Chapter Five: The Changing of the Blades

'WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE BELOW'

While the donkey-work of endlessly keeping the shelves full was a job for ME, and occasionally the yoghurt section for Mort, I should introduce the rest of the Kwiksave staff.

Everyone else was female, as being a checkout operator was deemed a girly job in 1981. Self-service checkouts were non-existent, it was all cashiers then.

The supervisor, Sharon was a good looking young woman with a rather extravert personality.

I think she liked me as she sometimes pulled on my curls, (I had longish hair then) and called me ‘cute’ on more than one occasion.

This was generally while passing me during her jaunts to the back of the store to interrogate the other checkout operators on pricing (see below).

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More like a long-haired skinny lout dripping in sweat, covered in box scratches with the possibility of being a little pungent if bath night was not ‘last night’

The fact that my hair was more of a throwback to the seventies was no big deal it seemed and maybe my smell was 'manly', or was it the Hai Karate?

The fact was there was no chance I would have the balls to ask Sharon out.

For one, she was the supervisor which meant she had long spells in the office cavorting with Mort, and secondly, she ranked above me.

One couldn’t date a mini-boss, and what if Mort was forcing her to do dastardly deeds such as sexual favours? Was this the reason for the 'tooth problem'?

Her looks were marred by one of her front incisors that had broken off, and become rotten which left people rather shocked when she smiled.

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I am quite possibly looking into this too deeply, as there appeared nothing between them at a casual glance.

Sharon had no shortage of smiles and appeared oblivious to the horrified looks she received.

Someone told me that she was terrified of dentists. I don’t blame her; they were fucking animals in 1981.

Marianne was a regular checkout operator, probably in her early 30’s, with curly blond bleached hair and also good looking, if a little worn out.

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A very down to earth, no-nonsense person I didn't have much interaction with her. Maybe she got married too early and had experienced a hard life?

In any case, she didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with blokes and kept away from me and Mort.

Well… everyone kept away from Mort.

Linda was a chubby girl, married, and in her late 20’s with decent looks. She was a cheery person, but quite dull-witted with an approximate IQ of around 75.

I tried often to talk to Linda only to find my comments flying way above her head and into the stratosphere, with me getting some strange looks in return.

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I had to talk to someone, and my only chance was the 15-minute break in the mornings and afternoons. Anything to keep me above the sanity line.

There was another full-time checkout girl, but she was not talkative, or at least not to me, I can’t even remember her name. She seemed unfriendly and gave off that vibe.

The checkout girls were expected to memorise every price in the store. There were no price stamps on any of the stock.

Each girl was tested every week by the supervisor Sharon to see if they remembered the prices using a shopping basket full of random items. This included things that had increased in price too.

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Failure to remember the prices correctly resulted in disciplinary measures. It wasn’t that easy for them too.

On more than one occasion I found Linda in tears after receiving a bollocking for getting too many wrong answers after yet another price interrogation.

It appeared being a little thick didn’t really help on the memory management side.

Cover Picture is a combination of free sources from here and here, combined and edited with Luminar 4. Any unsourced images are my own.

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