Supermarket Chronicles Volume 1,
Chapter 1: OffCom
“Do you fancy any overtime for yesterday?” came the familiar voice from the Boss. After about 12 miliseconds I recalled the fact that I was indeed down to work the day before. Not the perfect way to start the day, realising that you’d let your department down, but at the end of the day it’s just a produce department. Right? Wrong. You see I work for a special produce department. Actually its less of the produce department thats special, more that while I’m working there it’s special. Let me explain.
I work as a spy, I supply in-depth information on the way that the store is run and occasionally the people who shop and workr there to an organisation call OffCom. The Office of Communications. This office then uses this information to ensure the peace is kept throguhout the city, region and even country by ensuring no marketing ploys or money earning puts any shop at a monopoly to the others. I’m kinda an agent.
In our store, there are two others who work for OffCom with me. One works of the deli, Ben and the other works on the checkouts, Aaron. Between us we cover the store and report back. Unfortunatly for us, when things go wrong in the store its up to us to ensure any issues are resolved and normality restored to the store. And thats what we do. Keep the peace.
Every store has at least one agent, we (as a larger store) have 3. We don’t have an external agent, but some stores do. And they pose as customers and come in and cause hassle. Trouble is, customers do that anyway so its pretty difficult to dicifer the dodgy agents from the moody customers.
Well that’s the explanation of the way my work works and how I work at work. Now I can begin to explain the intimate workings of an eventful day at work.
It wasnt any earlier than normal, but as I strolled into work on a fresh, bright February morning, I felt incredably tired. More so than normal. It wasn’t that I found it unfair, I was earning money after all. The kind of money that pays for late nights at nandos, scoffing down Extra Hot chicken, which incidently was exactly how I’d spend my pay day evening the night before. Combined with the spicy breath, dodgy stomach and all-round tiredness I only just managed to make my way passed all of the other departments to the furthest point from the staff canteen (something I always wanted to complain about – not that it would make much difference, but it would certainly entertain me for a while), our chiller. Its almost home from home.
You see today wasn’t the average day. Cyda decided he wanted to visit. He’s the one who used to work here and so knows everything and manages to somehow use it against us. After his first few comments, directed at me – ‘spit out the gum, shave the beard and stop piling the produce out so high’. He doesn’t like it when I make all of the shelves look nice and full – its a Cyda thing. After I was out of ear- (and eye) shot and out in the yard of the shop, he pulled me over and pinned me to a wall by my throat. He whispered something in my ear.
‘Don’t even THINK about making the department look nice today… or you and the entire store will pay for it.’
My heart was pounding faster than ever, I pulled his hand off of my throat and tugged his slender head down to my ordinary hieght. His red eyes glowed with evil as I whispered something back in his ear.
‘I’ll do my job. If you got a problem with that you can take the carrots I’m putting out and shove them somewhere else, if you want I can tell you where.’
His eyes lit up more so and lazers slowly began to eminate from the pupils. He raised a fist and prepared to punch, I ducked and slid across the shiny concrete floor. His reaction speed clearly wasn’t so fast as he’d already sent his fist flying toward where I was pinned. His fist met the wall with a thudd and a lot of blood. He turned to me and yelled after me as I ran towards the shop floor, ‘The pain train is coming…’
The last thing I saw was him on the his mobile phone whilst clenching his bruised and bloody fist.
Not long after Cyda came walking through the front doors (yea I know! Somehow he learned how to use the front doors, he must have seen someone else do it or something…). How he got there or why his fist wasn’t hurting anymore suddenly seemed irrelivant to me whilst I was standing over the tomatoes near the front of the store. It wasn’t Cyda that worried me, it was a dozen chavs standing right behind him looking directly at me. Cyda stood just inside the doors, allowing the chavs to walk straight in. They walked past the security gaurd who managed to stop two or three of them but regardless there was at least eight well-built chavs heading my way.
To be continued…
(there’s a chase in the next chapter…)