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 You can’t move in the seven remaining shops on the high street without toppling over piles of unwanted sale goods and it’s the same in my particular retail prison but with the added stash of obligatory new year self loathing books to battle through such as Paul McKenna’s ‘I Can Make You £8.99 Poorer’ and ‘Shit Yourself Thin: The Ex-Lax Cookbook.’ January, quite frankly, sucks. So what will 2012 hold in store for us retailers and consumers? Here’s a stab in the dark.

January: Several big high street stores go under as all the money they took over Christmas is given back as the nation returns everything with a receipt. Rail fare price hikes make travelling by space shuttle more economically viable so visiting shops out of town becomes a ridiculous notion.

February: Rising fuel and food costs mean many people can only afford fuel and not food. ‘Nigel Slater’s Cooking With Diesel’ becomes a national bestseller.

March: A new game sweeps the nation called ‘Spot the Shop’ which takes place in shopping centres nationwide. No one wins. The National Lottery starts a new type of draw called ‘Scramble!’ whereupon players follow a hot air balloon across open fields as Ant & Dec throw loose change out of it. The first draw is won by a Mrs J. Broad from Felixstowe who fishes £2.26 out of hedge and treats herself to a tuna sandwich. ‘It’s a dream come true,’ she adds but later openly regrets that she blew the cash all in one go.

April: The government tries to kick start the economy by making oxygen legal currency.

May: The Government tries to paper over its less than sensible oxygen decision by releasing a series of Home Office pamphlets advising the householder on self suffiency. ‘Why Not? Eating Your Children To Cut Costs’ is derided openly but becomes very popular. Places in schools become more readily available which is a huge boon.

June: A wave of fierce patriotism sweeps the nation as the Queen’s Diamond jubilee is celebrated. So as not to appear crass as the only person in the UK with any money she changes it from Diamond Jubilee to Formica Jubilee. The celebrations boost the economy as someone in Hull buys a packet of crisps to celebrate. National pride and consumer confidence take another upsurge as the England football team kick off their Euro 2012 campaign. Unfortunately they fall into the same old trap of being shit and only succeed in depressing an already serotonin depleted nation.

July: It’s holiday season. No one can afford to go away so holidays at airports become popular, people divide their time between branches of WHSmith and the strangely not defunct Tie-Rack. Luckily there few bored children moaning about this as most of them have been eaten.

August: It’s an important time of year for retailers as Christmas is here. The three remaining retailers are quietly optimistic about their chances but one more goes bust before the end of this sentence.

September: September is cancelled due to the sheer expense of running a month with lots of letters in its name. Calls for another May to be introduced in its place go unanswered and branded ‘silly’ by a calender watchdog spokesperson

October: The number of people who work in retail in the UK drops to an all time low of six. These six people have to run every shop in the country by themselves and the whole of Manchester closes down for a week when the Saturday girl does a sickie.

November: The UK asks the US for a fiver for a cup of tea. The US refuses and international relations break down.

December: Christmas is ruined as the US releases 14 tonnes of nuclear warheads upon our sceptered isle. The only survivor is Tie-Rack, which goes into administration shortly after as irradiated neck wear is out of fashion.

So there we have it, the shape of our trading landscape for the coming year. You have been warned.

 Yet we are told to look after ourselves so we can live longer to experience the horror, struggle and facebatteringly thankless toughness of existence for an extended time, and then be moaned at for putting a drain on everyone and everything and made to suffer a guilt trip of momentous proportions. 

 Due to my prediliction for self destruction I doubt I’ll ever become old enough to drain anything other than one or two drips on my hospital death bed. This can only really be a relief as otherwise I’ll end up being old and confused but still mobile enough to go shopping. A bit like the following examples of shop bothering octagenarians…

It, unless you’ve not noticed due to a time consuming crack addiction or brain damage from getting excited about the mind dribblingly pointless X Factor, the run up to Christmas. This is a key trading time for us retailers to make money and, as a result,  for elderly relatives to be sent into a new unrecognisable universe populated by i-tunes vouchers instead of  record tokens, self service tills instead of humans in aprons, and inkjet cartridges as opposed to quills. No wonder they get confused but there are still some that baffle in the extreme.

‘To save me walking all the way around the shop, where do you keep your cigarettes?’  asks one old bean.

Yep. This happened. Never mind that since Sir Walter Raleigh opened his first newsagent/potato shop upon returning from the New World (must check Wikipedia on this but I’m pretty certain this was how it was) fags have been kept behind the counter.

 Next up is my new girlfriend. Don’t get excited, I’m not talking of a staggeringly unlikely change of fortune where someone I actually have strong feelings for expresses the same. This isn’t science fiction after all. The new girlfriend is an old lady who just happened upon me rather than any other member of weekday staff. She needed help on a problem so highly complex that the wartime team of Special Operation Executives at Bletchley Park would’ve downed tools over it and wave white handkerchiefs in Germany’s direction: the opening of a metal clasp on a metal box file. For ten minutes I explained ,and made example of, the process of pushing in the little button so the clasp releases from the clip and, voila, instant access to her back issues of The People’s Friend can be easily obtained.

She didn’t understand. I had to write the instructions down for her on a bit of till receipt in the simplest terms and then go through several operational rehearsals before she asked me out. To her car that is to help her carry it. Because I’d displayed such valour and kindness, she tried to give me  £4 for my trouble. Upon telling work colleagues this they were dutifully impressed when I said I passed up the offer.

 That was until I told them I battered her round the head and took her car and purse instead. Four quid indeed, I ask you.

Ahem. She visits me occasionally and always asks if I’m the nice chap who helped her to her car that time. Her lack of certainty means we can feel the first flush of excitement in love anew time and again and I get offered four quid to boot. Nice. This is how you keep a relationship fresh: memory loss.

Other ancients testing the patience are presented thus:

‘Do you sell Christmas cards?’ Oh for crying out loud.

 A customer holding  ink cartridges for that almost forgotten implement, the pen. At the bottom of the packet it says the word blue. The cartridges emanate that royal blue ink familiar to all. ‘Are these blue?’ asks the customer.

 Another old timer with his seemingly not that much younger son were buying inkjets. ‘Do you do white ones?’ asks the dad. Crikey.

Ridiculous. I like it a bit more when we have to play guessing games, they have an almost Dickensian parlour game element about them.

‘I’m after a book about that new band.’ She asks.

‘Ok, which new band?’

‘The one with those chaps in.’

‘One Direction?’

‘Ohhh, that’s them.’

Bring on those melting ice caps, that’s what I say.

 Anyway, why was I beckoned? A lady had just bought an audio book of Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest which is eight discs of angry buzzing with some screaming. Maybe. She wasn’t that happy because it had taken me a long time to find the discs thanks to our unusual filing system (Maeve Binchy under L, for instance). She paid and left but was back five minutes later. She then found me and wagged her finger in a manner that screams ‘You. I want a word with you. What you’ve done is so heinous that no-one else must witness the dressing down you are to get.’

 We arrive at the back counter and she proceeds.

 ’The audio book you sold me has a disc missing, it’s lucky I checked before I got home, and what’s more one of the discs is blank!’

I apologise and ask to take a lo0k. I discover that two discs are stuck together.

‘They’re all here madam.’

‘Yes, but what about the blank disc?’

‘It’s not blank. It’s upside down.’

I flip the CD over and the shiny underside illuminates her embarrassed face, whilst casting a beautific rainbow shimmer over my smug one. You can stick your waggly finger….eugh, maybe not.

 Beckoners aren’t quite as annoying as another method of getting attention: the silent hoverer. This type of customer seemingly only wishes to communicate via telepathy. They’ll walk up to you, catch your eye and just stop; freezing suddenly like a cat interrupted whilst washing its anus. I like to just stare back, emulating their anus face which is quite  nice of me as they say that by mirroring someone’s body language you are showing  understanding and empathy.

 The silent type are infuriating but at least they don’t up the ante like some. The space invaders are worse and I don’t mean customers shaped like a pixelated eighties arcade game beastie. Some get so close you can smell what they had for lunch two weeks ago and in a bid to maintain a proper proximity one has to step back. This, without fail, will cause the assailant to move closer, thus an awkward dance of escape and pursuit entails until several laps of the shop have been completed which I’m thinking of turning into a fitness DVD for the new year when everyone is encouraged to feel fat and useless. To get rid of the space invader it may be that the only workable methods of defence are 1) exhale hard into the face (preferably after consuming some highly aromatic German sausage) or 2) lick their nose, which is best avoided especially during the winter months when you’re likely to get a lip full of nose drip.

 Another method of a customer encroaching on our space is one which doesn’t even require them to be present any longer: Farters.

 The number of times a day I end up unexpectantly walking through the fetid wafting cloud of rectal emissions  is untrue. Is it mandatory to have someone with an overactive bowel in every shop?  However, this goes the other way. There are times when the gaseous pressing urge of methane affects me too. After a furtive glance around to make sure it’s safe it pays to let go. This is when, as soon as I release my bottom bomb, a member of the public will emerge from nowhere to ask a question, at once enveloped in my fug as we both pretend in that most British of fashions, that there is absolutely nothing wrong -  even if both of us have eyes a-streaming accompanied by retching.

I guess it’s another way of maintaining personal space though. Try it when you’re next encroached, but try it with care, believe me.

 Back to school customers are a special breed, usually asking for revision guides on obscure subjects like GCSE scuba diving or AS level Latin P.E.

An example. I was standing in one of the book aisles trying to make space for the nineteen new James Patterson titles of the week, when a mother and daughter appeared. They had the furrowed brows of concentration/puzzlement and their heads tilted in the universal body language of the book browser. They were scanning the tragic life stories section and I assumed they were looking for tawdry tales of being fed shoes whilst locked in a cellar by an abusive transexual police officer father with a drink problem.

‘It could be in the true crime section.’ Said the daughter.

‘Oh yeah!’ Retorted her mother.

So they continue to look perplexed whilst getting neck pain and I thought maybe now was a good time to help them out. So I offer them my help, leaving the pile of Patterson tripe behind which is a bit foolish because in the five minutes I leave them he’s gone and got his ghost writer to write another three which will already be added to my pile upon my return.

‘Have you got any books by Jacquelyn Hide?’ The mother asks.

I engage my memory bank, my immediate thought is that she sounds like a romance and saga type author but I draw a blank. I ask what sort of books this J. Hide pens. I get two shrugs. Then the daughter pipes up.

‘I think she writes classics.’ There’s quite a lot wrong with this sentence.

It clicks. I have to try hard not to either burst out laughing or sneer with contempt or maybe combine the two.:

‘You’re after Jekyll and Hyde aren’t you?’

‘GOD! Mum you’re so stupid!’ And with that, the teenage girl exonerates herself from any idiocy she may be culpable for, even though it’s her that is studying the damned book.

My dad really thought that I’d made this up. (Un)fortunately not.

It seems that Robert Louis Stevenson is a very misunderstood author as a couple of years ago I was looking up his books for a customer and apparently, according to our brilliant ordering system his most famous book was Treasure Ireland. Long John O’ Silver anyone?

 It’s not rare for us to be asked for phantom books. On the same day as the Jacquelyn Hide seekers I was asked for colouring books. For adults.

Now. What is an adult colouring book? Pages of Council tax bills with nice blocky letters to shade in? Painting by numbers Tessas and Peps? Or maybe adult colouring books means…no I don’t, think you need it spelt out but needless to say you’d need quite a lot of pink.

Here it is: imagine you are almost on the floor with despair. A day of huge workloads, pressure from head office, piles of paperwork, problems with colleagues and the obligatory stupid, messy, ill informed, time wasting punters is nearly over. The shop lights are dimmed and the shutter is being lowered to advertise the obvious fact to the general public that at 5.28  you’ve had your nine hours of shopping time for the day. But this won’t deter this sort of dreaded visitor.

The latecomer.

The latecomer is a professional arsehole identified by a smirk, a swagger and a general aura that emits a sense of smugness; they know we are bristling with frustration, rage and hate at them robbing us of freedom …but they absolutely do not care and feed off our exasperation,what’s more is that they adore this effect. They breeze in to a choir of frustrated muttering and barely under-the-breath swearing from the staff which they take as a cue to move more slowly.

‘Sorry Sir/Madam,’ I’ll say with a smile as real and convincing as Katie Price’s tits, acting cool and professional and calm whilst inside I’m a vitriolic boiling cauldron of ire, ‘we’re closing’.

‘I won’t be long, I know what I want!’ (You try this in a pub at kicking out time and see how far you get with this. ‘I know what I want, I won’t be long! Nine pints please, you can lock up when I’m done can’t you?)

‘Ok.’ (Ok in this incident means: I want to grab you by the lapel, drag your face towards mine and fleck your face with my spittle as I scream at you, now F*CK OFF and let us go home!’ Then they’ll saunter round, deciding that then is a good time to have a carefree, relaxed read of all of the magazines.

‘I’m sorry we really are closing now, the staff have travelling arrangements and aren’t paid for any unforeseen over-time.’

This didn’t go down well with one particular harridan a few weeks ago.

‘Oh! You don’t want my money? I thought there was a recession on, I’m so glad that business is so good that you can refuse sales. Trying to kick me out isn’t very good customer service is it?

Oh I’m sorry, how about I give you my mobile number? If you wake up at three in the morning feeling the need to replace your hole punch why not give me a call? I’d be happy to travel across counties by taxi at my own expense and let you in if you like, I’ll even serve you Haribo and Galaxy bars on a silver tray and give you a foot massage.

Witch.

Almost as bad are the early birds, the ones that hover around outside fifteen minutes before trade starts,  tapping on the shutter and bellowing ‘are you open? I only want a newspaper!’ as we gamely ignore them. Bloody Daily Mail readers, why can’t they wait for their fascism until nine AM like everyone else?

The worst example of almost forced entry was a few moths ago when a newspaper had the brilliant idea of teaming up with Our Beloved Company to offer customers special Lego sets every day for a couple of weeks. Utter mayhem.

Queues were forming up to an hour before we opened, faces pressed up at the shutter, gawping in at us as we busy ourselves sorting out out news and magazines, like they were viewing creatures at the most disappointing zoo in the world. We tried our best to ignore the gathering hoards pressed desperately against the store but when two hundred pairs of eyes are following your every move it’s quite disturbing.

As the hour of trade approached we were all found with foreheads beading with sweat, a forlorn look on our horrifed faces as the imminent raising of the barrier would unleash this plastic brick loving hoard, swarming like locusts. I prefer locusts, they’re a bit less pushy when it comes to toys.

 Before the barrier had even been fully lifted they were squeezing in, fighting each other in a bid to reach the pile of Daily Mirrors. They raced towards the tills, ripping out the coupons and dumping the unwanted paper on the shop floor and snatched the plastic packets of joy. Honestly, you’ve seen better manners from starving people being given international food parcels.

Then disaster happened. We ran out of Lego.

The abuse directed at us was staggering.

‘What am I supposed to tell little Jimmy now eh?! It’s a f*cking disgrace! You should have more of it!’

Staff members were loudly given such wonderful accolades as ‘useless’, ‘stupid’ and ‘con-artists’, as well as being blamed for hurricane Katrina, the rise of Nazi Germany and Celebrity Big Brother. Apparently the general public were so outraged at the lack of availability that it even made the news.

Maybe the extinction of our species is actually nothing to worry about, but something to look forward to, eh?

Mills and Boon.

If there’s one golden rule of book retail, never, ever deprive a female pensioner of romance and saga or you will be relentlessly (albeit pretty damned slowly) pursued and quite fiercely tutted at to within an inch (they still use the old measurements as it makes them feel safe) of your life.

Unfortunately I take delivery of these granny grot books every two weeks as the M & B writers are a prolific bunch, churning out novels called things like ‘The Arabian Sheik’s Forbidden Pregnant Secretary’ or ‘Unmasked By A Caddish Rake’s Sextuplet Lover’s Mistress’ or some such drivel at a rate that makes trashy thriller hack James Patterson look positively lazy with his nine books a week (which he gets someone else to write anyway. I hate you James Patterson, I really do. Ahem). Quite often the old dears will be in on the exact day of delivery, hovering around the unopened boxes desperate for their fix of inoffensively erotic banality to entertain them when Countdown isn’t on. Recently, one biddy got so impatient with my lack of speed at getting them on the shelf that she insisted on opening the two boxes herself to get first dibs. She tore through the layers of protective paper with an urgent vigour that belied her ancient years, leaving a scene of devestation; a landslide of virgin lovers, swarthy horny greeks and wholesome baby saving, definitely the marrying type, swooningly attractive doctors all over the floor.

Others are less able to help themselves to their all consuming habit.

‘How am I supposed to get to the Mills & Boon down there?’ The books are at the bottom of the Romance and Saga section exactly where the company instruct us to put them, ‘I’ve two replaced hips and I can’t get to them, you should move them up to the middle.’

I opened my mouth to defend myself against this onslaught when, from behind me, another wavery voice joined in this chorus of disapproval.

‘…and I can’t reach the Maeve Binchy all the way up there!’

Trapped. A pincer movement of frustrated oldies had me pinned down.

‘I’m your best customer!’ exclaims the M&B addict, ‘You should move them for me!’ In the end, there I am squatting down actually reading out the titles to her wondering what makes ‘ Occupied!:The Sultan’s Bedouin Tent’ preferable to ‘Texas Cowboy: His Unexpected Bride’ but quite reasonably not really caring. After I’d finished embarrassingly reading this twaddle out loud in public I left the olds to it and listened to them slag me off to each other in crumbly harmony.

Then, two weeks later it happened again but with a different eroticism seeking old Doris but  the same complaint. Again, I attempted to offer my excuses when out of nowhere two American tourists start backing her up and insisting I phone head office to get them to change our display methods. All of a sudden the height of our books had become an international concern so I did what any self respecting tyrant does in the face of American pressure: ignored it.

——————–

If I’m not being assailed by the nearly fossilised there are, of course, the rest of society’s darlings to enjoy, some of which are highly politicised and radical. How about the Tony Blair Turner? This phantom warrior knows how to hit the establishment hard…by popping in to their local stationer/booksellers and turning Tony Blair’s autobiography round THE WRONG WAY so you can’t see his face. Right on! Hit Blair where it hurts… by slightly annoying a bookseller.  This person needs to show the imagination of someone in my own town who used to go into a rival book shop and move this book into a better place…

…the crime section.

 Brilliant. See, you don’t need to set fire to things to get noticed, just be witty. You get less ‘free’ energy drinks and trainers though, so be warned.

‘We spend up to 85% of our lives inside. How does the building structure affect our outlook on life?’

Hmmm. Seeing as I just got deleted by a friend from Facebook as I was ‘too depressing’ I think we know the answer. But how much of my sparkling mood is down to my environs?

 As discussed previously, the shopping centre where our store is located is well lit, clean and blandly functional. There are definitely worse places to work, as a tour guide in Auschwitz for example, but it’s behind the scenes in the store that are more likely to affect my colleagues and I as we are entombed there daily.

 Let’s take the staff room. In my previous store which many years ago had lots of money chucked at it in a bid to make it the nirvana of stationery, books and Haribo, they have FOUR sofas, a fitted and fully functioning KITCHEN replete with FRIDGE for people to leave food to rot in, a glimpse of the unattainable outside world via a fully integrated SKYLIGHT, a TELEPHONE and some abandoned random things from days gone by like old photos, a witches hat and bowls of ORNAMENTAL PEBBLES. Luxury.

 My current store’s staffroom, in comparison, looks like a scaled down model of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina but let’s look on the bright side and focus on the redeeming features. We have five BINS, all of which are permanently overflowing with McDonald’s wrappers or reams of wasted paper, four strip lights – two of which we aren’t allowed to use for money saving reasons. The lights barely illuminate the TABLE in a pale sulphorous hue that is covered in a myriad of food and drink stains which we hide under crappy tabloid newpapers and McDonald’s wrappers. There is no natural daylight to distract us or give us unreasonable non-work related thoughts. Other features include an old plastic KETTLE that has more fur on it than a 1970s porn star, a collection of ancient stained and cracked CROCKERY which is home to the EBOLA virus so we all fight over the one clean plate which is a plastic ‘Charlie and Lola’ one. There is a small fridge held together by its own ice and a clock that depicted the time as five to eight forever until our new manager spent our budget on a double A battery. There is also a small broken portable TV with a state of the art ‘blu-ray’ video recorder (possibly) which was used in times past to play patronising training videos to new company victims, sorry, I mean employees. All in all if we got a feng-shui expert to visit, s/he would immediately opt to nuke the damned room from existence rather than waste time with pot-pourri and the like. You can’t, after all, polish a turd. 

The rest of the behind the scenes areas are just as inspiring. Like the fetid stench of blocked drains? Then you’ll love our corridor. Down this corridor are the changing rooms and the cleaner’s cupboard, which ironically, smells even worse than anywhere else. Thankfully we don’t venture in there very often as we have an externally employed ’cleaner’ who comes in once a week to push the dust around from place to place at the slowest pace possible whilst getting in your way. The toilets are thankfully not too traumatic as long as you don’t mind stains, streaks and old calcified wee patches on the floor and no soap. Next up is the stifling cash office. Airless, humid and bland (sounds like a firm of solicitors) this is where the magic happens, if you find paperwork, counting someone else’s money and voice conferences magical that is.

Lastly there is the basement stockroom. Colourless, gloomy and forbidding,  I love it as there you are the furthest away from the most depressing aspect of the building: customers.

Magazines have been around since biblical times. We know this as archaeologists unearthed a copy of ‘What Crucifix?’ magazine from near the sea of Galilee a few years ago. This was thought to be the earliest recorded publication until the recent discovery of ‘Virgin Birth’ (issue one: ‘the best mangers reviewed!’ ‘We test drive the latest donkeys!’ and ‘how to explain to your husband that it’s possible to be pregnant without having had sex!)

It seems to me that most periodicals exist purely to heap crippling insecurities onto readers: your body is too flabby, your sex life is laughable, your car is crap and everybody else is fitter, shinier, more well rounded, has better behaved children and is a lot happier than you. The public lap it up even though the air-brushed pictures are about as convincing as that Roswell alien hoax and the writing is as enlightening as an evening talking to Wayne Rooney about astro-physics. I know someone who’s daughter works for a very famous beauty magazine. In an article extolling the brilliance of a skin product, this magazine used a picture of  a then colleague of mine to illustrate the youth enchancing properties that this paste of lies (TM) provides. The caption gave her name (Miss X) and her age, 35. I have to say that she did look really good for her age because she’s really 23. Defeating the ageing process by not being old is obviously the way forward.

 I have a favourite magazine at the moment though. If you get a chance whilst sheltering in a newsagent from our brilliant summer weather, check out ‘It’s Fate!’ magazine, a periodical written by liars for idiots and the insane. The cover is always brilliant, advertising stories such as ‘A psychic gastric band made me drop two dress sizes’ and every month a ghost gets accused of causing banal household problems: ‘A singing ghost creates music in my radiators!’ and the following month: ‘The ghost in my drains was creating a stink!’ What next month? ‘A ghost caused my light bulb to blow after only three years of use!’ or ‘My ghost spent the kids’ dinner money down the bookies!’ Thank you ‘It’s Fate!’ by giving us all the perfect excuse for when anything goes wrong. I should’ve used it last week when the bailiffs turned up on my doorstep demanding to take away all of my belongings. I could’ve just claimed that the ghost maxed my credit cards, wouldn’t let me pay my council tax and forced me to spend too much money on KFC.

 Although there are literally thousands of magazines published every week, there seem to be some gaps in the market for new, specific titles. From the publishing house of Vinylrichie why not try these.

• Murdering Times: A practical and helpful publication for murderers and those considering this rewarding  hobby. Features include a step by step guide of how to dig up and replace the patio without the neighbours or the police finding out, and in depth diagrams of the best dismemberment process and the top ten excuses about why your wife has suddenly disappeared.
• The Onanist: A light hearted, sideways glance at the world of self-love. Free handy pocket sized tissues with issue one ( the issue to issue to.)
• What Magazine?: An incredibly huge and cumbersome periodical that helps the reader make an informed choice about which magazines to buy by reviewing every single title ever published.
• Internet Troll!: A title for those delightful life shunning, socially inept cowards that sit in their urine stained pants in their mum’s house delighting in telling someone who has done nothing except like a video of kittens on YouTube what a lady’s part they are. This magazine has quite a few private ads so you can contact other trolls to abuse, but aALL of the contact details will be fake.
• Rain Lover: A weekly mag that has article after article on rain. One week there’ll be articles on drizzle, the next on moderately heavy showers and so on. Readers are invited to write in with their best stories of rain, the best storyteller gets a weeks holiday in Manchester to get wet with weather expert Michael Fish.

These magazines sound quite irritating, but nothing beats the irritation of having to deal with kids’ magazines as each and every one comes replete with FREE PLASTIC CRAP PRETENDING TO BE SOMETHING REAL! such as a Peppa Pig I-phone or a Dora The Explorer telescope and modem set. What should really come on the front of these brightly coloured tat fests is a vial of morphine to shut the little cherubs up and stop them making a mess everywhere. A much better idea, don’t you think?

Actually, customers sharing their medical problems with us is a lot more common than you probably realise. I have one old lady that, even without any leading questions such as ‘how are you?’ will launch into a description of how her nerves are shot and she’s depressed and her husband is in a bad way. Then she’ll burst into tears. As you can imagine it gets a bit awkward. 

‘Er, maybe some half price chocolate or Haribo will make it all better? No? Not even Tangfastics?’

 Try offering your own stories of mental illness and they don’t want to know. Strange. I could try telling her of the time I finally plucked up courage to see a doctor about how distressed I was only for him to tell me to ‘get a girlfriend and learn how to drive’ and wave me out of the office, which in hindsight was good advice as the girlfriend could dump me and I could drive into the sea afterwards. Good thinking Doc.

 Thankfully, tears at the till are uncommon unless you count members of staff, tantrums are the usual order of the day, especially at the moment over such a simple thing: the carrier bag.

 There is a distinct shortage at the moment because buying carrier bags eats into the company’s profit, thus making our darling CEO only able to afford forty weeks a year on a yacht in Monaco as opposed to forty one. You may have experienced this shortage yourself by shopping at your local branch of Our Beloved Company recently, you may have been offered a bag for a penny (‘I’m not paying that!) or one of our 8 pence ’Bags for Life’, which is only a bag for life if you happen to be a mayfly. Seeing as each household has enough carrier bags stuffed under the kitchen sink to succesfully choke a school of dolphins, you have to wonder why the public don’t always bring one with them. Maybe they just hate dolphins.

The biggest bone of contention for us, and the shoppers, at this time of year is the horrific temperatures we are expected to endure. Constant emails abound about our air-conditioning and light consumption; how dare we expect to have any comfort as it isn’t company policy to make sure the staff are ok? If any member of staff dehydrates (no drinks on the shop floor and the criminal infrequency of breaks almost ensures this) it’s ok because if they die there are plenty more victims, sorry, potential employees ready to give their lives for the noble, essential purpose of supplying  HB pencils and ‘Hello Kitty’ lunchboxes to the world. 

 However, it is acceptable for the company to stuff money down the toilet when they see fit. We are getting through till rolls at a rate of knots due to a new policy of churning out money off vouchers, sometimes three of the sodding things in a laboriously slow electronic vomit  before the receipt comes out. These vouchers invariably end up in the bin as, surprisingly, people aren’t bothered about getting five pounds off their next purchase if they spend over £250 on pencil sharpeners on a Thursday after 3.45 PM or a free Ribena if they spend over £15 on ‘With Sympathy’ cards, which we didn’t get any stock of anyway. So next time you read a report in a periodical about the rapid depletion of rainforests you know who to blame.

The lungs of the planet may not be around for long but at least we’ll have plenty of pencil sharpeners, so it’s not all bad.