say it with pie

"Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it’s bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named ‘Lolita’?" asked a concerned mother on Raisingkids.co.uk.

Woolworths has taken the offending bedroom set off their website after being flooded by complaints by angry parents. The really hilarious part of this story is the reaction from the Woolworths staff. A company spokesman told The Times: "What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia."

Once they figured it out, Woolsworths began scrambling to cover up their faux-pas. "Can it be hidden as soon as is possible? Then I really need to find out how it came about being on our site and who bought it," a senior staff member wrote in a (not-so-)confidential internal e-mail. It's sort of like when you're trying to impress someone at a party, make an ass out of yourself and try to save face: "I absolutely loved Crime and Punishment! Tolstoy is my favourite author of all time. What? Oh, right, I meant Dostoevsky. I just got them mixed up because...I was reading Crime and Punishment AND Anna Karenina at the same time." Don't lie, you've done it.

Okay, so nobody is surprised that the staff of Woolsworths is not up on their literature. But the real lack of genius comes, as always, from the commenters on the story's website. "Adolf and Ghenghis were real people. Lolita was just a character in a book. It is/was a common name or pet name in Latin-American countries. These mothers really sahould go andget a life and Woolworth's should tell them to go take a runniog jump [sic]," says Roger Tilbury of Worthing.

So, how about a Ghenghis desk set? Better yet, imagine the irony of an Adolph bookshelf!