Vinylrichie’s Weblog

 Since I was a small boy, replete with the obligatory scabbed knees and snot trails emanating from my little nose, I was told to respect my elders and listen to their sage like advice and experiences. But it turns out that old people are generally a little confused and infuriating with a generous dollop of  idiocy over how modern life works, like dealing with video recorders and ceefax.

They have forgotten how to shop for a start. They can hold a queue up like no other with their excruciating behaviour. First off they will queue in the wrong place (no amount of signs help), then they will spend five minutes after you ask them for payment trying to find their purses or wallets, then they will spend another five minutes trying to fish coins out, another two trying to remember how decimilisation works, then they will drop the coins everywhere and be too stiff to pick them up. However, this is all much more preferable to other method of payment: plastic. What bright spark decided to let the elderly possess credit cards and actually let them use them? An obvious road to frustration to all.

‘The card goes in there. No, there. Look, there. At the top with the chip facing down. No, the top. At an angle.’

At this point you give in and insert it for them. Then comes the arduos task of them painfully recalling and entering their PIN, generally pressing one button every thirty seconds. Then they fail to grasp that to get the PIN accepted one presses ENTER so you will be staring at the receipt dispenser in vain for a long time (two out of five of these transactions will be terminated because of the forgotten PIN thing). Then they have to remove their card even though they won’t because the words REMOVE CARD are a bit cryptic. Then the hallowed words that all of my colleagues know and hate and hear every three transactions will be uttered:

‘They’re all different aren’t they?’

We all wince visibly when this happens and try out our best fake jovial laugh before the true disdain shows through.

So, what except for ‘Take A Break’, ‘People’s Friend’ and ‘Kittens and Booties’ magazines do the elderly buy? Lotto tickets. Lotto Lotto Lotto. Wednesday draw, Saturday draw, Daily Play, Euro-Millions, Thunderball and several different varieties of scratch card. I hate the Lotto. I hate it because it’s strangely mainly  played by the over sixties and if any of them end up winning big they will more than likely give it to the Cats’ Protection league. What the hell will our coffin dodging friends spend fifty million quid on? That is a hell of a lot of Murray Mints and doilies. That isn’t why I hate it really. I hate it because even though the olds are utterly obsessed by their gambling they don’t know how to effing well play it. They mark the sheets wrong, fill in the wrong form for the wrong draw, put marks in the wrong place, screw it up so it won’t scan, and then never, ever check the results beacuse they don’t know how their TV works. So they then ask you for the results which takes a lot of jabbing at the touch screen so you can inform them that they are still as skint as ever and those cats will have to fend for themselves for at least a while longer and that they’d better suck that Murray Mint a bit slower. Roll-over weeks are the worst as the world and his wife decide to do the lottery as just winning twenty million would be a waste of time wouldn’t it?

 I have two Lotto customers who excel in the annoyance stakes. They are ‘Wassname’ and Silver Snake man. ‘Wassname’ is so called because he cannot remember how to talk. Everything is ‘Wassname’.

‘Can I have the results for wassname?’  He asks. ‘You know, the wassname that wa drawn on Wassname, errr….’

‘Daily Play?’ I ask.

‘No. Wassname, you know yesterday’s.’

‘There was no draw yesterday, it’s Monday.’

This will carry on until you finally just print everything out and thrust at the little blighter so he might leave you alone. Nope. Then he’ll bring out a huge wad of old tickets and ask you to scan every single last one of them to check for wassnames. I will scan sometimes around twenty tickets. And you know what? He presents the same tickets every single time. We know this because my colleague marked them. Arghhhhh. This happens every single day. Every. Single. Day. 

 Silver Snake Man is younger, with an unrecognisably strange european accent and an addiction that should lead him to ask for a job with us so he can fulfill his destiny of making as much mess and losing as much money as possible. He is called Silver Snake due to his habit of buying handfulls of scratch cards and scratching at them until little wormy slivers of silver accumulate around his feet and on our carpet. He goes round and round every day. Queue, buy, scratch, rip, throw cards on the counter. Queue, claim mediocre winnings, spend winnings on more, move off,  scratch, rip, dump, queue, scratch etc. This can last for up to an hour, sometimes two or three times a day. Painful is the word. And what does he do when he isn’t in my place of employment? He does exactly the same only elsewhere as I have seen him in other shops too. If you ever think you are wasting your life then just take a moment to remember these chappies and allow yourself to feel just a little self satisfied.

One last thing. If you insist on buying a lottery ticket, never ever say to the vendor: ‘Can I have a lucky dip? Make sure it’s the winning one!!! I’ll split my winnings with you!!’ You are probably likely to get the ticket inserted up your wassname. How’s that for a lucky dip of sorts?