We went for a quick trip to Mothercare World yesterday, which was a naïve thing to do. Basically, any parent of young children will know a trip to Mothercare is seldom anything but quick! It was total mayhem in there!

Staff were shouting across the store at each other that there was no one to man the tills, they were sending customers to the tills at the opposite side of the store assuring there would be someone to serve them there, but when I moved across it was just as busy and a lady just walked out because she couldn’t be bothered to wait any longer.

Kids were racing around with miniature shopping trolleys which could really do some damage to calves if you didn’t see them coming and there were all manner of other toy pushchairs, trikes and bikes whizzing around. Then on the floor need the customer service tills were yet more toddlers fighting to race the cars around the toy track whilst babies battled to find a pathway to crawl past and parents stood around looked harassed and done for! Luckily we only went in for a few items and while our trip mightn’t have been as quick as we’d have hoped, we emerged relatively unscathed!

So, what did I learn from the experience - well, Mothercare does have a very good online service, so maybe that’s worth bearing in mind next time!