Accessorize

I feel that I have to jump in and defend this Accessorize.
Generally speaking, I love Accessorize. I love the style of the things they sell and I think it’s great that there is no apparent logic to the way things are arranged.
I walk past this particular branch of Accessorize every day on my way to work. The current window display is a stunning arrangement of all things colourful and snuggly ready for winter (or now, for those of us who live in Wales). Every time I walk past I see something else I want.
It is true that the staff here leave a lot to be desired, but I find that this is something particular to all Accessorize stores and isn’t limited to this one. For some reason, Accessorize insist on hiring girls with giant sticks up their behinds and who have no interest in helping customers whatsoever.
While this would put me off most stores, I can more or less cope with it in Accessorize, and this store more so than any other as there is rarely more than one sales assistant in here.

Oh, I’m in illustrious company here…
Right, here’s the deal. I’m a straight guy who has, once or twice, had occasion to patronise Accessorize and spend some money in the place. I’m not exactly proud of it, but K.I.S.S. costumes don’t glitter themselves now, do they?
Being a guy, Accessorize offends me on a molecular level regardless of why I’m in there; the entire shop is ridiculous. It looks like Tinkerbell spent the night drinking fruity cocktails and then vomited all over everything in the store. Nothing needs that much glitter and surely that many sequins on a bag is excessive? It looks like you’re being attacked by robotic bees and it freaks me out.
On top of this, it’s one of the more unintuitive stores around the city centre. Dear Accessorize, here’s a lesson in basic store management; things that are similar to each other go in one place, then other things that are similar to each other but not to the first things go in a different place, then a third group of similar things can go in a third place and anything that looks nothing like anything else goes by the till and gets called an «impulse buy». Where you’ve gone wrong is you seem to have loaded all your stock into old fashioned muskets and just blasted it through the doorway; where ever it landed, that’s where that item lives now, and anyone who tries to talk sense into you gets fired.
It’s lunacy, is what it is. The least you could do is put all the obscenely sparkly things on one side of the room so that the entire shop doesn’t turn into a damn epileptic rave every time the light from someone’s phone bounces off a sequin.

I’m sorry to hear that people have had bad experiences in this place, but it’s always been very good to me.

It’s funny how you can really love one Accessorize store and really dislike another; after all aren’t they practically the same? In the case of this particular branch they really are not, and I’m incredibly thankful to see that my fellow Unilocaler Laura has a similar opinion to myself (in regards to the staff), of this store in comparison to the one in the St Davids centre.
For starters I really don’t like the layout of this branch, Accessorize stores are by nature very small, so I have absolutely no understanding to why they have decided to plonk the till right in the middle of the store. It takes up far too much space, makes it difficult for staff to assist customers (they are effectively trapped), and most annoyingly makes queuing rather confusing (nobody ever knows where to stand, and it’s incredibly easy for people to accidently queue hop).
The jewellery itself is all rather pretty, which is to be expected. However I really don’t think the selection is anywhere near as good as in the other Cardiff Branch.
My big problem with this store though, is not the bad design planning, or the jewellery selection (both of which irritate me), but with the awful staff. I’ve never found them to be particularly friendly, but I was in here recently when the store was completely empty, and asked a staff member if they had a particular necklace in stock. She and her colleague both told me that the item I was looking for didn’t exist (I now own it), and were both incredibly patronising towards me, so much so that I felt rather intimidated. I must say that I am sorry to see that Laura was also treated rudely by staff in this store, but also rather relieved that I’m not the only one.
Avoid this Accessorize and head to the St Davids centre branch, where the staff are both incredibly lovely and helpful.

I have already reviewed Accessorize once, I think. And I gave it a fantastic review because I normally find that they are lovely. However, my experience at this one was so bad that I actually emailed them a complaint just now…
I went in and there was one customer assistant on the shop floor. I was standing waiting for a friend when she walked past brusquely and I was forced to move out of the way. Now, this in itself was rude enough for me. I would try not to force someone out of the way in everyday life, let alone when they were a customer.
Anyway, I said that it was rude to the friend I was with. Maybe she heard and was angry or maybe she was just ignorant and rude but whilst I was looking at some products she pushed past me so that I stumbled (that’s fairly hard) and then said ‘Oh, scuse me’, VERY sullenly.
This is not acceptable in any way. She was rude and I walked out of the shop despite seeing things I wanted.