Bunnings Stafford looks huge from the outside, but it's like the TARDIS: much bigger on the inside. Coming here made me learn something about myself: my sanity limit inside a megastore is 20 minutes. Unfortunately the sheer size of a place like this, plus the distractions (the range is huge, almost satirically so) mean you probably can't make it out of here in under 20 minutes. And if you're stupid enough to visit on the weekend like I did, then you'll spend 20 minutes at the counter alone.
I like the place smells like wood in and around the gardening section, but the lack of air conditioning means the whole store is unpleasantly hot in summer. The contained heat gets to be a bit much combined with the different body odours wafting about, and I felt myself longing for the outside gardening section even though I didn't want to buy anything from there.
For some reason I expected Bunnings to be stocked with more furniture than it has, like a kind of Ikea. Of course it's essentially a D.I.Y. hardware superstore. I was more interested in electrical stuff when I last visited, and the prices were cheap across the board. I have no idea if the D.I.Y. materials would be considered cheap or expensive because I generally get someone more knowledgeable than myself to do repairs. I wasn't in the market for it, but the outdoor furniture here turned my head. They stock different types of wooden love seats (or swings) that look beautifully crafted, and I had a good swing on all of them.
The staff were friendly but unhelpful. (That's not a grammatical error.) I asked a random passing employee if they stocked fans. At first cheerful, he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "No, not at the moment. It's summer, you see. People buy them in the winter." I considered whether he was messing with me, but the slow and deliberate way the words were uttered made me think he had special needs. Then I felt bad for being annoyed with him and confused by the whole situation.
Ahh, incidents like these. read more