There have been many contenders for the much coveted prize of seasonal tw*t of the year this week. Due to the massively high volume of people contending for this award you really have to stand out to be in contention. So hats off to this weeks’ entrants for setting the bar really high.

 First off is the woman that demanded that we should open more tills. She could plainly see that every single till was manned, but as far as she was concerned we should start sawing, wiring, programming, routing etc so she could have her own cash register. Insert your own insults here.

 Second are all those utter halfwits that rattled at the doors during a town wide power cut on Wednesday demanding to know why they can’t come in to our pitch black shop to break their necks on all the abandoned shopping that people dumped when we evacuated the store. Extra points are awarded to those that idiotically asked when the power would come back on, like all of the staff were psychic electricians. A few more points go to those that threatened to go shopping in another town entirely as we had obviously cut the power ourselves just to spite them. Oh No! Don’t go!

 Thirdly, all the public that asked me if our latest hardbacks are available in paperback. These are the same types of people that will see an advert for a newly released blockbuster movie on the telly and rush straight out to buy it on DVD. It just makes me wonder how they have survived at all whilst having no idea about the order of things. Do they wonder why they feel uncomfortable in their wet clothes after a bath? Or do they wipe their bums before a crap? Mind you, most of these cherubs are asking that paperback question about Dan Brown’s latest so you can’t expect much in the way of intelligence from them I suppose.

Next up are those that whinge about the books they want that aren’t discounted to their satisfaction. A special mention goes to the person yesterday that demanded to know the name of the shop manager so she could report him to head office about our pricing, obviously failing to grasp the painfully apparent notion that it is those darlings that set the prices in the first place. Fill your boots sweetheart and good luck on getting them to answer the phone. I hope that the complaints department is an automated voicemail system as every other fucking corporate phone line is. (My Vodaphone voicemail thinks I’m ‘her’ friend. She says things like ‘Thaaanks, I’m just putting that through for you. That’s great. Ok, cool….’ Nauseating.)

But there are two contenders for utter moron of the week that can go through to the final without doubt. Yesterday, upon being asked to direct someone to the crossword puzzle books I obliged. The girl scanned the shelves and huffed and puffed. She then whined:

 ’Your crosswords aren’t liberal enough.’

True, we only seem to have Tory newspaper crossword books but what makes a crossword liberal? Clues about sandals and muesli? I ended up walking off to tell everyone what she’d said, and I think she overheard me which made me laugh unapologetically. Hey love, I’m doing you a favour helping you through your idiocy crisis. The first step is admitting you have a problem and I’m just bringing it to your attention.

So we come to my favourite. Even though the Christmas shopping queues are relentlessly long and we are constantly on the go and concentrating on our own tills, I can’t help but eavesdrop on what’s going next to me. My colleague next to me had just finished bagging up this man’s shopping when I heard him ask:

‘ Can I speak to a manager please?’ In a very polite and calm tone. It was nothing to do with me, and I should keep my nose out of these things if I can but my streak of vicious goading had been awakened so I interrupted.

‘What’s the problem sir?’ I enquired.

‘I’d like to complain.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, you aren’t playing any Christmas music.’

We looked at him, scanning his features for any slight show of irony. Nothing. It must have been Santa himself which is bad news for the kids the world all over. It looks like you’re getting Dan Brown for Christmas.

 Sometimes people impart such deep and profound existential words of wisdom that one’s very being is rocked to the core and you are forced to question all that you’ve ever known.

‘There are a lot of books here when you think about it aren’t there?’ One startlingly astute man proffered. Wow.

 Another person was overheard exclaiming to his friend: ‘Look at all these books! Who would want to read all of these??!!’ I just don’t even know what to say to that to this day, I really don’t.

 Well, as these two wonderfully intelligent people realised, yes, we have a lot of books. Unusual for a book shop I know, but we like to think we’ve set the standard that other book shops might just one day follow. One day. Having such an array of books has its problems though, thanks to the real nemesis of the staff: head office.

 I can only imagine what laughs they have as they think up the most soul destroying and pointless activities for us to do. The most pointless and frustrating of all are the price changes.  Christmas is obviously a highly competitive time on the high street so offering the best deal is key. Without a doubt we have great deals on, lots of new books at Christmas are reduced to half price (I sound like a bloody TV advert) but for a limited time. By limited I mean about three days at a time. Therefore I can be found going around the entire store almost everyday trying to find all the books and making sure they are all correctly priced. This is just crap. Head Office seem to decide the price of each title at random. On Mondays a top title will go up to thirteen pounds from half price. On Thursdays they will go back down again. They may even change in between depending on….depending on….errrr….

Darts. I reckon head office love darts. A few of them throw some arrows and whatever the score is of the first throw is the price of each book for that day. Then they correspond with all of the hundreds of stores and ask us to implement their changes. At this time of the year it is their favourite joke. They seem to ignore the fact that we have the small matter of customers to deal with, huge deliveries to battle through, staff shortages to contend with and the like. To do these price changes we use a scanner which is bluetoothed to a small printer. Nifty huh? You scan the barcode and the little printer prints out the right sticker. Yeah, right.

It doesn’t work, it doesn’t fucking work. Ever.

Bink. Bink. Bink. Bink. Binkbinkbinkbinkbink as the scanner tries to connect to the store’s bluetooth system. I stand there looking forlornly, sweat beading on my brow. Finally it connects. The printer prints out half a sticker which is unreadable. The printer screen says ‘Error. Load supplies.’ I open the box and realign the roll of stickers. Then I press feed to get the thing going. ‘Error.’ I press feed and it spits out a stream of blank stickers, wasting huge swathes of the things. Finally, it prints out about three stickers of the nine I’ve asked for before ‘Error’ flashes up again. During this time of pressing buttons the scanner will freeze again. Bink. Bink. Bink. Bink.

Bink. Silence.

Bink.

Binkbinkbink. The screen goes blank. It comes back on and resumes it’s binking. Whilst this is happening I will get accosted by loads of customers asking me where things are and enquiring as to the actual price. I can’t tell them the price as the scanner doesn’t work so I have to abandon the task and go to the till to find out. Going near the till unless you’ve been assigned to it for that part of the day is fatal as you just won’t get away and spend twenty minutes serving customers. This is when it gets really upsetting as the customer will then find the one book you’ve missed repricing so they’ll get it cheaper. This in itself is notable because the customer can NEVER find things for themselves even when it is literally right in front of them, but they can smell a wrongly stickered book and route around for it like a dog in a fox turd. Then head office start querying why you’ve had to do so many price overrides. ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH.

 The books aren’t just on the books floor, they are everywhere including at the front of the store with the birthday cards. This is the most awful place to do book price changes. The scanner will not work at all there so I have to walk halfway down the store a scan each individual title and then battle with the printer again to try and get some stickers and walk back to the front. Being at the front is hellish. Upon seeing any member of staff as soon as they walk into the shop, the customer will take the opportunity to hassle you without doing any shopping for themselves.

‘Where are the newspapers?’ they ask. I point to a couple of metres away where stacks of newspapers are. ‘Where are your christening cards?’ I will say that I don’t know because I’m purely on books. They will then ask you to find someone who does know or have a go at you for not knowing your stock. This will go on and on until the job is done or a nervous breakdown ensues. Last Monday it took me five hours to do the price changes, and on the Thursday it had to be done all over again. I have been caught many times with my head against a shelf as I want to scream, occasionally I will bang my head against a wall, literally.

 But the worst part of being at the front of store are the bullying slimebags who we astonishingly let camp out and  bully the public by trying to force them to buy perfume. These people are there every single day asking:

‘Have you got one today?’ Have you got yours? Do you like perfume? Got a special lady in your life? Etc.

They even pick on the staff and when one asked me if I wanted to treat my girlfriend to some perfume I let her know that I would have to miraculously get one first.

‘How about your Mum?’

‘She’s dead.’ Bang – that did the trick, embarrassed shuffle from the saleswoman and immunity for me. Sounds awful but I could hear Mum’s laughter at my delivery. She would have approved.

 What, you are wondering, is he going on about now? A woman came to the counter holding a David Attenborough DVD ‘The Life of Birds’. She enquired about the price so I scanned it and told her it was fifteen pounds. She then turns to her husband and asks him:

‘Shall I buy it?’

I interject and offer my humble opinion that you can’t really pay too much for a David Attenborough series.

‘But it’s not for me .’

‘No?’

‘No. It’s for my cats.’

That’s the joy of retail, you think you’ve seen and heard it all and then someone outdoes everybody for inane behaviour. Buying a DVD of birds for cats to watch? Pet porn is what it is, pet porn and nothing less. Weird. She probably buys the BBC Wildlife magazine for it too when there’s a double paged centre spread of harvest mice. Phwooooarrr. I suppose the odd knitting magazine would do the job too. Cor, look at the balls of wool on THAT.

Sadly, most of the time it’s just the regulars that haunt most of one’s day. Tomorrow is Monday so that means the man with shit on his shoulder will come in to read the history books. He literally, a couple of weeks ago, had a big smear of brown excrement on his shoulder. Dog? Human? I really couldn’t tell and I wasn’t going to ask. He has since wiped it off but the brown watery residue still clings to his coat so I keep an eye out for shit shoulder every week and without fail he’ll be in and NEVER buy anything, but at least that means I can keep my distance.

 Every day, homeless club congregates in the chairs on the books floor. They have been kicked out a few times but always sneak back in. They don’t cause much concern but they absolutely reek of cheap cider and/or urine. This is doubly unpleasant for me as the chairs are situated in the area that I’m in charge of so it’s my nostrils that get assailed by their distinct perfume. The routine for them is to come in, take a newspaper or even a book, and then try to read for a few moments before promptly falling asleep and starting up a resounding chorus of snores. One of the chaps who is known as the Sleeping Ninja (no, me neither) can sometimes spend up to seven hours in the chairs. Depressing. Then, at five in the afternoon, the unmistakably pungent aroma of the body odour man who spends his day sitting in various shops and shopping centres arrives to bend the spines of books on murderers or self help books from the laughably awful Mind, Body and Spirit section. Anyone that spends their time reading any of that pile of cruel lies has to be approached with caution. The only enlightenment one gets from buying these types of books is the realisation that not only are you still struggling with your life, but you are £7.99 worse off and some American charlatan is on their way to affording another huge ranch in Texas due to millions of others making the same mistake. It’s enough to piss your chakra right off.

 Seeing as I’ve gone off on this tangent I may as well ridicule the other section of the shop that gets my back up. The Tragic Life Story section. If you love other people’s misery then why not buy a bunch of books with titles like ‘No, Daddy…Don’t Put it There’ or ‘The Child That Was Kept In A Bucket’, or even ’Mum Swapped Me For a Bag of Smack’? These things sell very well so if you want to get rich then think of the time you got smacked as a child and then tell the story over three hundred pages whilst adding a few made up horrors and sticka cute crying child on the cover. Bob’s your (abusive) uncle, a bestseller for sure.

 There’s a lot to sneer at in the biography section too. Especially if you are a a book snob like me. Miley Cyrus biography? The girl is only about two. Wayne Rooney has about three out and he’s not exactly old. How exciting can it be to read about a young fella who’s only achievement is putting a spherical object between two sticks? Probably more exciting than Lewis Hamilton’s autobiography which is about sitting in a car and going round and round for five hours. You wait until I bring out my book on the night I played ‘Scalextric’ and beat Robin Beeson. Now there’s a tour de force of a story. Now I’m off to finish reading ‘Daddy Burnt My Genitals With a Blowtorch’. You can borrow it if you like.

 Life at this time of year resembles a Richard Curtis movie. Cheerful lovers trudge through a glittering snow covered landscape smiling beautifically as they contemplate the joy of Christmas. Happily they stroll into shops to carefully choose the perfect gifts for their loved ones, engaging in light hearted banter with shop assistants that are only too happy and willing to help.

Yeah, right.

Richard Curtis is one of life’s big fat liars. Have you been Christmas shopping yet? Did you enjoy it? Did you come across anyone else that had a look of calm enjoyment on their faces? If yes, mug them of their valium stash before you attempt anymore retail ‘therapy’ as it’s like ‘Hamburger Hill’ out there. Us retailers versus those customers. And we’ll fight to the death as there is no other choice. Obviously there are two sides to the story but I’m gunning for retailers. Bear in mind that if you get less than sparkling service from any shop staff they have probably already endured an horrific barrage of  the many abuses that they are supposed to gladly endure whilst being paid a fiver an hour for eight hours a day.

 So I thought I’d be helpful and give a bit of advice to make any shopping trips you undertake through the festive season as painless as possible. Firstly, treat others how you wish to be treated – that is especially true of shop staff. Going up and criticising prices, layout, length of queues etc will not go in your favour. If you don’t like the prices then diddums. Exclaiming that: ‘it’s cheaper online/in HMV/ in Malta’ and suchlike will at best illicit a shrug, at worst a facetious comment. By explaining where and when it’s cheaper is not a conversation that requires a response as you have your own answer: bugger off there. An average shop worker doesn’t have the power to all of a sudden pander to your whims and drop the price by a fiver just because you want it.

If you feel like you are having to wait in a queue for a long time then consider this: the whole fucking country is shopping so live with it or try shopping first thing in the morning or maybe in August. Also, consider that at least three out of five shoppers are idiots when it comes to ANY shopping let alone at Christmas (whence the ratio goes up to four and a half  hence the queues moving at the pace of a tortoise on ketamine.) Here’s how to slow a queue down in the best ways possible:

1)Don’t ever have your money ready at the counter, keep it at the bottom of a shopping bag and only dig around for it when all thirty two of your items have been scanned and packed and not before.

2) Become totally inept at using credit or debit cards. Ask an old person to teach you this if you’re too good. Even very young children have the ability to put things in the right shaped slot but it is amazing how in adulthood this skill deserts about 70% of shoppers. When the card is safely in the slot (to earn extra points exclaim about the fact that ‘they’re all different aren’t they?’ to bore the staff rigid) try forgetting your PIN. Then put the wrong PIN in twice. Then remove your card before it prompts you to, therefore cancelling the transaction totally needlessly. At this point it is advisable to suddenly recall that you’ve forgotten something and run off leaving the cashier surrounded by your goods whilst he or she helplessly looks on at the massive, grumbling, loudly tutting length of the queue.

3) Stand at the counter staring at your receipt trying to work out if you’ve been charged the correct amount. Then question the total refusing to accept it whilst being thick about the difference between ’buy one get one half price’  and ‘buy one get one free.’

4) Bulk the queue up by needlessly waiting in line to do the lottery, and even filling in the slip wrong - then blame the cashier for your own mistake. Or why not try doing a game in the lottery that you’ve never done before and totally getting it wrong. Try filling in a ‘Hotpicks’ slip when you want to really do the ‘EuroMillions’. Either way, you end up a few quid down and you piss the staff and shoppers off alike. Job’s a good ‘un.

5) Talk on your mobile phone whilst at the cash desk, pretending that the shop assistant is of no importance and that you are the only person in the world at this point so forgetting that others might be in a rush. This will irritate anyone and everyone but if it is your phone that rings then it’s ok for you act like this.

 6) When the cashier asks if you want a bag treat it like the most challenging problem you’ve ever faced. Um and ahh for at least thirty seconds before saying ‘no. I mean yes – just a small one. No, actually I’ve got one. Oh go on then – to keep it nice.’

7) After everything has been paid and packaged, decide you want gift receipts which entails refunding the said items and reselling them thus successfully making life more boring than before for the whole of us.

 To make life on the shop floor more horrid for staff and customers alike try taking your small children along for the trip and allow them to have massively loud screaming fits about toys/sweets/boredom/the futility of existence. You will probably (if you are the parent) be able to zone out and not let it get to you so that’s ok – it’s just the surrounding two hundred people that want to kill you and precious little Tarquin or Clitorissa. And don’t forget to have an SUV sized buggy even though your child is the size of a jelly bean and use it as a if you were a German tank ploughing through the Russian steppes and on to Stalingrad.

I have one simple idea to make Christmas shopping bearable – everyone goes out and spends all that money on themselves. Therefore you can guarantee that you’ll get stuff you want and you might enjoy buying it. Plus you won’t get lumbered with two copies of Dan Brown’s excreble ‘The Lost Symbol’ which is bound to happen to some of you. You have my sympathies.

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This blog is dedicated to all of those that endure working in retail at this time of year, and especially to those at the leading high street retailer that I work at. Without you it wouldn’t be any fun at all.

 Since the dawn of time (between nine and five thirty, late night fighting on Thursdays) a war has been fought. Where there are people selling, there are people buying. But law has decreed that these two sets of people will seldom see eye to eye so there must be constant conflict in the arena that is the shop. And like all wars there will be no winners, just bloodied corpses and shattered, hollow victors. Retail Wars. (Available soon on PS3 and XBox 360.)

 Unfortunately, life in the trench of retail is far from ideal. We not only have to deal with constant barrages from the customers as they find other new and terrifying angles to assault us from, we have directives from head office who are safely ensconced in their ivory tower. There, they do everything in their power to help the customers. That is to help the customers find ways to attack us and make our lives hell. For instance: we will frequently have offers on books stating that there is up to half price on our top thirty hardbacks. However, the words ‘up to’ will be rendered so miniscule so as to be nearly invisible to the naked eye. Cue a nice huffy complaint every twenty minutes from a disatisfied customer demanding they get the latest Bernard Cornwell for next to nothing.  Then there will be the one hardback in the chart that has no discount at all. This happened to me last week when an irate old biddy pulled one of only three non discounted books from the chart and demanded that she get it for half price. I told her that it wasn’t half price and by law only seventy five percent of offer stock has to be discounted. Huge strop follows at me (because obviously it’s me that sets the prices for our nationwide business outlets) as the customer tears at my heart with those doom laden, terrifying words:

‘I shan’t be coming back in here again.’

At that moment I ask myself, my heart shuddering and a look of astonished disbelief etching itself across my face, what now? How can it be that the world still turns, people celebrate birthdays and do things like sing or whistle when such loss occurs? The weird thing is that they think I should care. They think that the searing rejection they have just spouted is going to affect my life and that of the company. The lady then walks off with an air of smug accomplishment. The great thing is that she thought she had won. No dear, I win. I don’t have to listen to your plaintive wailing ever again over such piffles, I still get paid and you’re stuck next time you want a convenient place to buy your Daily Mail because you’ve boycotted the only store in the high street that sells it. You’ve made your bed, dear, and you’ve wet it.

 Other customers will try to win the battle betwixt retailer and shopper by using the failure proof method of sheer idiocy. There’s a three for two offer paperbacks so why not ask the shop keeper if that means they have to buy three of the same book? When an offer informs that it’s three for two on all books why not pick up a random book and ask ‘does it include this one?’  There are stand out winners in the thick customers department though, and they are our most ubiquitous member of modern society: The Chav.

There has never been more unnatural pairing in the world than a chav and a bookshop. Chavs very rarely venture into bookshops because there is nothing for them there. They don’t like books and they don’t know anyone except their probation officer that reads so there isn’t even any point shop lifting books because what can you do with them? Most of them aren’t even heavy enough to break car windows with. However, there will be occasions when our feral brethren will venture into the world of print. The main reason is when that esteemed literary genius Katie Price has a new novel out. This will prompt a few overweight chav girls to drag their boyfriends into the book department, to shout at you demanding the new Jordan book which they can’t find even though they’ve looked under b (for book) on the shelf. The one other reason chavs venture in is if Jade Goody has died and there has been a quickly released biography that cashes in on her tragic end. I actually caught a chav nicking this on the day of release though. I didn’t know true sadness until that day. Except the day that I overheard a couple of thick chavs approach the graphic novels section wondering if that meant they were sex books.

At the moment there is one cast iron way to annoy this particular bookseller which involves minimal effort: walk to the till and buy a copy of Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’. Double the effect by asking if it has come out in paperback and you get full marks and get to see my ears go red to boot. Try it today, you can always get a refund when you realise your terrible mistake.

  I am trapped in a nightmare of my own making, and perversely somewhat (kind of) enjoying it. Although harking back to one’s past can lead to ruminating regretfully on how things have changed, such as most friends that have  moved away to do adult things like breed, get mortgages and get married/divorced/married, or family members that are searingly painfully no longer around, it can also provide a certain amount of entertainment. (Well, a bit.)

 This blog has been absent for a few months due to a mixture of  ‘character building’ setbacks. One of which is an absolute paucity of money which has led to my internet being cut off as well as the real risk of eviction. This rather urgent setback saw me return to the record shop with cap in hand asking for the possibility of a few days work during my annual leave from the slavery of the ‘leading-high-street-stationers/book sellers to attain some pocket money so I can buy some food. What a holiday. Still, at least I won’t get delayed at any airports, contract amoebic dysentery or get sunburnt. Phew.

 What I will get though is the unsettling sensation that I have never, ever even left. The last sixteen months have been a  real time and highly tedious dream of being unappreciated in another shop on the minimum wage.  I spent yesterday whimpering on the inside as each person that visited the shop greeted me like I was there every day. No one asked what I was doing there or where I’d been. It was like one of those dreams when no matter how loud you shout no one even notices that you’re screaming. Then hell’s gape grew even wider and spat that most abhorrent of creatures back into my sphere of existence: Peter the mancunian, or Manx as we know him here, or smelly Pete, or that c*nt – which is the most apt description. Regular readers of both my record shop and bookselling blogs have been introduced to this repellent individual before and know that he is my arch adversary. His mere existence casts an indelible shadow over humankind. If God was real and cast his all seeing eyes over His creation of mankind in some sort of appraisal, He would weep. He would wipe us all out in one move and probably spend the rest of time building the word ’sorry’ out of cosmic Lego bricks and casting them out into the universe as a self induced punishment. AND IT WOULDN’T BE ENOUGH.

 The reason I reacted so badly to Manx appearing was that record shop owner had informed me that he had been banned. He had been banned (long, long overdue) for being too rude too often; so rude that even mild-mannered record shop owner got pissed off and told him where to go with his Bonnie Tyler picture discs and Michael Bolton LPs and fetid body odour.

 At eleven AM I spy the unmistakable swagger and lank hair of that man on the traffic island in the middle of the road outside. He has stopped and is staring in the direction of the shop, motionless. Owner and myself are here and he strides off in his style that resembles someone who hasn’t made it to the toilet on time. He’s seen me, I know it, but I feel safe as he walks off -seeing as he’s barred.

 An hour later and owner has left. The door opens and I look up from the PC to see that nasal voiced odious little tick coming in.

‘You’re banned Peter.’

‘You wanna buy some top funk?’

‘No. You’re banned Peter.’

‘Am I?’ He asks, and comes in anyway.

 At this stage I really can’t be bothered and curse the fact that on the first of only two days that I am here I am cursed with this trouble maker. I decide to let him go through the two small bins of £1 LPs before I remind him again. He wants to play mind games. I don’t. He finishes looking through and moves to the CDs.

‘ Get out please Peter.’ I demand. He refuses to acknowledge my statement so I repeat it. Again, no reaction and it becomes a matter of principle. I will not be defeated by this acrid cretin. I decide, for only the fourth time in fifteen years to manhandle a customer. It’s just lucky there is some of that antiseptic hand lotion on the desk for decontamination afterwards, although a sheep dip may be more helpful. I get up and put my arms out.

‘Get your hands off me!’ He sneers. A look of hatred illuminates his impossibly small evil piss-hole eyes. He then turns and goes back to pretending to look at CDs. We both know that he’s pretending as it is all about a battle of wills now, not what Kenny G CDs he can find. I grab his rucksack and attempt to drag him towards the door. Once again he spins round but this time slaps my arms away. I can feel the possibility of physical violence in the air. It makes me nervous on the inside but I’m not going to show this vile worm any semblance of it. To be honest, I’ve never wanted to punch anyone as much as this but the last fight I had was when I was eleven and I lost that, besides, I can’t afford to get my glasses damaged.

 His defiance makes me seethe. I grab his rucksack again and the same reaction ensues; he spins and slaps my arms away.

He shouts: ‘I’ve got witnesses!’ as there are two guys looking through CDs with their back to us.

‘They couldn’t give a shit and they’re not even looking.’ I say. He looks over, the two men have developed selective hearing and have not paid any visible attention to what is going on. Manx walks off towards some more LPs stored under a rack on the floor.

‘Get out Peter.’

‘It’s cool, everything’s cool.’ He says.

‘It’s not cool, you’re in here and you’re banned.’ I say. He ignores me. I’m losing. Then I try my last resort before a proper tussle takes place: the annoyance technique. This entails me standing in front of wherever he tries to look. This is at once effective, surprisingly so. He is thwarted by my childish antics.

‘If it wasn’t for you and your mouth I wouldn’t be banned!,’ he cries, ‘and that fuckin’ joker you work with!’ All I do is smirk and he finally leaves. I apologise to the two guys for the scene that they refused to acknowledge and make some coffee. It is just like old times.

…………………………………………..

 Today is a little better. No fights but I’ve had the bus spotter in. Another who hasn’t even realised that I haven’t been around for ages. We have the same conversation as he asks me for things that don’t exist and he leaves. Some things never change, nor should they. It’s like wrapping yourself up in an old comfort blanket only to find someone’s been sick on it.

 A mere two weeks after employing me, a practical joke takes place. I’m informed by my increasingly resented manager (now elsewhere to hoodwink a whole new bunch of poor saps) that I’ve been selected, by her, to be trained in the use of a walkie talkie so I can play at being a security guard of sorts. The only problem is that I have the physique of a shrew on amphetamines so am therefore about as threatening as a drinking straw. My protestations at yet another new and (unpaid) extra responsibility are ignored and I’m sent packing, with a couple of others to a local supermarket, where some pretend policemen (Police Community Support Officers or, rather, Cannon Fodder), are to instruct us on how to use these radios to keep our property safe and the rest of the town’s shops and the CCTV operators informed of ne’er do wells in the vicinity.

 There follows a rather excruciating role playing hour of radio cops and robbers as we attempt to learn how we are supposed to describe  people clearly and inoffensively.  We are taught the phonetic alphabet, we forget the phonetic alphabet and then we are fully fledged ‘crimefighters’ after one hour. If we’d stayed another hour we would probably be skilled enough to run the secret service. I have to admit that posturing with the radio did briefly make me feel a bit like Alan Rickman in ‘Die Hard’ or someone out of NCISYCSI Miami or whatever, but very fleetingly. The reality would be that I’d be vaguely skulking behind the sympathy cards watching someone attempt to nick a Dr Pepper whilst trying to remember whether my target is I.C 2 or I.C 4 and what my call sign was in phonetics again.

 The following day I dutifully fetch, turn on and attach one of the radios, purely for cosmetic reasons as I had no intention of acting upon anything other than something urgent (attempted theft of a Hannah Montana pencil case perhaps). Although I was reluctant to play ball, having the radio constantly crackling into life at my hip provided quite a lot of entertainment. I got to hear about every trifling matter that occured throughout the town, from the location of passed out drunks, to the multitudes of chavs that were congregating outside and inside JJB Sports calling everyone ‘bruv’ and seeing how many jets of spittle they can eject from between their nicotine stained rodent teeth. I got to hear the rather remarkable tales of well to do rich ladies that stole from clothing shops just for something to do whilst their lawyer husbands play golf or go for ‘team building’ excercises with just their nubile nineteen year old P.A for company. Probably.

It isn’t mandatory to have a radio once you’ve been trained, but I felt that if I was to look indisposable and like the sort of hard worker that deserves recognition (still waiting), I probably should. So I carried that damn bit of plastic for days on end with it constantly spitting out its incessant blasts of static between broadcasts, usually from the clothes shop up the road that deals clothes to teenagers who wish to look like they’ve been spiked, assaulted and mugged at an american college.  The first person I had to radio in was hardly the most celebrated of crime fighting incidents. A man, who was so incredibly drunk it was a wonder he wasn’t comatose, proceeded to try and convince me that the big pile of books and magazines he was holding had been bought downstairs but he had no bag. Then, upon my not unreasonable request to see his receipt,  he proceeded to drop all of the books and the entire contents of his pockets all over the floor whilst rooting for it. There was a surprising amount of cash on the floor, but he didn’t come up with any proof of purchase. For ten minutes he was swaying from side to side, getting me drunk with his abhorrent boozy stench and insisiting he was legitimate paying customer, as the general public at the other tills looked on with undisguised horror and clutched their precious shopping from Laura Ashley close to their chests. I even got the odd knowing look of sympathy from some of them. Yes, I know, must be the blitz spirit or something.

 I eventually convinced him that he should leave, without taking his ‘purchases’ with him. He teetered off. Then, with such drunk incompetence, and a lack of shame that only drunks carry off with any gravitas, he picked up a huge hardback Ken Follett book and shoved it straight underneath the inside of his jacket.  I stopped him, trying hard not to laugh.

 ’What are you doing with that?’ I asked.

 ’I want to read it,’ he slurred. (I can’t be bothered to try and type slurred, sorry.)

 ’Yes, but we’ve just been through this haven’t we? You need to buy it before you can read it.’ I said.

‘ But I’m a speed reader, it won’t take me long.’

 Class. He had me there, how ever was I to argue with such flawless logic? I only radioed the poor bugger in for his own safety.

 Other than that the radio just caused hassle. Townlink would radio in a description of someone (commonly chav couples with a big pram or buggy to hold the loot), my colleague and I would do our best to blend in with the birthday cards whilst we watched them. They’d leave. The end. Oh, except for my colleague did catch a man that nicked a Tango Fruit Twist once. We had about five coppers in for that one and he was detained under the Misappropriation of Carbonated Fruit Drinks Act 1992. (Not really, he got an eighty quid fine. But we charge £79 for a soft drink anyway, so no harm done.)

 I don’t wear the radio anymore unless loss prevention people from head office come in. But maybe if they asked me to carry a gun….

 It wasn’t long before my past caught me up again and clamped its slavering jaws around my posterior. I’d made the mistake of  trying to appear eager in my interview, which was a grave error. In desperation to get the job in the first place I’d made two mistakes; the first was to look like I wanted the job so I went dressed in a suit. I have since discovered, through the stream of youngsters that appeared for interviews over Christmas, that I could have got the job dressed in a T-Shirt, shorts and flip-flops. Mind you, with my legs that is one for (a short) debate. The second mistake was that I’d not lied on my C.V about my previous job. If only I’d totally obliterated the last thirteen years of record retail and said I’d been on a gap decade-and-a-bit around Malaysia or somewhere, because, before I knew it I was thrown into the ‘entertainments’ department to assist in a big cycle change because I knew something about it. (A cycle change is when we move the DVDs from one wall to another, put them in a different order and then reduce the price by a pound or increase the price by fourteen pounds depending on what some bastard at head office decides by rolling dice, then a month later do it all again and still not sell any.)

 I use inverted commas around the word ‘entertainments’ as it is at best a tenuous description. If you are entertained by ‘The Nutty Professor 3′, last year’s ‘FIFA’ Xbox 360 title (still at forty quid) or ANYTHING by Neil Diamond then it is named correctly. I wasn’t happy. I spent my time going through boxes heaving with different DVD titles and marking them off against the delivery sheet. Then it was time to tag them just in case someone with severe movie taste deficiency felt like shoplifting, which is probably the only way we would shift most of it. Next up was taking delivery of the CDs. Middle England had been told it liked the nasal warblings of Duffy and the chorus free snore-fest noodlings of Coldplay so that was what they bought. They bought it so our suppliers sent more of it and the days were taken up with counting and filing the bloody things while the bitter pill of irony sat rancid in my mouth. To make it worse, most of the counting and tagging production line slavery had to be done in the airless, fetid stench of the ‘ents’ stock room. For security reasons the windows are firmly screwed shut so if you fart in there be prepared to live with it for about four hours. The only near advantage was that there was a little portable radio in there which I could listen to on the quiet. However, day time radio caters to the masses so I was treated to whole mornings of Duffy and Coldplay or, if the young ‘uns got control of the radio first, lots of urban black people going ‘uh, yea’ and singing ditties about guns and money and er, bitches. I tried Radio Four but it made me want to sleep, with its languid, comforting soporofic murmer and I was having enough trouble staying awake anyway. I even tried Radio Three but all that high brow classical made me feel like one of our upper middle class Surrey customers who buy ‘Country Life’ and ‘Killing Small Animals’ magazines.

 I was dragging myself around trying to convince myself that my new working life was working out just fine, but failing. My colleague didn’t help by taking every opportunity to remind me that life was shit and that the job would destroy my soul, like it had hers. The manager used to come into the department once or twice a day to ask, ‘So, how’s it going then?’ and I would scowl. I took to complaining and asking when I was going to be doing the job I was hired for and was met with unashamed brushings off. Deal with it.

The final straw was, when on one of these intrusive managerial visits, I was questioned about my contract. I had applied to this leading-high-street-retailer by responding to a window placed advert asking for : Full-time Bookseller, Mon-Fri 10-6. In the interview I had expressed my delight at being allowed weekends off. I actually asked her whether this was true as retailers usually expect you to work at least some weekends. I was assured that the weekends were covered on this tightly run ship and I was free to spend Saturday afternoons on the terraces getting mildly bored by my football team as we played Darlington or someone…

 ’What’s this I hear about you not working Saturdays?’ asks the boss. A slight rise of anxiety in me rises, replaced by irritation. I then proceed to repeat our interview.

‘I don’t remember this’, she says, ‘I wouldn’t have said that you could have Saturdays off and you’re supposed to turn up at nine, not ten.’ The smell of bullshit assailed my nostrils.

 I refused to back down stating that I’d only had one interview in thirteen years and was rather unlikely to forget it that quickly. She refused to believe me and I refused to back down, I wasn’t the nervous sixteen year old quaking at authority. But it was put up or get out, and having debts up to my eyeballs the choice wasn’t really difficult. I was loving it after all. Loving being on £5.92 an hour with one unpaid break, a day in a farty cupboard surrounded by ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ boxsets, being shoved on the till to sell lottery tickets to inept shoppers and management that lied through their teeth as well as a colleague that was doing her best to convince me to commit suicide which, if I farted again in the stockroom, was rather likely albeit accidently. Happy days.

 The terrible curse of work is that most of us have to do it every single bloody day, working towards a retirement which gets further and further away with each generation: the proverbial dangling carrot. I don’t even really like carrots anyway, I’m more of a cabbage kind of guy. The repetitive nature of our mundane existences makes me gasp with wonder that there aren’t more suicides in this country as we run around like  dimwit hamsters on our eternal spinning wheels, getting nowhere and getting knackered in the process. These were the kind of thoughts that bothered me as I found myself embarking on my first whole week in the new job. What a sparkly start to a new ‘career’.

 My first week as highly knowledgable bookseller was spent ensconced on the tills for eight hours a day so I could get to try and figure out how to work them. The upstairs books floor is largely a haven of serenity compared to the hideous inferno of hades downstairs, therefore less customers meant less hot till action so the learning curve was slight. Due to this I was ringing my little bell for assistance from the established staff almost every transaction as some awkward customer would confuse the hell out of me by presenting vouchers at the wrong time whilst trying to return an item bought in a three for two deal whilst asking for the Lottery (I HATE HATE HATE IT) results from fucking June 1994 (in braille.) This action had one outcome: I was solidifying my reputation as pain-in-the-arse. I was met with the occasional glower  from my colleagues as they had to put down what they were doing to assist me for the hundreth time. With every ring of that little bell my self loathing grew but there was nothing I could do except hope that the customers would just pay for one item at a time. With the exact cash. Not a chance.

 It wasn’t long before I was acquainted with a new enemy: the books ordering system. Like some pedantic headmaster, our incredibly inefficient system will only find what you are looking for if all of the spelling and punctuation is totally spot on. Just a missing apostrophe is enough for the stupid thing to announce that that book doesn’t exist, so if you want to read ‘Gullivers Travels you can’t. But you can get ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ I, for one, am a punctuation Nazi – I’m totally with Lynne Truss on this one – but a little leeway would be welcome. Sometimes one is just too busy to make sure everything is coloned correctly and a big problem with this is that the majority of staff are young, and young people on the whole are no longer encouraged or expected to spell properly. (I’m fighting the urge to rant further about this, and don’t get me started on anachronyms like LOL or the proliferation of exclamation marks used to denote humour or wackiness!!!!! LOL!)

 Another great trait of the ordering computer was that it would be very, very slow and then crash just as you were about to complete all the details of name and contact details. Therefore you had to boot up the thing again whilst apologising to the tutting old biddy as she looks at her watch and goes on about how she’s not got the time to hang around because ‘Cash in the Attic’ is about to start. Then there are the customer foibles. The ones that won’t give you their phone number or, as happened to me on Friday, the ones that won’t even give you their name. Like our aim in life is to spy on, and steal the identity of these blithering Dan Brown reading wankers. Thankfully our ordering system is now much faster, so we can let you know in seconds that we can’t get that book for you, so try Waterstone’s.

 Anyway, I was picking up on how it all worked quite well and was reassured by colleagues in their kind moments that I wasn’t thick, it was just an incredibly crap computer system which made life difficult. I began to realise that it seemed that everything was designed at this leading high street retailer (TM) to frustrate, annoy, antagonise and depress staff and customers alike. This has still yet to be usurped as head office’s main contribution to the company.

 After about a week, I earned the right to be let loose onto the shop floor to do some actual work, with maybe two or three hours on the till per day. I was naturally pleased to be amongst the books. Books are a passion of mine; fiction is my bag – the more depressing the better as it makes me feel like my life isn’t quite as shit as all that. I also love history books that are written with wit and verve, some travel writing is most entertaining too, and nature books enthrall me due to my proudly held obsession with the natural world and all of its incredibly diverse glories (except for horses – never trust an animal with a hair-do). So I eagerly await instructions from my supervisor as to what sections I will be given responsibility for….

I get given: business, computing (because I wear glasses which instantly makes me computer literate doesn’t it?) and sport (I only really know about football, the rest of it is quite boring. Cricket? Standing around is not a sport. Golf? Surely only invented as a way to get away from the wife or cement your reputation as a 1980s ‘comedian’. Motor Racing? Cars going round and round for five hours – you can do that on the M25 and no one watches that. Horse Racing? Tiny men on those afore mentioned coiffered beasts – very un-nerving and watched by ugly people with nicotine stained fingers and hoity toity idiots drinking Pimms whilst balancing what looks like an ostrich on their heads.) I also take control of the crossword and puzzle books which only the elderly buy whilst awaiting the bony hand of Death to grip their shoulder. (Shoot me if I get like that. That was an in joke for about three people, sorry.)

 Great. So I’m the one in charge of fielding questions about subjects of which I now nothing. If I knew about business I wouldn’t be working in a shop would I? I would be counting my gold on a yacht moored in Monaco whilst giggling bikini clad girls run their luscious long fingers down my tanned chest. If I was into computers I would be stuck in some grim open planned office talking about ‘thought showers’ or ‘blue sky thinking’ whilst working on a project to do with spatial futuremark adobe photoshop windbag applications version 0:2.

My hopes were lying prostate at my feet, sobbing. But small mercies, I was away from dealing CDs as that would be just too cruel to escape from the record shop only to be chucked straight back into a different one. Can you tell where this is leading? Thought so.

 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.