Chapter 03

Supermarket Chronicles Volume 1,

Chapter 3: Reconstructing Life As We Know It

You can never overestimate the amount of dust that gets into the air from simply removing a 5 year old pack of monkey nuts from the shelves. Imagine how much more so the dust is multiplied by a couple of hundred builders ripping apart the store. Not to exagerate, breathing clean air has become a distant memory. Two weeks on from my roof adventure with Cyrus….. sorry I mean Cyda, he hadn;t been back to the store, which in my eyes is a huge success for everyone concerned. Since then I had time to decifer the small slip of paper his royal stupidness left me behind with, and I had to admit, the time and space had given me enough energy to devise plans and means of putting scraps of information to good use.

You see it wasn’t just a normal scrap of paper, it was Cyda’s little life mission. His dodo egg. His hidden interest with Sainsburys. It was no secret that there was going to be a lot of construction work done in our branch, they were making the store bigger and smellier… The one thing that was kept a secret was that our sainsbury’s was built on the remains of an old manor house which had been deserted for some time, and according to Cyda’s little post-it-note it was clear there was something worth having down below. And it was less of a priceless artifact and more of a stash of golden treasures. I’m not one for digging holes to find little coins that are worth a fortune, but I am one digging for a small fortune. As safely ingraved in my head was the location of this fortune.

Of course the added advantage to finding this treasure would be that Cyda would probably never bother me again. Us again. After another monthly report was filed and sent off to the friendly people at OffCom, I started my little wonder around the back area to find the spot to drop into the underlying structure of the store. No easy task I might add. There is only one thing more annoying than the customers, the builders.

Not too long after making my way out the back, there was several men the size of gorillas shoving me out of the way and lifting through huge planks of plaster-board and chiller-walls. Safe to say a fight with them wouldn’t be the way forward, but out of the corner of my eye I saw what I was looking for. A long, vertical beam stretching from as high as the roof, all the way down through the floor. The perfect thing was that there was already a hole at the bottom of it, as if they knew I was coming. The non-perfect thing was that it was in a non-entry-to-sainsbury’s-employees-area.

Pause at that point.

So there are areas in the store that we, as the sainsburys employees, arent allowed to go BUT at the same time there are areas that the builders can’t go to either. Areas like our toilets and changing rooms, but the flipping ogres don’t seem to take notice of those signs… they walk straight in and use whatever they want (it’s not that nice coz they stink – its like they’ve never washed or something)… but when it comes to us not going into thier areas, they suddenly get very strict. I think the best way to describe it is like the gates of mordoor in that lord of the rings film. You know those giant fat beasts that open and close the door… they remind me of the builders.

Back to the plot…

So I tried the old hard-hat ploy. I grabbed a hard hat off the rack and walked into the closed off area, all confident, this way I was able to go in un-noticed. Unfortunatly, the sainsbury’s bright orange fleece, does little but draw attention to itself and as a result I quickly found myself hurled out the door and spinning on my hard hat and feet wedged into some broken pipes. I was not impressed. I was getting angry now. Covered in saw-dust or plaster-dust, whatever you call it, I walked onto the shop floor, swinging my shoulders like a hard-guy-hero should. By the time I reached the meat isle, I even had a super-hero theme tune in my head. Supersteve.

I grabbed two giant joints of beef from the frozen meats, enough to hurt anyone and cause some serious damage, even to people the size of dinosaurs. Swishing my hair and cloak back as i headed to the warehouse, I felt on top of the world. There was only one thing between me and my fortune, builders bums. Before I could make it out the back I was stopped by an old lady type customer who wanted some toothpaste (the fact she didn’t know where it was didn’t surprise me, in fact by the look of her teeth I thought I would have to explain how to use it too…!), after a small long-distance trip to the other side of the store, she kindly told me she wanted a cucumber too. For those of you who don’t know, these two items are actually situated at opposite ends of the mile-long store.

“Fine…” I said lifting the old lady, lifting her into the trolley (toothpaste and all), “Hold these” As I threw in my meat joints, now starting to melt and smell. I took about three thrusts of the trolley and rolled all the way to the produce section (home from home). Still going at top speed, I grabbed the joints and left the trolley to crash into the spuds at the produce end of the store, the old lady would be fine. She may loose a few teeth, but to be honest, that probably wouldn;t be a bad thing. I finally made it to the warehouse and noticed there was more ogres standing gaurd now. I was beyond the point of patience here and so i jumped into one of the fork-lift trucks and powered straight towards the evil men. Not a metre away from them, they still hadn’t moved. I threw the joints, aiming at thier heads. I got one in the eye and he fell to the side, the other I hit on the knee and he fell to the ground just as the forks reached him, causing the truck to tip at a great force and sent me flying into the fray of the builders nest. I landed with an almighty thump, right next to the hole and the metal beam, before anyone could see where I’d landed, I rolled down into the hole.

I probably should have checked it’s depth first.

To be continued…

(more fork-lift truck action in the next chapter)