Supermarket Dreams

Supermarket Dreams

Altogether now, supermarkets, the delight of the child the torment of
the parent. Picture the scene items are fired at lightning speed into a
trolley, well now this must be somebody in one heck of a hurry, perhaps
they have a dinner party to organise and have rushed out of the house
with the chicken casserole sitting in the oven which of course they
forgot to turn on, could that be it, well no as now a scream goes out
to young Steven aged three who is smiling with delight as he grabs at
any item that his little mischievous hands can get to and throws them
into his mother's trolley.
A young couple walk past as the mother is trying to replace the items
on the shelf, she puts one item back and little Steven throws down four
more, the young couple pass on by, looking at each other with an
expression of, thank God that's not us or course moments later the
mother wheels little Steven past and shares her own private smile as
she sees the couple about to get into a full blown argument over
chicken noodles verses beef noodles.
Some writers spend years in the library pouring over page after page,
book after book, psychology, philosophy, Plato, Socrates in order to
discover just want it is that makes the human animal think. And all
they had to do was spent ten minutes walking down a supermarket
aisle.
I tell you everything you could ever possible want to see you will
find it at your local supermarket. Now some supermarkets do, of course,
differ from some others, there are the local small supermarkets where,
as the song goes, everybody knows your name and then there are the big
ones, enough footage to build several well needed homes, with aisles
twenty feet across, enough room for a couple of cars and perchance a
light aircraft. In general these supermarkets are targeted by
expressions indicating that the staff are so rude, unfriendly and so on
and so forth, well whose fault is that now. Is it yours, is it mine or
is in the supermarket management well I like to think that it's a
little portion of all of the above. Let me explain.
Picture another scene. There you are, you have just landed a job at
your local big supermarket chain store and lets say your first duty is
to be trained in as a cashier and it goes well, you know your stuff,
you can scan as fast and accurately as Andre Agasi can serve a tennis
ball but you've not had such a good day, it started good, but then the
queue started and it's getting longer, the floor manager has just
whispered in your ear with as much charm as an African viper that you
had better get a move on. Now the lady in front of you is looking in
her massive carpet bag for her club card, she had it that last time she
had this bag is what she keeps repeating, sure you do you say to your
self as you notice the ever building queue getting more thecae, she
gives up looking for the card and pays, now as you have nobody on your
station packing your bag, this poor woman, carpet bag or not, has to
pack her items, do you let her get on with it or do you help. Well at
staff training you were told to be as accommodating as possible, so you
help, as a human thing to do this was nice, the lady smiles at you and
thanks you, you start to feel a little bit better, then or course the
inevitable happens you get a lord and lady muck as your next customers,
now in brief a lord and lady muck are a couple who shop in the same
shop as we do, but their expression states that they are infact
lowering themselves to row with us other slaves, they approach and you
just know what is going to happen and lo and behold after two minutes
of arguing about the price of a bottle of foot spray, they want to see
a manager, so you push your bell to call over the floor manager who
dutifully approaches.
The floor manger gives out to you, in front of lord and lady muck of
course, and tells you to charge the price the couple want, you do so,
now on the bag packing front there is no choice, lady muck walks out of
the shop with lord muck looking at you, flashing his evil peepers
between you and the bags, back and forth, so you pack the bags, this
takes over three minutes, lord muck departs and then you turn to face
the next customer.
And this customer could be you, it could be me, we have stood
patiently but are a little bit annoyed at the delay, we are next asked
for our club card, we give the usual response to that question, well I
think I have it some where and this is where you lose it, you respond
with a low hum, when you are given the card you grab it, scan it and
throw it back on the counter, you scan the items with little regard for
their contents and roll them down to conveyer and trust me your not
packing these bags.
So now when we arrive home and are asked what did we do today, we tell
the vast tale of our trip to the supermarket, we laugh together as the
story of little Steven is reiterated, we giggle as we speak of the
young couple arguing over which flavour of noodles and of course we end
up with the epic adventure which is all about the dreadful service we
got from the most sour faced cashier we ever met in our lives.