Coupling. When does it happen? When do people become "A couple"?

Because I NEVER see it happen. I’m always the last one to catch on, when Nick and Charlotte are kissing

at work and I look over at the rest of my colleagues and point in shock the all shrug. So. Didn’t you

know? They’ve been going out for ages.

Have they indeed. Well excuse me.

I’m never there when it happens, which may well indicate why I myself am never part of ‘the couple’ I am

‘the single’; that awkward friend, everyone wants to set you up with someone, but hasn’t really got the

heart to do that to them. I sympathise. Besides most of my friends know that if they were to set me up with

someone I would probably do a Miss Piggy style karate chop in their general direction, and that is

something no one wants to witness.

So this is a request of those who couple- please, let me into the secret, is there some kind of club whereby

you regularly swap partners? Is there a magic password?

Because frankly, you all look a bit ridiculous to those of us who are single, and we’d love to catch you at it.

The Corporation is a key word in today’s market place. The corporation assures us of a continued level of

of quality, of competitive rates and will do, it promises, what it says on the tin. Now and then I long for

someone who will not do what they say on the tin, I would like to pleasantly surprised- and if the cost of

being pleasant surprises is an equal amount of unpleasant surprises, I say so be it. Perhaps the most

offensive thing about the corporation is how hard it tries to be casual, to be cool, and to look like it is not

making money. But of course, we live in an active, if not entirely aggressive capitalist state and money is

all that matters. I work in a large book-selling chain, let us give them their privacy by calling them

"Riverrock". A pleasant name, no doubt. At the lowest level there are a number of booksellers in

matching t-shirts, students, academics, drifters and people who just like reading. All of them with a

passion for their books and their own sections in which they seem to excel. At the top level are…

‘management’ the omnipresent dark cloud of Head Office who may claim ‘people skills’, ‘team building

strategies’ and boast C.V.s just full of pointless courses, but have never read Dickens in their life. They

look at the charts and then send runners with suggestions down to the workers below. Once a month Head

Office send a mystery shopper to see how well the bookslaves are doing. A bookseller will get points for

smiling, for asking if the customer really needs a bag, for making small talk about the weather and for

pointing out the offer of the week. The bookseller will not get points for simply finding the book required.

By this criteria bright enthusiastic idiots who are nothing but a pain to customers, may score highly while

the best bookseller I know, an eccentric and not always sociable man, will score very low, despite having

wider intelligence and having read more books than anyone else I know. Surely what customers want is

someone who can help them, not someone who will beam at them and make small talk. Oh, but wait, how

foolish of me, the customer is not at the centre of the equation here, are they? No. They are the necessary

means for making money, the customer must be happy, or else they will not return and then money will

not be made.

It is not the lack of respect for the customer that really saddens me, it’s the lack of passion.

Recently "Riverrock"; the UK’s top seller of books, made the executive decision to stock "less books and

more stationary, gifts and electronics". It is, it really is, sad. That we have come to a world, where no one

seems to care about anything but their bank balance.