For those of you who haven’t ventured into Waterstone’s Nottingham, here’s a brief overview of the store. It has four floors, and two entrances. The main desk on the ground floor is cunningly situated in the middle of these two entrances which, for commercial reasons, cannot be closed during the trading day.
This means that the ground floor desk is always very cold.
To try and keep customers at a fairly normal temperature – although as they’re only going to be in the store for about 15 minutes it doesn’t really matter – the heating is always on. Very on.
This means that the other floors – especially travel (the first floor), which gets the full blast of the over-door heaters – are pretty hot.
When working on the ground floor, one should wear a jumper. Or three. Or, we were told today, a coat. In fact, in our briefing today we were told that we must not stand doing the same thing for too long, least we get too cold. I’m sure the store risk assesment now includes hypothermia.
But on the other floors, you are likely to melt if you wear anything more than a thin top.
When I wear a jumper, I’m rota-ed to work on travel or elsewear upstairs.
When I wear a t-shirt, I’m on the ground floor.
Typical.
Today, wearing a t-shirt, I was on travel. Wow. I couldn’t believe it – something must have gone wrong somewhere.
It had.
About 11.15, when the weather in Nottingham was at its worst – freezing, windy sleet – the fire alarm went off. OK, we thought, it’s Wednesday – they’re testing the alarm. Nope – today’s Friday. Drat. Fine, we’ve practised this – and, in fact, done it for real several times. Evacuate the store.
“Can we pay first?”
“Can I take the books with me?”
Let nobody tell you that customers are not stupid.
And to cut a long story short, after 20 minutes of standing in the freexing wind and rain, we were allowed, shivering, back into the store. Turns out a heater in the customer toilets had overheated. Typical.
