Here's a
true story. It might sound like a joke, but believe me this is true. And you're
going to have to read right to the end to get the punchline.
A few hours
ago I was wondering what to cook for my evening meal, and I really fancied a
particular type of stuffed crust pizza that I always buy from a particular
shop. This is because, having tested out many supermarket pizzas, this shop sells my favourite.
So I drove
the two miles to this particular store in Leeds, purely to buy one solitary pizza and
then drive straight back home to cook it.
Now for the
benefit of our readers around the world, I need to explain that this week the
United Kingdom has been going through some of the worst snow and icy weather
that we have had for a very long time in this country.
And with
that in mind, some schools, offices and other places of work have been
closed (especially in rural areas) as it's been difficult for people to get to
work in areas where the snow has been particularly bad. But that shouldn’t apply
to a large well-known shop close to the centre of Britain’s fourth biggest
city!!
So anyway, I
drove to this particular store which I knew for certain doesn't close until 8.00pm
and there was even a big sign on the door confirming they would be open until 8.00pm.
I arrived at
7.15pm. But guess what? The doors were locked and they weren’t allowing any
customers to go in, even though all the lights were on and I could clearly see
several members of staff inside chatting with each other. In other words, they
had closed early without telling anyone (presumably using the snow as an excuse
for the early closure).
But this
didn't make any sense at all, since there were still staff inside the shop,
seemingly doing very little work.
Now you
would have thought that if their excuse for closing early was because of the
bad weather, then all the lights would have been out and the staff would have already
gone home.
It was
annoying that I had wasted a four mile round journey in the snow, just to buy one
single item, when the shop had inexplicably closed early - even though there
were clearly staff still inside.
By now, you
are probably becoming impatient for the punchline to this joke. So here it
comes…
Can you
guess the name of the store that had wasted my time by closing early due to the
snow?
ICELAND.