Argos

When I was young, the Argos catalogue was about the best thing you could possibly read: nobody wants books, they want a visual guide to select birthday and Christmas presents (Easter too if you’re a clever, manipulative child…) and an easy price guide for prospective donors to your playtime fund.
These days we have the internet, but for some reason it’s not as much fun as looking at page after page of groups of items and turning over the corners to mark what you want! You always start off with the intention of buying one thing and get swayed by the myriad alternatives sitting right next door to it. Can you justify to yourself the extra cash for the better item… Damn right you can because it has all the stats right there in front of you without opening new tabs, windows and certainly without having to tolerate the boring/obnoxious/stupid/couldn’t care less/​desperate for commission sales assistant (delete as applicable — if you shop at Westfield then all the above apply).
So Argos is awesome? Not quite — it has a great range of stuff, but not the best. It’s easy to choose, ring & reserve, home delivery etc, etc, etc but it’s downright spoilt (at least in Balham anyway) by the fact it now seems to take far longer than it did 20 years ago for your items to come from the warehouse to the collection desk even with all the modern technology. The quote times appear to be made up by Gordon Brown’s cabinet!
Maybe my Argos Balham experience has just been spoilt because every time I go it never fails to appear badly understaffed or there is some irate punter screaming obscenities at the service staff because their bathroom scales are off white instead of cream as it states in the catalogue.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t buy toys every time I go anymore… sniff, sniff :(