Andy Hall wrote:

B&Q is further from me than Focus but almost always has the items on
this basis, usually a selection and overall across a basket of purchases
generally better prices. Added to this, they seem to employ students
at the weekends and quite a lot of staff from eastern Europe. I've
always found them courteous and helpful and willing to put in the effort
to help find things. Focus, OTOH, seems to employ mainly slobby
teenagers at the weekends and I find them rude, unhelpful and generally
with a DGAS attitude.

I've found focus to not be particularly welcoming to female customers.
I went in, intending to make one is a series of substantial purchases
(doing up a newly-purchased home), and was carefully ignored by staff,
who rushed to attend to every spotty youth who came up to the counter.
I left, and went to B&Q, whose staff went out of their way to be helpful.

Sheila