Then they put loads of spaghetti and marshmallows in the middle of the table. They said, ‘Right, in teams of four, you’ve got to make a structure with these materials.’
And I was like, ‘How is this going to show them if I’m good at the job or not?’ I thought it was going to be like how fast can you put ten tins of beans in a carrier bag and stuff, but it wasn’t. They must have been looking to see who was a good listener and who was good at leading a team. I passed that stage as well.
Then I had to go for a solo interview. Honestly, it was like they were picking someone to be their new chief executive rather than a checkout girl, the amount of interviews I had to do. My mam would be like, ‘How’s it going?’
‘Well, I’m through to the next stage.’
‘Jesus, it’s like The X Factor! It’s like you’re through to boot camp or judges’ houses!’
Then they’d ask you to sell them a pen at the interview. They put a pen on the table, and they went, ‘Right, can you sell me this pen?’
I’d watched a lot of TV in my time, so immediately I knew what to say. I went, ‘Right, can you just sign here?’
They couldn’t because I’d already picked up the pen.
‘Ah, course you can’t ... What you need is this pen!’
It was like a scene from Wolf of Wall Street. I thought I’d definitely got the job. From there, I was just on a high from the interview. I went home, and I was really confident. I was like, ‘I’ve nailed it, Mam, honestly, this time next week I’ll be filling those carrier bags.’ And I was right, a week later I started.
Despite all the great things about working in a supermarket I take my hat off to anyone who does it now. It was different back in the year 2008 when I worked there. How do you cope with the carrier bag charge? When I worked there you didn’t have to pay for a carrier bag. Back then you didn’t have this problem of five pence for a bag, you just had to ask people, ‘Do you want a bag for life? No, that’s fine, have as many free carrier bags as you want. You ruin the world – that’s fine! Yeah, you tell those dolphins choking on plastic that you couldn’t be arsed to carry two items to your car so you needed a bag. Go tell them as they go extinct! You lazy bastard.’ Honestly, some people. Just because they were free they’d be doubling up, I mean that is taking the piss. Just pay ten pence for a bloody bag for life, man, you’re killing the eco system.
I couldn’t do it now with that trauma of people arguing about paying for a bag. When the charge was first brought in, I wouldn’t pay for one ever. I’d carry stuff home because we only lived across the road from Asda. My mam was like, ‘Why don’t you just get a bag?’
‘No, I’m not paying five pence for a bag!’
And then I’d get angry with myself if I forgot my bags. I’d be like, ‘I’ve got a bag for life, but I left it at home.’ So then I refused to buy another bag for life because now I’ve got that many, I’ve got a bag for life for every day of my life, and that defeats the object of a bag for life!
People would also complain to me about the produce, saying things like, ‘This tin’s got a dent in it.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, can I get any money off?’
‘It hasn’t ruined the contents inside. It’s beans, what’s it matter if the tin’s a bit dented?’
‘Why are you putting them on display?’
‘They’re only going in your food cupboard. No one will see them!’
I just don’t care about things like that at all.
The customers could certainly be tricky. Someone once threw a box of paracetamols at my head. You’re only allowed two boxes because of the suicide risk. So the till doesn’t let you scan more than two boxes. The customer started ranting and raving. ‘I’m going on holiday. I’ll just have to go to another shop.’
‘Well, you’ll have to do that. I’m sorry.’
‘OK then, I’ll just go to another person in here.’
‘You can’t now because you’ve just told us. So I’ll have to tell the manager.’
At that point, she just threw the paracetamols at my head. Luckily, it wasn’t a tin of beans, but it’s still assault. I was like, ‘You can’t do that!’
I was just in shock. So I rang the little buzzer, and then got security to take the customer out. I was like, ‘You need to remove this woman – she’s just thrown a box of paracetamols at my actual cranium!’
On another occasion, I had someone scream at me, literally calling me all the names under the sun. I mean the situation was stupid, but I don’t make the rules – I was just trying to do my job. There’s this mixer that’s in the alcohol aisle, but it doesn’t have any alcohol in it. It’s cranberry juice and orange juice. It’s a cocktail mixer, but my till was flagging up that you’ve got to be eighteen to buy it, and obviously the customer wasn’t eighteen.
I was saying to her, ‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you.’
‘But I can go and get cranberry juice and orange juice and mix them together.’
‘You’ll have to do that because I can’t sell you it. The till is not letting me. I’d love to, but I can’t – I’d lose my job.’
She went mental and started screaming, ‘Checkout girls? More like fucking Nazis!’
And then I had another woman who was with her kids. She didn’t have her ID and she looked very young. She could have had her kids when she was fourteen for all I knew. She was trying to buy plastic cutlery. You had to be eighteen to buy plastic cutlery, so I couldn’t let her without ID.
She really kicked off. ‘Who am I gonna stab with this? It’s not even strong enough to butter fucking bread, never mind stab someone!’
‘I know, but I’ve got to ID you, otherwise I’ll get in trouble.’ The policy is ‘Challenge 25’. I took my job very seriously. I mean, at times I did think I was the police. ID, ID, ID: the power does go to your head. It’s that green uniform and that badge!
When I got my little badge for working there more than one year, I felt like Lord Sugar. Honestly, I felt invincible. I remember getting that and strutting through Asda and being like, ‘She’s here, she’s arrived’ with my little green gilet on. I loved Asda.
Everyone was so friendly – except for the people that threw paracetamol at us, obviously! You got to meet loads of interesting people. Ahh, there was this old man who would come in every Wednesday. I think I was the only person he saw during the week. Sometimes he’d literally just come in for a couple of items and a chat.
He’d want to chat about life in general. He’d be like, ‘Hiya, Scarlett, what are you up to?’
I’d just tell him about my day until the next customer came along, and I’d be like, ‘Aww, see ya later.’
There was another man – oh my God! – who would come in and no one would want to serve him, God bless him. So I’d always end up serving him because I’m like, ‘Come oooon.’ I love interesting people. Some people say weird, I say interesting.
He would have this radio thing with him all the time, like a big, massive walkie-talkie. He’d have the same crack every time. He’d come in and you’d go, ‘You all right?’
‘Yeah, been listening to the ambulances.’
‘Right …’
‘And I’ve been listening to the police as well.’
‘You know that’s illegal. You know you’re not supposed to do that.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I’ve just heard there’s two lorries that collided out there.’
‘Ooh, right. Have a good day, then.’
And the next day, he would come in and tell literally the same story about the lorries. Every day, every single day he would come in and I’d be like, ‘What’s been happening?’
‘There’s two lorries that collided out there.’
‘Ooooh, God. Have a nice day.’ Every day!
He was harmless really, but everyone in the store would be like, ‘Oh God, I got lumbered with him today.’
‘Don’t say it like that,’ I’d reply. ‘He’s just a bit nutty, do you
know what I mean? He’s not hurting anyone, he’s not really listening to the police. He just wants attention, and then he’s on his way again.’ He’d literally just come in to buy a can of pop, I think just to talk to people.
I used to love him. He was one of the reasons I was so upset when I finally had to stop working there. I was starting university and it would have been too much travelling home. I would miss the little old lady Margaret too; she would always be so excited for her trip with her carer to the store. She used to chat to all of us checkout girls, telling us about what she had been knitting or watching on the television. It’s so nice to cheer people up and put a smile on someone’s face if you can.
This may be overstating it, but in a way working in stores or retail is a sort of social service. I just think honestly sometimes you were the only person that those people would speak to all day, sometimes all week. You don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life so if you can give a little smile and be kind you don’t know the difference you will make to that person’s day. As a tale in Aesop’s Fables once said:
‘No act of kindness, no matter how small,
is ever wasted.’
Chapter Ten
IRONY: GETTING BURGLED DRESSED AS A BURGLAR
In 2011, a crowd of 3,872 people in Dublin, Ireland, broke the record for the largest gathering of people dressed as ‘Where’s Wally?’. The feat took place at the Street Performance World Championship in the city.
In 2010, York University fined its hockey club £200 after it made students drink a concoction of dog food, anchovies, raw eggs and goldfish.
The University of York has a higher density of ducks than any other university.
I wanted to become a dance teacher originally and own my own dance school. That was what I had always dreamed of. The summer after I’d done my A levels at Queen Elisabeth Sixth Form (where I had received three qualifications including an A in Dance), I sat on my sofa at home with my huge, heavy Dell laptop, refreshing the page to UCAS for about two hours when I finally got the confirmation through. ‘You have been accepted into York St John’s University.’
I was eighteen and was going be a YSJ student, class of 2009. I was the first person in my family to go to university. I was so excited. I enrolled in the dance degree; although nowhere in Britain covered ballroom and Latin, York St Johns did do ‘contemporary dance’. Now this is an art I can appreciate and love watching – however, actually dancing in a room full of strangers, pretending to interpret a tree swaying in the wind or a mole-rat burrowing to safety, I can positively say it wasn’t for me.
After eight weeks of the degree, everyone’s parents were invited down to see our Christmas dance show. My nanny Christine and Mam came down and they said afterwards the best bit was the mulled wine and mince pies. I came out dressed as a giant panda wearing a red jacket and a black leather briefcase, swinging my arms and walking in straight lines. Even through the panda eyes I could see my mam and nanny crying, not with pride but with laughter. To be honest I felt like joining in.
‘What was all that about?’ my nanny asked.
‘I was meant to represent a human who felt enclosed and caged by society. Work was my life and just like a panda in a zoo I was being watched constantly by CCTV.’ Deadly serious, I looked at them both, waiting for the expressions on their faces to change to understanding.
‘Load of bloody shite.’
I had to agree with my nanny, it really wasn’t me at all. The other girls were so passionate and I loved them for it. But I was just going through the motions. I am not one to give up but I knew over the Christmas holidays I needed to look into changing my course.
I knew I wanted to teach children but all the courses for early years were taken. But that didn’t stop me. I kept looking, and one day, when I was out with all the family for Sunday dinner – me mam, dad and little Ava – I was ready to make an announcement. ‘I’ve looked into it and I’m going to have to do a three-year course with subjects that are on the curriculum, like English, maths and physical education, and then do a PGCE to become a teacher. There’s a course that looks really good: it’s physical education and sports coaching, I get to do placements with special educational needs children and it also includes dance. What do you think?’
‘Go for it, kid. You are great with children and they always seem to love you,’ said Mam.
‘Aw thanks, I will then. I’ll do it.’
So I enrolled on a physical education and sports coaching degree and I started in January. Now one thing I lack is common sense and you would have thought I would have got the memo about going to the first lecture in sportswear but sadly I didn’t. I rocked up with pillarbox red hair, false eyelashes and a leopard print maxi-dress on.
I sat on the wooden benches of the lecture hall and looked around at the people I was going to be spending the next three years with. Yep, I was the only one not wearing Jack Wills or a tracksuit. But unlike school I instantly had a positive feeling about my time at York St John’s. I wanted to embrace every aspect of being a student. From doing all-nighters in the library, to eating nothing but nine-pence Super Noodles, to being involved with a society and of course Freshers’ Week.
I loved all the placements, which involved going into schools and teaching dance and gymnastics, and I sometimes brought drama into the sessions to help build the children’s confidence up. I even spent one of my summers off in America. It was a placement scheme and I was put in a camp in Pennsylvania where I taught children aged four to sixteen with special educational needs. Even though this was nearly seven years ago I still speak to one of the mothers on Facebook to check how little Andrew is doing. It was so rewarding. However, as time went on I realised being a teacher was swamped with paperwork and bureaucracy, from planning and marking to going to safeguarding lectures. I have friends who are teachers and honestly they do such an amazing job. People just see it as a nine-to-three job with lots of holidays. It is so much more than that.
I actually went to the doctor at one point because my wrist felt like it was going to drop off I had done that many lesson plans, but it turns out it was just writer’s cramp. Something kids these days don’t understand. My lecturer would insist we all handwrite our plans and take notes during lectures but would give you 0.5 seconds to write them down. I’ll be honest, a lot of the time I didn’t have a clue what was going on and just filled my essays with big words like ‘subsequently’, ‘nevertheless’ and – my personal favourite – ‘simultaneously’, so that it looked like I knew what I was talking about. Still can’t believe I thought I’d actually sprained my wrist. That is my second most embarrassing trip to the doctor; the first was the time I woke up after a night out and thought I was vomiting blood as my sick was red. Turns out I had forgotten about the five red Aftershocks I had downed.
Speaking of drinking, being a proper kid’s belly has been a repeated pattern throughout my life and it is now the reason why I don’t actually drink that much. I literally cannot handle my drink. How I managed to go out every single night of the week when I was a student (apart from Sundays, I mean don’t judge me, even God needed a day to recover), I do not know. I think because I quit dancing to focus on my studies I had a void that needed filling. I got thinking about what I could fill it with. ‘Vodka. That’s going to be my new hobby.’
Me and my girls had it all planned out. Our week went like this:
Mondays were Gallery nights, normally a theme like ‘Where’s Wally?’ or ‘dress as an animal’.
Tuesdays were Revolution nights. We knew not to wear high heels on these nights; there were cheap paddle boards of shots and all the R&B music you needed to grind your ass off.
Wednesdays were sport society nights at Tokyo, so that’s when we hung out with all of the hockey team.
Thursdays: those were Student Union and Salvation nights.
Fridays we’d order a takeaway and just have a little drink in the house.
Saturdays I would go home to see the family
and then catch up with the girls from home or my boyfriend at the time for a little night out.
Sunday would be a family day and time to travel back to York. AND REPEAT.
I somehow fitted in studying and getting a 2:1 BA Honours, having part-time jobs throughout the whole of my time being a student and also being in the hockey society team. I now struggle in life to find time to fit in basic hygiene and keep up to date with social media, so I do not know how I managed.
Some of the best times of my life were made at university and a lot of the greatest moments were made with my uni girls, Sarah, Zoe, Jess and Siân.
Sarah is one of my oldest friends: I went to primary school, secondary school and college with her. We became really good friends at college and decided to pick the same university and live together there. I had the honour of being bridesmaid at her and her hubby Michael’s beautiful wedding and am godmother to their first child, Jacob. She is my best friend, what I call my ‘forever friend’. She is the most caring individual you will ever meet. She was like the sister of the group.
Zoe is the most similar to me in personality and the wild child of the group. She is my bad influence friend. We all have one. Everybody fancied Zoe; she is quirky, fun and always wore leopard print or tartan. (I will be attending her and Ricky’s wedding this year – we have all grown up so much.)
Jess was the mother of the group. When you needed a shoulder to cry on Jess was our surrogate mam. If a lightbulb needed changing or we needed a spring clean we would all turn to Jess. She would make actual lasagnes from scratch and make wholesome meals for the house when all we had was noodles (pretty sure she’s been baking since she was in the womb).
Me Life Story Page 9
