“Do you want me to print off the sale of goods act?” screams an angry, seething, firebrand scotsman pleonasm-istcally.

“That doesn’t apply here” replies the sale assistant.

“So what you’re telling me is that you’re above the law.”

“ When did you buy it? Do you remember who sold it to you?”

“I don’t remember but I can get yesterdays timesheet because I came in on a skive and can tell from that when I was here.“

“It doesn’t really matter but we can’t exchange this because you’ve opened it.”

“Well how can I tell that it doesn’t work if I don’t open it. Do you expect me to look through the plastic and tell you that it isn’t going to work? I’m telling you, if I opened a TV and it didn’t work – I’d get an exchange.”

“Ok, just for you - I’ll do an exchange.”

After that argument, the O2 staff must be in the best mood to give me a good deal on a new mobile phone. I stand there looking as eager to part with my money as an idiot is to give their bank details to the third viscount of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A young woman, possibly a mini driver and looking slightly like Minnie Driver, heads into the store room. Her boss, who has just finished arguing with the scotsman, orders her not to take her tea break but rather serve one of the customers waiting. She walks past the person who has been waiting longest and had to put up with standing behind an angry scotsman and comes to talk to me.

I lay out my desire to have the N95, a £30 tarrif and a £5 a month Mobile Internet . “That’s £35 a month isn’t it? And that means that I get the phone for £90? Right?” I say trying to use the pressure technique I once saw on Derren Brown’s show.

“Erm, yes” she replies. I know I am trying to pull a fast one here but let’s face it – these places make so much money, I don’t really feel any guilt. We sit down and she starts tapping in details, asking me for confusing things like my addresses for the past 3 years, my bank account and my name. And then she gets the phone out of the store and I can see it. The con is on.

“Erm, the computer is saying that the phone will cost £130.”

“But if I’m paying £35 per month, it says £90 in your book here. And you agreed with me before didn’t you?” I say pinching my finger and thumb together and moving them in a circular motion trying to synch my Jedi Mind trick.

“Well the computer doesn’t seem to agree, I don’t think they add in that £5 from the Internet bolt-on” she says.

She must be very strong minded, I switch my attack and try and play to the commission led salesperson in her. “Oooh, well if that’s the case, then I’ll have to go and have a think about it. I wasn’t really expecting that……” leaving a nice trailing silence waiting for her to interject.

“Ok then.” she says.

“Because that £40 extra is a lot more money than I expected to spend……..” I put on my thinking face. “Well I guess I’m going to have to go home and have a think about this.”

“Ok then.” she says.

I get up to walk out and I’m pissed off. What happened here? I wanted to buy the phone and I really would have paid £130 but I feel a bit upset that O2 weren’t even willing to fight for my custom. Do they not know anything about customer service? Compare this to Starbucks who send you a nice bag of coffee for using their card.

This has really pissed me off and they wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I can really hold a grudge. I’m boycotting Vodaphone because of the whole Glazer thing, Orange pissed me off when they took away by 500 texts without anything more than a small print warning, I can’t use Virgin Mobile because of their extortionate WAP charges, even though I identify with their young hip anti-establishment image and the cool-best-mate’s-dad like owner. Now O2 have upset me.

Help me T-Mobile you’re my only hope.

I walk towards the tram stop. I am quite happy to get the replacement bus. After all, I have already paid for it. I get my Tram season ticket out and check the date it expires. It finished yesterday. Ok so I haven’t paid for the bus, but I can get a ticket for it. I check my wallet and I have no money.

I head towards the nearest cash machine that charges me £1.50 to get to my money. After getting the money, I notice a regular bus coming towards the stop. I head towards the bus and step on. “Town please.” I say. It’s been so long since I had to pay for a bus trip to Manchester, I hope that the young hip kids are still referring Manchester as “Town”.

After successfully negotiating the bus journey, I decide to treat myself to a Coffee from Starbucks. My decision to do this didn’t really come as much of a surprise to me, and I don’t think it would come as a surprise to regular readers, but I decide to act excited about allowing myself to have a coffee.

I take the coffee and walk towards my second bus. After five minutes of standing and waiting for the bus, it arrives. Two buses and only five minutes of waiting – my bus luck is in. Maybe I should play the lottery .

“One to the place that I work at which if I named I’d have to kill you.”

“The place that you work at which if you named you’d have to kill me….. That’ll be £1.80.”

I pay, switching coffee to my left hand.

“You can’t come on here with that.” says the bus driver pointing at my coffee.

A look of paniced despiration comes across my face. I start to look crazier than a Glasweigan NHS Consultant. (After the recent bombs, the Police are going to arrest and search more Asians. Wouldn’t they be better off arresting all Consultants? And with them all in jail, us normal people may be able to get a tee-off time on a Friday afternoon.)
“Well ok, you can take it on but you can’t drink from it.”

I nod in acceptance and try to supress a smirk as I walk upstairs.

I draw strength from History’s greatest rebels who have stood up to injustice and righted wrongs - Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Donny Tourette – and sit down in my seat and drink my coffee. I place my feet on the shelf at the front of the bus, covering the sign that says “Do not put your feet here.”

I am feeling very rebelleous today. When I get to work, I’m going to spend all day dicking around rather than working.

The trams are no more!!!

The Man in his White Ivory Towers has decided to shut down the trams for a few months to replace the track. Although the decision claims to have been made because the old track was causing the trams to breakdown and get poorly, it is much more likely that this decision has purely been made to spite me.

For the next two months I will be using a mixture of the Bus and the Car. I don’t so much mind the bus, I used to ride the bus to school every day. (Listen to me “ride the bus” it’s almost like I’ve been hanging around with a Canadian, eh?). I even had a chewed up Clippercard which never worked and gave me numerous free journeys. But the bus does allow me to have a relaxing journey into work so it is kind of like the tram but just for a lower social class. Or if I was setting an IQ test, I would put it:
Bus is to Tram as MySpace is to?
And the answer would be Facebook.

Harry the Yaris isn’t going to know what hit him. He’s used to driving to Football on a Wednesday and Sainsburys on a Saturday and then sitting around all week reading the paper. In fact I can already feel the stress of having to drive in every day and I’m sure the car must be picking up on it. One of the reasons I get the tram was to avoid the stress of driving. I hate having people cut you up, sitting in traffic jams, not being able to read, having to remember to stop at red traffic lights and having to recollect that if you hit a cyclist it’s likely to cause damage to the car.

And what will become of the ginger haired man in the trench coat? He has almost become family. I see him more often than I see my parents and the few words I spoke to him to ascertain if the seat next to him was free is more than I have spoken to my older sister in the last 12 months. I will miss his stoic glare and unswerving ability to get the front seat on the station side of the tram.

I will also be missing out my once a week treat of getting a Starbucks on the way in to work. I hope they don’t go bankrupt because of this loss of trade. It’s always tough for these small local retailers. Although I suppose this could be a blessing in disguise, the once a week treat was becoming slightly unmanagable on every day of the week. This will give me the chance to get some blood back into the coffee stream.

There has to be at least one advantage to me of the trams not running. I suppose it could be the refund I’ll get from my ticket. But they sent me a form to fill in so there’s no chance of getting a refund. I wonder if they’ve just sent the form out betting on the fact that 97.35% of people won’t complete it because they can’t be arsed.

And then it dawned on me, I know one thing I won’t miss about getting the tram. I won’t be getting a lift home off my Dad on a Friday evening anymore, so no more pretending to be interested in hearing about the new pill he’s had to start taking this week, no more faking interest in the latest goings on at the Church, no need to feign interest in his latest business deals and no need to make-up things that I’ll be doing on the weekend when the only thing I’ll be doing is picking up a little Canadian.