There is a recession on. You only have to step outside your front door to know it.

By the time you have hit the high street it's almost slapping you in the face.

We all know that doom and gloom prevails, especially in all things retail.

In Bristol, as in every town and city up and down Britain, shops cease trading suddenly.

So you might think that the retail sector, a place which knows all about marketing and customer service, would be going the extra mile these days to make sure what customers there were are always right. No question.

Well, you might think that, but I don't.

Recently I purchased two "bargain offer" summer weight sweaters from a well-known UK high street chain store. The "bargain" bit came into play because you got a ludicrously cheap price if you bought two rather than one.

It was only while away on a recent weekend that I realised the error of my ways. Slipping into one of the sweaters for a night out, I became tangled up. I could not find my way out. The thing was just sooooo big.

Now, because my wife nags me about having my belly straining the seams of any knitwear I have, I always err on the side of caution when it comes to selecting a size.

Which is what I had done here.

Thinking cheap and cheerful may have meant cutting the cloth a little more sparingly than normal, I opted for a bigger size. It had an X and an L in it.

It was a mistake. As I said, changing into one of the new sweaters for my evening out, I emerged from the mass of surplus fibres to find the thing drooped down way past my posterior.

Worse still, the arms overshot my own flesh and blood ones by a good six inches. I abandoned them, popped them back into the suitcase, and, a week or so later, still with the labels on, I headed for the store to swap them.

I found two others in the size I really needed (no X-rating this time) and looked around for a place to pay.

Astonishingly they are rather thin on the ground these days. Even when you find one, there's no guarantee it will have anyone on it. So, after a while waiting for someone to appear behind the counter, I headed back into the endless rails of garments to find someone sorting through men's underwear.

"Could she help?" I enquired. She could not. If it was an exchange you had to go upstairs to the exchange counter. Logical and illogical at one and the same time.

Anyway, upstairs there was that device so beloved of every single one of us, a good old British queue.

Bizarrely, there were two people behind the counter but only one doing anything as the queue for exchanges and refunds lengthened.

Could the young lady help her colleague?

She could not. She was only here to serve anyone buying something. So she stood there watching us all twiddle our thumbs while her chum, a bloke, persevered with the process of swapping and/or refunding.

Soon she was joined by two others who also, initially, stood and watched. Then, as if being struck by a bolt of inspiration, another personage appeared at a different till and, before you knew it, was doing what all the others could have done, processing swaps and other irritating things like mine.

She was swift, courteous and efficient, and my sweater swap was done and dusted in a matter of moments.

But the tedious wait before had been unnecessary and you got the distinct impression that chainstore shop staff are maybe encouraged to be jobsworths rather than adaptable, customer-friendly folk.

Which is a shame because, I suspect, that in these impecunious days, I am not alone in voting with my feet and walking on by past any shop which has forgotten what customer service is all about.