‘Try Carphone Warehouse, they might have some?’

I’d just popped into the Notting Hill o2 shop to get a pair of iPhone headphones. Or any headphones, really. I forgot mine today. What an arse.

‘You’re the fourth person to ask me about headphones this afternoon,’ the chap said, ‘We sold out this morning.’

Weird. A run on headphones for iPhone?

I nodded at his suggestion. It was conceivable that somewhere in the Carphone shelves, there might be some super-overprice headphones for sale. You know, the same Apple ones but at 19 pounds extra.

I walked over with my expectations shot to hell. I walked into the Carphone shop and shuffled in between the hordes. There were only 6 people waiting to be served by two sales assistants – but in the stuffy, poorly arranged store, 6 people made the place difficult to navigate even with the obligatory British ‘er, sorry’ statements every 10 seconds.

I scanned the shelves. Nothing. Scanned the back shelves behind the sales chaps. Then I made for the exit. What a depressing environment.

The trouble with Carphone Warehouse is that one transaction could take 45 minutes to complete (eg swapping contracts, changing networks) whilst another – buying a charger or a pair of headphones – would usually take 30 seconds. So 6 people in front of you … that could actually take a few hours to get seen! I didn’t wait to see if they had any in stock.

Instead I did what all sensible Apple fans do: I went to the Apple Store instead. Job done.