Vinylrichie’s Weblog

 I hadn’t slept. I had spent the night looking at the clock but no amount of willpower could stop the time advancing towards the stomach fizzing horror of starting a new job for the first time in thirteen years. I finally rose to spend the next hour pacing around, drinking coffee and then experiencing the joy of seeing that coffee reappear due to the amount of retching going on.

What a baby.

 Somehow I found myself out of the flat and was little short of amazed that my legs were carrying me towards my destination even though my mind and spirit were still under the duvet whimpering pathetically. Then, somehow, I arrived.

 I went up to the books floor where I presented myself to a new colleague, an older woman who greeted me rather coldly. I was then escorted upstairs as I waffled on about something or other just to try and stop thinking about needing the toilet. I found myself in the staff room where two colleagues sat silently reading the tabloids; I was glanced at and ignored – just another recruit, more cannon fodder so nothing interesting. I tried hard to look nonchalant and tried harder not to fart.

 A few minutes later the manager came and got me and seemed astonished that I’d turned up. That made two of us then. I was shown into the office and asked to sit tight whilst she went off to get my file. That was the last I saw of her as it was a flustered yorkshire man that re-emerged from the door, not her. He introduced himself but looked rather irate that he had to deal with me. This was an assistant manager. At that point the phone rang and he answered it and spent the next few minutes complaining that he had to do a bloody induction and it wan’t his job. I shifted nervously as I assumed the role of everyone’s pain-in-the-arse.

 Finally I was noticed again and then had my induction. This entailed lots of scrawling one’s name at the bottom of numerous bits of paper that outlined how I was no longer in possession of my basic human rights as I was becoming a drone for a major corporation.  We also had a chat about where I’d come from and my long stint in retail, which turned out to mirror assistant manager’s. He had been in the company’s employ ever since he was a young lad but didn’t seem too happy about it. I was then furnished with a ream of paper with tiny writing on, and told to sit in the staff room and have a good read, and to take as long as I need. I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone wanted shot of me.

 So I retired to the staff room to learn about how it is apparently bad to sell cigarettes to nine year olds, that the money in the tills isn’t mine, that abusing customers is frowned upon (damn) and general obvious comments about how to breath in, followed by out (repeat as necessary). I read it all in about twenty minutes and I was stretching it out too – I didn’t want to seem that I hadn’t read it and reappear in the office looking like I couldn’t care less. Therefore I had a ‘coffee’ and flicked through a newspaper, but felt all of a sudden like I would appear quite thick if I hung around in there too long. After forty minutes I sought out the assistant manager and I was greeted with surprise.

 ’That was quick! Are you sure you’ve read it? Have you understood it?’ He asked. It seems that whatever I do will be met with surprise, with a dollop of suspicion thrown in. I then begin to believe I’d neither read it properly nor understood it. I was not having fun. My ‘early’ reappearance in the office to await instructions seemed to throw everyone and they had little idea of what to do with me, so I was sent out to lunch so they could find someone who would not be too bored to till train me that afternoon. Half way through my first day and the nerves had been replaced by a feeling of depression, which felt like an improvement of sorts.

 After lunch I am asked to await further instructions in the staff room. In the room are two girls, one of which has been selected to till train me. I introduce myself and then listen to how she is too tired and bored to bother teaching me anything. Great stuff. I spend the next hour pretending to comprehend processing gift cards, club cards, credit cards, vouchers, lottery payouts, refunds, company cheques, hard cash, coupons etc on the incredibly convoluted computerised till system that crashes every five minutes. It was all so bewildering and I hadn’t even made it on to the shop floor. But during all this I discover that the girl who is teaching me is really nice and chatty, sarcastic and laconic. We will get on just fine, and it feels good to have an ally finally. Then the manager, whom I hadn’t seen since she fetched me from the staff room that morning, comes in to speed the training along and catches us chatting and not working. Ooops. Therefore training is now over and I am told that I will learn better on the shop floor. But instead of the books floor I am cast  into Hades downstairs, where the relentless slog and streams of customers will ensure that my knowledge of how to work the tills will be enchanced, or I’ll have a nervous breakdown.

 I am dumped onto a till next to a middle aged man amongst the teenagers, whose job it is to keep an eye on my floundering ineptitude. I seemed to spend the whirlwind of the panicky afternoon permanently tugging at his sleeve like a little schoolboy asking him how to do everything, as customers look at me pityingly: a grown man trying to learn how to work in a shop, ludicrous. I felt like I was a bit special needs. After a couple of hours, the man goes on a break and it’s the girl that first taught me who replaces him. It feels like a reunion with an old friend so I greet her warmly and then proceed to slam the metal till lid down on her finger, thus nearly fracturing  it during the following transaction. She is not pleased and in rather a lot of pain. I apologise profusely but neither of us feel any better.

Finally six o’clock arrives.I’d made it. The end of my first day, but I wished it was my last. But it couldn’t get worse.

Right.