Today my wife and I visited a home furnishings store in central London during our lunch break. It was one of those pretentious places where the mass-produced merchandise is carefully designed to look hand-made.

It seems to me that these places hire staff based on their looks because it appears their collective IQ doesn’t even come close to the price of one of their crappy little ‘hand painted’ ceramic egg cups (£4).

But at least they’re, like, so pretty.

Anyway, my wife and I were looking for matching towel and toilet roll holders for a bathroom we are currently redecorating. We were wandering around the store looking for the bathroom stuff, lost among the rugs and curtains in various shades of coffee, vanilla, caramel, mocha, cinnamon and cappuccino.

Suddenly I really fancied a Starbucks.

Our aimless wandering hadn’t gone unnoticed because a sales ‘assistant’ approached us with a massive, vacant smile.

“Can I help you with anything?”, she asked like she’d been practicing it from a prompt card.

(Yes I’ll have a large cinnamon cappuccino please).

“Yes please”, I replied, “I’m looking for your bathroom accessories”

She stood there for a moment; still smiling vacantly. It was clear she had either not heard or not understood me and, from her broken English, I was going with the latter.

“The what?” she said; her smile staying perfectly locked in place.

“Your bathroom accessories”, I replied, again.

There was another noticeable pause before her eyes lit up like she’d just seen a preview of a new season of The Kardashians.

“Ah, yes! Follow me”, she said and started to walk across the showroom.

Cool.

We walked past bedroom stuff, lounge stuff, kitchen stuff, dining stuff (all of which had me craving a double mocha latte) until we reached the corner of the showroom where she pointed down a corridor.

“Just down there sir” she said, still smiling.

“Thank you”, I said as she left.

My wife and I looked at each other and sniggered.

The stupid twat had taken us to the toilets.