The Servant

At work, Paula noticed that she was walking around the shop canted slightly to the left. Head lowered, as though she was walking into a high wind. I told her that this was the first stage of ‘shopkeeper’s cringe’, a disorder that afflicts shop workers as a result of years and years of being servile. Remember those shops of yesteryear staffed by aged hunchbacked munchkins scurrying around after the customer’s least requirement? Well, nothing’s changed. Even I find myself saying thank you at the most inappropriate times. Someone stopped and asked me directions the other evening, and I thanked them at the end of it.

I was very nearly unhelpful. The car stopped in front of me, presenting me with the passenger’s seat window wound down, and an elderly woman sitting there smiling up at me expectantly, saying nothing. Various confused scenarios ran through my mind all at the same time. Was I expected to recognise her? As my long lost Auntie Jean? At which point, would she shoot me? I almost ran off, deciding the situation was getting too weird. But she was deferring to her husband, who eventually leaned over to ask the way to Romford. I think they were from the North.

The main difference with shopwork these days is that we’re also being servile towards (in our case) the Phoenix system. People ask what it’s like working in a bookshop and I say: ‘Well it’s like that film…’
‘What, Notting Hill?’
‘No…’
‘You’ve Got M@il?’
‘No: The Terminator, that’s it.’
Except that, rather than some high-tech ultra-powerful machine dominating us, we are the slaves of DOS. Clunky and halting like George A. Romero’s zombies, but ultimately just as overwhelming.