Monday 23^rd October 2006

I am easily cheered up. A significant improvement in my demeanour can be achieved on even the crappiest day by a friendly shop assistant. Today’s checkout lady at Sainsbury’s, though, seemed to be trying a bit too hard.

She first offered the useful advice that consuming the fourteen litres of orange juice I had bought, for consumption over a period surely unknown to her, might well turn me orange. I managed to fake a small giggle at an anecdote she seemed to be citing as evidence about once having been discoloured herself by excessive consumption of OJ in spite of her mumbling it slightly too incoherently for me to know what it was she was relating to me.

This didn’t offend my sensibilities too much. She may have been overtly passing comment on my shopping, but at least she didn’t think I was gay.

Where she pushed it too far was at the close of our transaction. I was just adjusting my packing in order to hurriedly allow the next customer to take their place awaiting service (there can surely be few environments more pressured than that in a supermarket at the front of the queue, paid but not quite packed…the unspoken but all-too-evident disdain from those behind you, their fierce eyes burning into the back of your panicked head…“Ten seconds of my day are being swallowed by this hairy, soon-to-be-orange man who has paid but not packed!!” they think to themselves), when she decided it was high time for another jovial exchange.

“Have you seen Open All Hours?” she enquired (not, we note “Would you like any help packing?” which, the designated time being the beginning of the till process, was now no longer on offer according to the Sainsbury’s “irritating checkout staff behaviour” flowchart). Unfortunately I was too busy juggling a credit card, my wallet and two carrier bags, one filled with delicate, squishable fruit and the other with a fruit battering ram made of four orange juice cartons, to explain that I had, but only under circumstances of extreme boredom which it had failed to ameliorate.

The punch line following this weak set-up was to start moving the lid of the coin tray up and down, like a kind of baying, metallic, capitalist mouth slavering with the proletariat’s hard-earned pennies, and possibly (though I don’t really remember) making some kind of noise to supplement this strange action.

Unfortunately, my lamentable knowledge of this unfunny Ronnie Barker vehicle left me totally nonplussed by this slightly awkward incident. I wonder if this is a joke she tries every so often to cheer up dreary-looking customers, or whether it was a sudden, spur-of-the-moment realisation that she had all the necessary props to pay impromptu homage to her comedy hero. Maybe she has worked there for years and I was witness as she happened upon this hilarity. I hope that my indifferent reaction didn't spoil this discovery, and that my distracted attempt at a smile left her day brightened in the way I hope she intended her antics to leave mine. And that the queue next to her till isn’t the shortest next time I need to pay for my groceries.

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