MY nomination for customer relations person of the week goes to the check-out assistant at Waitrose, who could so easily have got nasty with me.

There I was, in the usual flurry of confusion, with a hungry toddler in the trolley and a hungry husband pushing it, when I made a careless error.

I picked up a bunch of grapes which, after checking the label, I believed to be seedless.

These are the only sort our daughter Eve will eat. And anyone with a child who throws tantrums at mealtimes will understand the importance of this.

I then joined my husband in unloading all our shopping at the till. After the price of the grapes had been registered, I gave one to Eve, who'd been whinging for them for a good ten minutes.

The next second she was spitting it out and shouting "no like it". I tried

one myself and discovered to my intense irritation that it contained a pip.

I became huffy and snapped at the girl on the till. "This is outrageous. These are supposed to be seedless. My child could have choked. It's extremely dangerous to have food wrongly labelled."

She looked at the label, then held it up for me to look at. "But madam, it says here they're seeded."

"No it doesn't," I said, glancing at the letters.

"Yes it does," she said calmly.

"Yes it does," said husband, eager to give a second opinion.

I looked again and realised they were both right. I'd misread the most crucial word.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," I said, ripening like a tomato.

"That's all right," said the assistant, smiling pleasantly."Would you like to change them?"

"No, no, it's not a problem, really," I lied, ignoring Eve's tears and my own thought about the tedious task ahead of removing all the pips.

My husband, who was both appalled and amused by my behaviour, seized the opportunity to make one of his loving quips. "You'll have to excuse my wife," he said. "English isn't her first language."

He continued to mock me in the car on the journey home, which I spent in a sticky mess trying to keep up with Eve's demands for deseeded grapes.

"You're being grossly unfair," I said. "It's an easy mistake to make when you're in a hurry."

"I know," he said, "but you were so adamant that you were right."

"I wasn't."

"You were. The whole shop noticed. And that poor girl on the till. . . it's a wonder she didn't call the manager and get you thrown out. You realise we can never go shopping there again."

"Oh, nonsense. We'll just leave it a week or two."

"Well, I'm never going back in there with you, the customer from hell."

"Look, I'm sure the check-out

assistant had a good laugh about

it afterwards and no harm was done. I'll just have to be more careful next time."

With apologies to John Steinbeck, the incident has, hereafter, become known at the Grapes of Wrath episode.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.