Halfords

It was a question of a new back windscreen wiper. I was about to embark on my epic Cambridge uni drop and it was going to rain for the whole billion hours of the journey. I did a clever Halfords online thing where you can just put the type of car you have and then say what you want for it (a back windscreen wiper) and then reserve and collect. It all went very well aside from the flooded car park — it had already started raining. In the store the nice boy had my windscreen wiper. He offered to fit it for only a couple of quid. I looked at him and assessed his liklihoodedness and decided I could do that myself. As it turned out I couldn’t do it myself but had a helpful neighbour who could and didn’t even charge me a couple of quid. Now I wished I had tested the boy… well next time.

You know how usually there’s one sales assistant in one store who is really helpful, but when they’re not there, or you go to a different branch, you find it really hard to get any help?
Halfords is not one of those stores. Maybe it’s just because I’m pretty, or maybe it’s because I look like someone who desperately needs help and they all feel sorry for me, but I can always find a helpful assistant in any Halfords store.
Most of the time, I’ll look for what I want on my own, but there are occasions when my friendly mechanic has sent me off to get something that I don’t have the first clue what I should be looking for. This was my first experience with the Excelsior Road Halfords. I walked in with a scrap of paper with a bunch of words I didn’t understand on, went up to the first orange-​shirted man I saw, and said «Do you have this?» waving the bit of paper at him.
The man took me to the appropriate shelf, and then very clearly explained the difference between the two types of whateveritwas they had in stock, taking quite a bit of his time to tell me all about what it was for and what I had to do with it. He could have sold me any old thing, but he didn’t: as always, he really seemed to care about the needs of my car.
If only all shop assistants were trained by Halfords.

As I’m not a driver (I have horrific tales of the days when I was learning, trust me), I’m not really a regular patron of any car parts and bits and bobs kind of stores.
But I do cycle, and this is where Halford’s part comes in. They have a really great range of bicycles and gear, and it’s all at acceptable prices. In particular, their range of helmets and safety gear is unsurpassable by most other shops.
However, as quite often seems to be the case, the staff are somewhat wanting. At this branch in particular, the staff all seemed to have a great amount of difficultly even talking to me. Even after I’d approached them in the first place.
But to be fair, in the end they did prove to me that they knew their stuff; it’s just that it was like trying to get blood from a stone. This will be a top-​notch store once the staff have a few sessions in confidence. Bless them.