Those were the days.

So you're in a clothing shop and find "that perfect (insert)" but they don't have it in your size. So you ask the helpful looking assistant if they have any (insert) in your size please, with an extremely I'm-really-a-nice-person hopeful smile. They give you a "hmmm" look back with a "I think this is all that we have left" reply. And then say there might be one at Chatswood or Bondi Junction, or some other shop a zillion miles away, and they can ORDER IT IN for you, which completely negates the effect of this spur of the moment purchase for yourself when you're supposed to be Christmas shopping for others. And would mean another trip back to the mall. Which means another hour spent trying to find a car park. No that's simply not an option.

You pleasantly persist with an even more hopeful and sorry-to-trouble-you half smile asking "Perhaps you might have some out The Back".

Now I used to work in "retail" - if Saturdays and Christmas holidays at DEKA in George Street, Dunedin count. This is back in the early 80's where there still were "Backs" to shops with vast boxes of plastic spatulas and mixing bowls, the cardboardy chocolately smelled of the confectionery, (that was curiously locked in a cage which is probably a good thing as my fellow worker Katie had/has a major lolly issue and I always would go along for the ride) AND rows and rows of clothing in different sizes that THEY HADN'T PUT ON THE SHELVES YET. In these spatially challenged times, I imagine now that "The Back"'s have been converted to more retail space with candle shops or cheap shoes now hogging the spots where all the extra sizes of (insert) that you're looking for would normally have been.

So the shop person adopts the "humour-the-customer" strategy and says "I'll just pop out The Back and see if we have any" and I'm picking that they go out the back of the shop, stand and look at a blank wall for a pre-determined and recommended time before coming back sadly shaking their head.

I'm just saying.