks are just too great to take.