History Series / PhoneShop

* TheBully: Little Gary, who intimidates Lance from behind bars and is implied to have bullied Jerwayne. Jerwayne himself meets up with Cuzzy, who used to bully him in Sunday school.

* ChekhovsGun: The one-touch voice recorder on Christopher's phone. And the dildos that Jez is giving away.

** Christopher tells parents that he's the store manager, which is fairly harmless until they come along to the shop's sales seminar evening. Everyone plays along with Christopher being the manager, even when the police get called in.

** Christopher tells parents that he's the store manager, which is fairly harmless until they come along to the shop's sales seminar evening. Everyone plays along with Christopher being the manager, even when the police get called it.
** Taken to extremes when Jerwayne tells Cuzzy that he's the manager of a rap group called New Man Ting, which leads to everyone getting involved in the making of a music video which impresses a music executive.

* LiarRevealed: New Man Ting, the rap group fronted by Christopher that Jerwayne made up in order to impress Cuzzy, is revealed to be a scam — but only after a music executive got taken in. Cuzzy himself is eventually revealed to be a car cleaner.

* TheBully: Little Gary, who intimidates Lance from behind bars and is implied to have bullied Jerwayne.

* MaintainTheLie: Happens a couple of times.

** Christopher is revealed to have told his parents that he's the store manager when they try to book the store for an evening function. Everyone plays along, and the whole thing veers straight into this trope when things get rowdy and the police are called.

* MaintainTheLie: In order to get out of a relationship, Ashley lies to the lady in question, telling her that he's gay and in a relationship with Jerwayne. When Jerwayne finds out, he's furious — not just because Ashley violated a pre-existing verbal agreement between the two of them [[note]] namely, that either of them needs the other's consent before trying to get out of anything by pretending to be gay [[/note]] but also because the woman Ashley dumped works for Zara and she's told all of her colleagues, ruining Jerwayne's chances of pulling any of them. He demands that Ashley admit to not actually being gay, only to change tack (and insist that Ashley continue to pretend to be gay) when he finds that the Zara girls now see him as a gay best friend, which gets him an invite to an Ann Summers party which they would never have granted to a straight man.

* DirtyCop: Somewhat downplayed, but Lance does have to pay off the police officers who find that there are two men in their underwear imprisoned in the store's cage. Another cop is only too happy to sell him some confiscated weed in order to help him get in with the White Men's Reggae Club.

** When Jerwayne goes viral as the Sleepy Man, his admirers include old ladies and men, which he is not happy about.

** When Jerwayne is invited to lunch to meet his latest girlfriend's dad, he picks up on her nervousness about the encounter and assumes that it's because the dad is a racist. Turns out, though, the dad is actually PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy and thinks that the sophisticated, well-dressed Jerwayne is ''not black enough'' for his daughter.

* StreetMusician: The Sax Man, who sets up outside of the branch on one episode. His upbeat music helps to attract customers, but after Janine dates and dumps him in short order he starts to play sad music which drives everyone away. This causes the Meet & Greet man to go out and beat him up, only for the subsequent AmbulanceCut to reveal that the Sax Man won the fight; he's last seen playing happy music from the back of a police car.

* SitcomArchNemesis: Pretty much every character has one, mostly competitors whose business rivalry has been inflated in their heads into a blood feud. The shop as a whole has the Croydon Branch.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: Despite being married to Lance [[note]] although the wedding was not, in fact, legal[[/note]], Shelley has propositioned both Ashley and Jerwayne. In the case of the latter, she ''broke into his bedroom'', causing him to run away in fear.

* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: A sexual variant; Shelley seems to have notably fewer inhibitions than anyone else, and thinks nothing of hitting on her husband's co-workers and even (at one point) ''breaking into one of their bedrooms'' to try and get intimate. In the escort episode, she tries to force Janine to go along with a group sex encounter ... but when one of the male escorts she's booked is revealed to be Wheelchair Dave, she joins Janine in running away in terror.

** Concerning Ashley and Jerwayne, there's the "Aiya Napa bedroom misunderstanding of 2005", a consequence of which is that either man must get the consent of the other before "doing the gay ting" (ie. pretending to be gay in order to get out of a relationship with a woman). No more details are given as to the nature of the incident that resulted in this incident.

* PointyHairedBoss: Lance, literally so.

* PsychoExGirlfriend: A couple of these are encountered. Ashley is horrified when he realises that the pretty blonde he's just secured a date with is the nutcase with the owl tattoo who Jerwayne had previously mentioned. In the same episode, Christopher dates Amanda, who in a case of BewareTheNiceOnes turns out to have previously dated Ashley and Jerwayne, who (respectively) knew her as French Connecky Becky (who did a shit in a store window display) and Lisa Blake (who set fire to Jerwayne's cousin's hair).

** Razz Prince seems to be trying to model himself on [[Film/Scarface1983 Tony Montana]], while referring to his personal assistant as his "[[Franchise/ThePinkPanther Cato]]".

* NoodleIncident: Anything involving Little Gary, notably the "Catford hat-trick" (ABH [[note]] actual bodily harm[[/note]], GBH [[note]] grievous bodily harm[[/note]] and attempted kidnapping) that resulted in his arrest and imprisonment.

* DrugsAreBad: In "Baking Bad", the boys are affected by inadvertently eating Lance's hash cookies in various ways, none of them good.
* EmployeeOfTheMonth: It's a sign of Little Gary Patel's talent that he has always won the Salesman of the Month award. Even more so when he continues to win despite being in prison.

* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: The White Men's Reggae Club is roundly mocked by Ashley and Jerwayne for being this, although Lance points out that it's really just a place where middle-aged white men who happen to like reggae music can dance to it "without fear of ridicule".

* CountryMatters[=/=]CurseCutShort: Almost once an episode, someone gets called a "cunnnn-"

* TheAce: Despite being in prison, Little Gary Patel -- phone salesman extraordinaire and perpetual Salesman of the Month -- is seen as this by the rest of the Sutton Branch. He even manages to retain his Salesman of the Month crown ''while doing time'', presumably as a result of selling phones to his fellow-inmates in addition to intimidating Lance.

* BecomingTheMask: Combined with NotSoAboveItAll with Christopher. Although he doesn't approve of sales tricks like showing off a flashy watch and pretending to be a student (who's only working in order to fund his studies to become a doctor or a lawyer) in order to gain a customer's trust, he is nevertheless very quick to make use of such tricks.

* EmployeeOfTheMonth: It's a sign of Little Gary Patel's talent that most of the Salesman of the Month awards given out by [=PhoneShop=] have been awarded to him. Even more so when he continues to win them whilst in prison.

** Jerwayne, who sees himself as TheCasanova, has a long list of high street retailers that he will not date the female employees of, those stores being beneath [=PhoneShop=] in his and Ashley's reading of the hierarchy of the high street [[note]] so he'll date a young lady who works for Zara, but not Clare's Accessories, the Build-A-Bear Workshop or Mothercare[[/note]]. He won't even consider dating any woman who wears a polo shirt as part of her work uniform, and does not respond well to Ashley's suggestion that they should give the "lower league talent" a try.

* BecauseISaidSo: "If man says he is a ting, he is a ting. And now I'm a ting."
* BecomingTheMask: Although he doesn't approve of sales tricks like showing off a flashy watch and pretending to be a student (who's only working in order to fund his studies to become a doctor or a lawyer) in order to gain a customer's trust, Christopher is nevertheless very quick to make use of such tricks.

* TheBlindLeadingTheBlind: Christopher pulls the classic sitcom asking-your-mates-for-dating-advice error, which goes predictably badly. Subverted, though, as Ashley and Jerwayne freely admit that their strategy doesn't work on girls from a particular "aspirational demographic" which includes Waterstones employees, and Christopher had not mentioned that his date works in said bookshop.
-->'''Jerwayne:''' You said she worked in Costa!

* PsychoExGirlfriend: Ashley and Jerwayne seem to have more than their fair share of these.
* TheReveal: Don, a love interest of Janine's who poses as a businessman, is revealed to be the Sani Van Man [[note]] the man who collects the sanitary towel bins from just about every retailer on the high street [[/note]]; granted, it's his own business, but ''still''.

-->'''Lance''': Clean that off, Christopher. Use the old squeegee.

* StalkerWithACrush: Janine spends an entire episode having to deal with the fact that she has a stalker on her hands. At the end, the girl enters the store and reveals that she was following for love... not for Janine however, but for Christopher, who she thought was a woman who had a preference for suits.

* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: A sexual variant; Shelley seems to have notably fewer inhibitions than anyone else, and thinks nothing of hitting on her husband's co-workers and even (at one point) ''breaking into one of their bedrooms'' to try and get intimate. In the escort episode, she tries to force Janine to go along with a group sex encounter .. but when one of the male escorts she's booked is revealed to be Wheelchair Dave, she joins Janine in running away in terror.

!!If man says he is a trope...

* BewareTheNiceOnes: Amanda ultimately turns out to be ''both'' of the {{Psycho Ex Girlfriend}}s Ashley and Jerwayne had mentioned earlier in the episode -- she just keeps changing her name.

* DirtyCop: Somewhat downplayed, but Lance does have to pay off the police officers who find that there are two men in their underwear imprisoned in the store's cage. Another cop is happy to sell him some confiscated weed in order to help him get in with the White Men's Reggae Club.

* EveryoneHasStandards: A non-villainous example. Jerwayne, who sees himself as TheCasanova, has a long list of high street retailers that he will not date the female employees of, those stores being beneath [=PhoneShop=] in his and Ashley's reading of the hierarchy of the high street [[note]] so he'll date a young lady who works for Zara, but not Clare's Accessories, the Build-A-Bear Workshop or Mothercare[[/note]]. He won't even consider dating any woman who wears a polo shirt as part of her work uniform, and does not respond well to Ashley's suggestion that they should give the "lower league talent" a try.

* GenderBlenderName: Kim from the Purley Branch is actually a man, something Lance was unaware of when he was agonising about how to respond to the fact that an email to him from Kim was signed with two kisses.

* HiddenDepths: Janine has a few, including the ability to speak fluent Mandarin. Ashley finds that he's surprised by the eloquence of some of the poetry he received from soldiers after he signed up to an Army dating website. And Christopher, despite being the newest employee, knows ''a lot'' about the history of the [=PhoneShop=] Group (granted, this is evidently part of the company's training as fellow-newbie Rochelle from the Croydon Branch knows a fair bit as well, but his knowledge proves to be better than hers).

!!If man says it is a trope...

* BecauseISaidSo: "If man says it is a ting, it is a ting."

** Shelley's test of Janine's loyalty is one of these with two male escorts who turn out to be Wheelchair Dave and an unnamed (but presumably just as disgusting) friend of his. Janine, who was reluctant to go along with it in any case, is both horrified and disgusted in equal measure. So, for that matter, is Shelley as she evidently did not know who the male escorts she'd booked would be.

* VomitIndiscretionShot: Janine, after getting drunk with Shelley.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Lance claims to do this ''a lot'', on account of the medication he's taking to deal with his high sex drive.