There used to be a time when the local small grocer (mini-market?), pharmacy, news vendor/stationer and similar were places where, even early in the morning, you could pop in, be served, pay and be out often in a matter of minutes.

Now no longer and the fault is not of the businesses’ owners, nor even of customers.

Now it is this ever-increasing number of business reps (that modern word for salesmen) who, often at the same early hours of the day, come down on their shop clients, clog up the shop owners’ attentions, their counters, shop space, people’s time and what have you.

Some of them are arrogant to the point that they will not accept to wait for the shopkeeper’s attention while he first serves his customers.

They pull out their always thick album catalogues and electronic ordering tools and expect the shopkeeper’s full attention to browse through their offers, place orders or pay for same supplied earlier... and so on.

Customers are kept waiting or, indeed, also often being attended to after the rep when they might have been in the shop well ahead of the rep.

These practices absolutely need to be regulated.

For one thing, in the past it was always the case that, for a businessman, selling to and serving customers should always be more important than buying.

Consideration should now be given to having some system whereby shop owners will only be able to buy or place orders from sales reps after, say, 10am. If deliveries are made late in the day then we can also help to remove from our over-clogged roads many of the often dangerous delivery vehicles in the early part of the day.

Having written this, I can well imagine the reaction of some conservative elements who are against any change from the present status quo.

For such people, change for the better, in the interests of customers, is way down their schedules of priorities.