In B&Q yesterday I was struck - almost literally - by some questionable workmanship in action: a member of staff in the cafe was putting up hygiene and cooking certificates on the wall near the counter, 8 in all, two vertical rows of 4. I was standing right beside him as he huffed and puffed and sweated in the heat from the grills, and no doubt a little fazed by the audience that consisted of me, and his boss who was distractedly fixing my bacon cob. As one picture went up, another it seemed came down - crashing to earth and luckily not smashing to smithereens. Eventually, all 8 were balanced precariously on their hooks - at which point the guy stood back to admire his results. ***-eyed was the word (or is that two?) [I see on re-reading I've been censored!]. Not, I thought, the best ad for a DIY store. He turned to his manager: 'What should I do next?' The reply: 'There's some brackets to be put up in the store cupboard - the tools are in there.' His retort: 'I'll try - but those screwdrivers are useless.' Hmm - so I shan't buy any of those then. Of course, it was just a small unfortunate vignette of a bad ad, aired to me alone - but it did call to mind a study I once read entitled (and this is the abridged version) 'The effect of salesman expertise upon consumer purchasing behaviour.' The gist of this was that, in a controlled in-store test, when a salesman was perceived as competent in his field, 66% of customers purchased, compared to only 20% when the salesman pretended he was unfamiliar with product. There has to be a lesson here - just how much could B&Q sales increase if customers were able to witness lots of instore examples of good tradesmanship?