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Supermarket Soap
Daily life behind the counter
www.supermarketsoap.co.uk

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20th October 2008: Miss C Is My New Friend, Mr DJ Is A Paradox, The Bombshell In A Shock Bad Mood, Customers Who Should Be Banned, And Being Able To Read English In England Is Useful. So, considering what a good time me and Miss C had the previous shift we worked together on, she came in late, with a face like thunder, and when I said good evening to her, she immediately took this as offence and said to me "Alright".  I guessed things were going to go downhill from there, but then I think she remembered that I am no longer the enemy (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) and popped her head around the corner and said "Well, better late than never huh?"  After that we got on really well.  Not sure why we are back to being friends again, although I use the word friends loosely.  We get along, and I am still friends with her on Facebook, although I still don't trust her as far as I could spit her.  She has gone behind my back and done the dirty on me too many times for me to trust her anytime soon. Then we had the store walk with Mr DJ.  Now, this is where things get difficult.  I get along really well personally with Mr DJ.  Professionally, well, things are different.  I have had the misfortune of working on one of his shifts and he isn't a good supervisor.  The problem is that his humour can become blunt, and he distinctly has his favourites.  He also imposes far too strict time limits on jobs to be done.  Now, on a personal level I get along fantastically with him because he is deeply into music, and so am I.  I'm also a massive fan on his radio show, and so whenever we see each other we discuss and chat about his radio show, which is always a nice thing to do.  But then he walked around the store with us telling us that he had faced up the store (a blantent lie, which we could see as he said it) and that the produce and meat had been worked an hour previously.  And this is what really annoyed me.  Because I worked the chilled goods, of which produce and meat are a sub section, and I discovered that actually, quite a lot of the meat and produce could go out.  Entire cases of it.  Yet apparently it had been worked an hour previously.  So either I am becoming meticulous in my work (not according to The Bombshell) or he is an out and out liar.  I think we know which one to pick... But then Miss C and I incurred the wrath of The Bombshell.  You see, he decided that she was taking altogether too long in the racking, and decided to investigate, and caught us talking.  Which he then assumed was the reason she was taking so long.  The actual reason is that she decided to have a quick tidy up in there, and I was waiting for her to finish.  But yes, we were talking.  So for the rest of the shift he was in a foul mood with the pair of us.  I have no clue what he said to The Tall Pole but it wasn't good about us because when I went up to The Bombshell and The Tall Pole who were talking franticly in Polish and said "Yes, everything he says, completely true!" the pair of them began laughing.  And this is why they get constant reminders not to talk in Polish on company premises and this is why they constantly ignore the messages.  And then we had this absolute moron customer.  I could have happily been rude to him, but I am trying really hard to be nice to everyone.  So he comes up, hand bandaged and bleeding, and said "Yeah, sorry mate, forgot my wallet".  I felt like slapping him there and then.  I mean, seriously, how hard is it to remember to bring your wallet when you go shopping?  But I was patient, said nothing, and got him the no means of payment forms, thrust a pen at him, and told him to fill out the two sections.  Which he did whilst appologising.  I reassured him that it happens all the time.  And then he did something which made me so angry I desperately wanted to smash the touch screen over his stupid little head.  I asked for ID and he said it was in his wallet, but then he claimed to live next door to Rickaaaay and knew Queen Chav was his mum, so, I let the ID slide, because that is quite specific information to know.  And then came the part which made my blood boil.  "Yeah, they know me, and they know I do this all the time.  At least once a week."  I smiled and said "Ok then, well, you know you have 7 days to come back and pay for this, or debt recovery people will become involved".  What I wanted to say was "My god.  Once a week?  Why hasn't someone barred you yet?" But because of this absolute moron, we had a queue out the door.  Now, we have a couple of policies on this.  The first is that if there is more than two customers, someone else needs to serve as well.  We flagrantly breach this rule on nights because often there are three customers, two with petrol and one wanting cigarettes.  Hardly worth getting a second person off of what they are doing just for that.  Then there is the policy that if it's really busy, you have to ring the bell and someone will come and help.  So I rang the bell.  And guess what?  No-one came.  Well, not for a few minutes until The Bombshell came out, and said "Why you are not call for someone?"  I snarled "I did, doubt you heard it in the bakery".  Then there was Gin.  Gin is a regular who is always in a rush and monosylabic.  "Gin!  Gin!  Gin!  Gin!"  "Superkings!  There!  There!  Superkings!"  "Bag for gin!  In here!  In here!"  The guy must weigh 20 stone and has eyes which bulge out of his head, quite literally.  And he buys a litre of gin a day.  It used to be the own brand stuff, but then he switched to Gordons because the bottle changed from the beautiful green Gordons style bottle to a clear glass design.  He didn't like this.  So The Bombshell was trying to figure out from Gin which one he wanted.  Hard when the only direction you get is "No!  Other one!"  I turned around and said calmly to The Bombshell "Gordons, regular size."  To which Gin snapped "Yes!  Gordons!  That one!"  The Bombshell looked at me in shock and said "How you know this?"  I smiled and said "Alchy".  Lastly, I have a stunning piece of proof that if we are going to hire Polish people, we really should get ones who can read and understand English.  We have a process at work which I am not naming, but it's an anagram of API.  Basically, stuff which won't go out gets a ticket placed next to the SEL and then Shoe checks on the computer to see why it was ordered (reason number one: Pedro).  Now this doesn't include meat, produce or promotional items, because sometimes they are bulk ordered for good reason.  Anyway, so Shoe has already screamed at The Bombshell about not putting promotional items in the cage for the API process.  And he continues to.  So I told him AGAIN today that he was wrong.  It went down like a lead fart, but I fixed the problem.  So then Bob, who speaks little English, understands little English and reads virtually no English came in, and immediately began working the API cage.  This is made all the more frustrating when directly above the API cage is a sign reading "API, do not work this stock."  If it wasn't for the highs of great and funny customers, I would have quit retail a really long time ago.  Because contrary to popular belief, it's not the customers which make retail a bad job.  It's the co-workers. 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