In the supermarket.

The staff in the Mercadona supermarket are well trained. As a rule there is only one till open but they keep an eye on the queue and as soon as there are more than three people waiting the cashier gets on the phone and sings out across the public address system "Señorita ..... acude a caja". Then there is rarely the indisciplined rush to a newly opened till that you might expect. Shoppers are invited, por orden (in order), to move along to the next till. And off people go, keeping to the order they had in the original queue. Good grief! Who says the British are the only ones who know how to queue? 

When your turn comes at the till, the cashier goes into a scripted dialogue. A proper greeting followed by a question about bags - ¿Bolsa va a querer? - and about the car park -¿Coche en el parking? - and as a rule they help you pack. Ever so civilised.

At the Carrefour, which I visit rarely and therefore cannot truly speak with any authority about it, they seem less on the ball. Caught out there by a sudden change in the weather the other day - sunshine when we went in, heavy rain when we left - we had to buy an umbrella. As this is not the centre of town there were no umbrella-sellers on the street. (On Principe, the main shopping street in the town centre, they spring up like toadstools when it rains.) So I was forced into the supermarket in search of a brolly.

Phil stayed just outside the entrance with the computer bag as they insist plastic-wrapping anything other than a handbag as you go in. Paranoid fear of you secreting something away and leaving without paying? I guess they would plastic-wrap handbags if they thought they could get away with it.

Anyway, after some dithering I finally asked an assistant where the umbrellas were. Right behind her, of course! There is a special law that says that once you ask where something is in a supermarket you will spot it immediately and look like a fool. So I selected one that was not too garish and joined the queue for checkout. Very efficient, a little screen and an animated voice tells you which till to go to. I got the dopy cashier.

First he spent several minutes trying to remove the security tag; this was a €5 umbrella but I suppose that on suddenly rainy days they might lose lots of cheap brollies without security tags. Then he discovered that the selected umbrella had no price label. Several more minutes went by as he tried to find umbrellas on his computer screen to check the price - ultimately without success. After that he had to locate a supervisor to get a price for him. She disappeared . We waited. He served a couple more customers in the meantime. I went and found another umbrella with a label. I paid my €4.99 and left.

Phil thought I has been manufacturing the umbrella. Fortunately it was still raining when we eventually exited the shopping centre or I might have been just a little frustrated.

Here's something else about the Mercadona staff: they are trained to sing out the special offers that abound. Women with perfectly ordinary speaking voices change into cartoon-like characters with a weird sing-song intonation to tell you about the watermelon, pineapple, jamón serrano or fuet (a strange yard-long sausage-like thing) which is going at a really good price:- "¡lo tiene muy buen de precio!

What's more, they all seem really happy at their work. I wonder how much they pay them.