Esther Rantzen should attempt to redress the sad imbalance she has created by presenting a programme, if not a series, aimed at the people-who-work-in-shops audience. In this series she could advise them of their rights and how to cope with customers who have seen too many consumer advice programmes and believe that all people in all shops have an unswerving desire to rob them. These are the people who will buy the Kay just because you tell them that the Westone is better value. Or will refuse to believe that nine out of 10 cheap violins are Strad copies, and are only worth around £20;

"But it's got the label. Look in there young man, Stradivarius, Budapesti, see its even in foreign, and the date."

"Yes I am sorry, they copy the labels as well as the violins."

"Let me speak to the manager."

"I am the ma..."

"Then let me speak to the proprietor."

People who work in shops are the unsung heroes, the front line. Their work is in the trenches of this Somme of consumerism. Behind them their industry commanders (shop owners, manufacturers etc) exhort them to sell and sell, more and more, and to really believe in the product.

Facing them across the no-mans counter are the enemy with their bleating war-cry that 'the customer is always right'. One of the few certainties in this life is that the customer is not always right but every day someone will mutter the dreaded phrase at you through his (or her) beard, having spread a bag full of papers, tools, wires and buttons all over the counter. As he wields a micrometer at you he'll explain that he needs to replace the octave D, but thinks the gauge needs changing and can he try 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 plain strings, as well as 18, 20, 22 and 24 wound before deciding which one (note, one!) to buy. He is oblivious to the queue building up behind him of people who want to buy 'record player needles' or second-hand violin resin, hire a tambourine (true) or steal a plectrum. He imagines that you think he wants to buy something, when you know that he only ever comes in if it's raining during the hour between his signing on time and opening time.

You are a lucky consumer because you go to music shops and most people who work in music shops do so because they are/were/will be/think they are/wanted to be/almost were/could have been musicians. They are there because they are interested in music and not primarily in selling and they probably would not work in any other shop. (If you entrust your Strat, and some people do, to Smith Suburban Organ Centre to be set-up then you only have yourself to blame if you retrieve it strung up left-handed, with a twisted neck and the front two pick-ups not working). Although some shop assistants fall into the Thatcher-Khomeini category and 'would sell a rat's arse to a blind man for a wedding ring' (R. Brautigan), that type of person is more likely to be the shop owner than the assistant. It seems so futile though when a woman brings her guitar in to be tuned saying:

"It's been the same since I bought it. It sounded lovely at first but it gradually goes out of tune and every few months I have to bring it back to you."

You explain again that tuning is really the first thing she should learn but the next customer has got round the same problem by putting super-glue on the bridge and machine heads to hold the strings in tune. (It doesn't work).

These are obviously examples of non-musicians and it is unfair to be too critical. More annoying are the people who know something, or think they know everything. One insisted that he must have Barney Kessel strings, no other make would do and he had tried everywhere. Other flatwound strings were suggested but no, he quoted books, tracks, players, very knowledgeable, very patronising, quite rude. So it was done as he bade, stocks of Barney Kessel strings were obtained and lo! he wouldn't have them — far too expensive. Selling strings is often more complicated than it ought to be, sometimes because of the choice available; A woman whose star-to-be son has asked her to get a new bass string, having got over the embarrassment of asking for a G string ("Oh! there is such a thing, I thought he was having me on."), has no idea whether he wants roundwound, flatwound or linear or the scale length and walks out mumbling about speaking to your employers when you ask if she wants a funkmaster. There are people who want the best but will not pay more than two pounds for the set, the worst are the violin customers who can still buy strings packaged straight in long thin boxes, ("Mrs. Gore-Farquar said we must get Pirastro strings because they are the best and Lucy is nearly at Grade 2 now") but they only want one. Try and wrap a single string without bending it.

"Don't bend it. Mrs. G-F said that spoils the tone."

And then she is told the price.

"What £4 for a string!"

"Yes, I'm afraid they are £20 for a set, as you say, they are the best."

"But that's more than I paid for the violin!"

And the violin customer sweeps out of the shop dragging Lucy in her wake.

As you would expect, (sod's law) they all come in on the same day. You know it is that day when you arrive in the morning to open the shop and there is a gangling denim suit waiting for you in the rain, his Eko acoustic guitar held by the neck over his shoulder, no case. Your heart sinks. "Good morning" you try bravely.

"You're late. I've been here since twenty to nine" he complains as you turn off the burglar alarm and turn on the shop lights. Brightening a little, he adds "You look worse than I feel. You need a break. Somewhere sunny — like Libya."

"Can I help you?" You smile desperately, not throwing the barclaycard machine at him.

"Can you change 10p for the bus?"

For the rest of the day they wait at the corner of the street until there are about a dozen of them then they all come in together; Polish ex-pats who keep breaking mouth organs, school teachers who think that being an old jazzer means being able to spot an out of place spring on a sax at twenty paces, american road crews who want five dozen yellow, extra thin Jim Dunlop picks. They have to be yellow and they think it is a Godforsaken country that only has red and grey Jim Dunlop picks and where the MacDonalds don't sell onion rings. Between bouts of this there is the humdrum. Endless badly played versions of Stairway to Heaven. It is still the most popular one, along with Iron Maiden's Phantom of the Opera and the Grand Prix theme and for the keyboard dept — the Eastenders theme.

So if you get the impression that the shop assistant has heard it all before when you confide that Warners sent the demo back, although they want to hear the next one, or you express dismay that you still don't sound like E. Van Halen even with an American Metal pedal and can you swop it for a chorus, or that the music stand you got for Christmas doesn't fold up properly, it is undoubtedly because he has heard it all before. There is no limit to the absurdity he has to face daily. I know of one occasion, and this is no exaggeration, when a customer threatened to take their custom elsewhere because an assistant refused to respond correctly to their repeated attempts to buy a school recorder. The shop was on fire at the time. Even after the fire brigade had left the shop, burnt out, still smoking, water dripping through the ceiling, people were still coming in trying to buy sheet music.