Working in Bond street for nearly a year has made me familiar with the area. I know the location of certain stores Oxford Street, and what times the place is at it’s busiest. At one point I was even familiar with the tune a drumming busker would play each evening. Debenhams, H & M, House of Fraser and the Selfridge’s are just a few large stores I saw on a regular basis and understood the way they operated. However one store I thought I was familiar with, completely brought me back into the realm of unfamiliarity when we visited it for our wedding gift list, John Lewis.

I’ve only purchased a single number of items from the John Lewis on Oxford Street and although I was by no means an expert, I wasn’t a complete novice either, I was under the assumption it only operated like every other store in the sense that one chooses an item, pays for said item, then leaves the store. So you can imagine my surprise when I was told there was a process that involved one scanning items that get automatically added to their wedding wish list, and are also provided with a free drink and pastry. We originally planned to put our list together entirely online, but on receiving this information we couldn’t pass the opportunity.

No advanced booking was required for this particular store so we made our way to the customer service section upon arrival, answered a handful of scripted questions from the lady at the desk, and we were given the power to scan in any item of our choosing around the whole store. The device itself wasn’t that impressive, an old Motorola smartphone customised with a John Lewis scanner making it three times thicker than any other phone on the market. The app on the phone used for scanning looked very dated, with an interface akin to a Windows 95 application. Its requirement for a constant internet connection was something that was clearly overlooked by John Lewis and this became our first downfall.

Soon after reaching the lower ground floor Hannah spotted some oven mitts she wanted to add. She pushed the button on the side of the phone to activate the scanner, scanned the barcode and, nothing happened. She scanned it again and still nothing. Upon inspecting the device we realised it had no signal and no internet connection. Attempting to repair it ourselves proved fruitless, so we located a staff member at the till and asked for help, she too was unable to fix it. So she passed the responsibility on to her supervisor who stopped wrapping up crockery to glance at the device, then decided to call someone else for help. We were stuck on the side waiting and watching other customers make their purchases until another staff member came from out of nowhere, apologised, and took a look at our scanner. She too couldn’t fix it but told us our device was faulty and she will call to get one brought down to us. After around five minutes our new, functioning scanner was brought to us and we continued our adventure cautiously, as not to damage the again.

We spent the majority of our time on the lower ground floor trying to locate the items we wanted, the floor was incredibly large. A few things we canned included cutlery; kitchen appliances, crockery, an ironing board, a bin, cooking utensils, even containers for storing food. We both have a similar sense of style so there wasn’t much discussion when picking items, however, it took a long time for us to decide on what type of glass to choose. There were so many choices, but none in the size we were after, they were all either too small or oddly shaped. We settled on a style we liked in the end, but I’m sure we’ll end up adding to them with IKEA glasses in the future.


We next visited the bedding and bedroom furniture floor. I have no experience with purchasing anything for a bed, I have only ever bought pillows, and that was a two-click purchase on Amazon, I wasn’t aware of how many different types of feathers one could pick from for their pillows or duvet, I wasn’t aware of the thickness, the different sizes and how expensive some of these items can get. We ended up choosing a duck feathered duvet which can be doubled up for the winter, but single for the summer. As we were both clueless on pillows I seek assistance from the staff. I interrupted two sharply dressed men deep in conversation, upon receiving my request they continued talking, this time bickering as to who would have the honour of assisting us. A man with glasses and a grey ponytail humbly won the contest and after his college walked away gave some unexpected advice. He told us to show no interest in the all other pillows and focus our attention on one, not the most expensive or fanciest looking one, but a firm, lightly brown one that adjusted to the shape of your head when you slept on it, and never defeated no matter how often it was used. Both of us were asked to try it and I was immediately convinced, Hannah, on the other hand, was not a fan and although we added then to our gift list I have a feeling she isn’t going to use it.

We floundered around different floors for a few minutes, choose a door mat and a few other items. It was getting to the stage where our legs were begging for a rest after hours of standing and walking, so we decided to call it a day, not before we made one final stop to the cafeteria. In all the months I walked past this store I had no idea it had a cafeteria and a fairly large one at that with a wide variety of food to choose from. We redeemed our free beverage and hot drinks. With our hot chocolates, carrot cake and shortbread in hand, we found somewhere to sit, rest, and discuss the events of the day.


I no longer see John Lewis in Oxford Street as an average, relatively overpriced superstore where you walk in, purchase an item, the walk out. Instead more of a place where one can spend a day walking around window shopping, the have a decent lunch, a place where someone can book an interesting holiday and purchase a wide screen TV, a place where you can find obscure items you’ve seen in someone’s house, but never knew where they came from, then have a conversation about pillows with a staff member afterwards. It’s not on the amazingness level of Harrods, but it’s certainly closer to it than I thought.

Ollie