What a fucking palaver this morning; the place was a complete joke, with the usual lunacy in terms of staff capabilities v customer requirements. I stood in one of two queues while my ears endured the onslaught of shite.
"Member of staff to checkouts, please - customers waiting" was the tannoy announcement delivered by Rachel, who took a break from servicing to use the contraption. I heard the call, every other shopper heard the call, but the cunt being called was deaf - must have been, because he did not appear. Rachel battled on with her processing of people on the kiosk till, where the dreaded lottery facilities and the even more dreaded yellow 'Paypoint' machine allowed each shopper to spend much more time hogging the fucking space than a pig in shit.
Eleanor appeared; rather than add her presence to that of Val and Rachel, she simply took Val's place on the normal checkout lane, so that Val could fuck off! WTF? There was some useless exchange between the two women regarding breaks that defied logic, and I stood perfectly still in the queue. The noise in the checkout area was awful.
Behind me, I heard the exchanges between a girl of about twelve, and an older (and much larger) female who must have been about 17 - stone and years old. I could not decide whether the younger was the infant's mother, sister, auntie, minder or kidnapper. She was being advised by the older one on some arrangements involving her dad arriving by eight in the morning, so they'd have to be up early. There was further information to confirm that the house was freezing as the fire hadn't been on fir three days, but they'd all be okay what with the mattresses and blankets. I decided not to try and analyse what my ears had picked up, and instead wondered why the fucking hell the shopper at Rachel's till was not moving on.
Eleanor called out to Rachel, in need of input regarding how to deal with savings stamps. This led to Rachel stopping her own serving efforts and shouting over to Eleanor some instructions for the touchscreen terminal. This remote approach was not efficient, or successful for a while, what with Eleanor being a useless twat with an attitude. A baby started crying. Behind me, I heard mention of gallstones and/or gallbladder issues from the fat one. I've no idea of the extent of her issues and I was simply amazed at her gall in relaying such information at 90 decibels in my direction.
"Member of staff to checkouts, please - customers waiting." Rachel again, who then returned to some sort of transaction that involved the yellow machine and electricity. I sensed the growing queues, and clocked another woman (one of an age where the sex to conceive would not have been statutory rape) holding a child on her hip, and holding a basket in her other hand. Noise prevailed, commotion filled the area, and Val was (I hoped) in pain somewhere, considering she'd fucked off when Eleanor relieved her. Eleanor was begrudgingly scanning items at a reasonable speed, not that the issue with savings stamps had passed.
"Member of staff to checkouts, please - customers waiting." Fucking hell, Rachel - will you fucking fuck off with your pathetic efforts to raise the dead. The woman in front of me had a basket, crammed with stuff. Val appeared, and started serving on the second kiosk till. The beeps, farts, calling, whinging and general rustling was all creating an unsatisfactory ambiance. Mark appeared, and decided to fire up the second of the checkout lanes. His first action was to announce: "do you want to use this till, please". His second action was to tell the woman struggling with a baby on her hip and a basket in her other hand to move to one side, after she'd taken him up on his offer of using his till. Mark was adamant that somebody from the adjacent queue was first to benefit from his belated efforts to help. She stood back while a fit and able young bloke took his rightful place at the conveyor belt, and received Mark's input while the woman took up her position behind him. "Maybe the extra weight lifting would build up her arm muscles to the point where she might be strong enough to break Mark's neck on the next visit", I thought to myself, just before Rachel called me forward - not by name of course, but under the umbrella cray of "next customer, please" at 95 decibels, drowning out (just) any talk of gallstones.
"For tonight?" seemed a dumb-arse question - and it was. Of course for tonight! On a Saturday morning, buying a Lotto ticket, I was surely unlikely to be planning ahead for Easter fucking Saturday. I took my papers, milk and Lotto ticket, and was pleased to be away from the Co-op. My ears continued to hear, though, and for an hour I heard Rachel on the tannoy over a background buzzing that was like a wasp inside my head.
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