carry on
Someone rang twenty minutes before opening time and was not best pleased when Verity said the systems weren’t up and running yet, and could he ring back at nine? It had - he roared - taken him all the previous day to find our phone number. ‘All day’ to find the phone number of a shop (part of a well-known chain) in the high street! One began to wonder what terrible experiences he had gone through. Perhaps he could write a book about his adventures.
On one occasion when I did not manage to avoid being behind the counter, I had to serve this aggravating woman who is notorious for changing her mind in the midst of a transaction. True to form, she first wanted points added to her loyalty card, then, no, she wanted to redeem the points already on it to pay for the books she’d just bought, which meant refunding the original transaction and doing it all over again. And, she added, she was in a hurry. Well that’s just what you do if you’re in a hurry, isn’t it? Ask, on a whim, for a shop assistant to do something really complicated.
At first I thought she was a con artist, then just insane. Now I think she’s a renegade mystery shopper, who has lost contact with HQ and has started to believe her own cover story. Hopefully they’ll ‘bring her in’ soon. And shoot her.
Paula encouraged me to start unpacking the other day by telling me that I would be able to ‘get the snakehead out’. This curious phrase was in fact a reference to the many copies of Anthony Horowitz’s new kid’s bestseller Snakehead which were waiting to hit the shop floor. Later, a complete ban on innuendo was announced by Barbara, after a discussion on the sexuality of a job applicant got out of hand. Then, only a moment after this, she said - in all innocence, re the Lynx delivery guy - ‘Is he coming in the front or the back?’
Well, we fell about. Just for the record, he came in the front and went out the back.
I’m supposed to be doing the ‘CDP’, or ‘continuous development plan’, but so far I’ve only glanced at a few of the questions it poses. ‘What would you use a ladder for?’ Hmm. Challenging. CBeebies haven’t covered that yet.
Mind you, if they did, it would probably turn out that you use a ladder to make soup. I found myself idly watching something called Numberjacks the other morning. This is a bit like Thunderbirds, only with anthropomorphic numbers instead of the Tracy family. They are sent on rescue missions out into the world, the idea being, so I assumed, to teach kids how maths helps in everyday situations. Except the everyday situation in this case was that a malevolent spoon was floating around exchanging heavy objects for light ones. And vice versa. The problem was resolved when the evil spoon decided to take a rest from her (for the spoon was a she) evildoing on one end of a see-saw. The numbers simply jumped on the other end and catapulted her off into the stratosphere, leaving me wondering what I’d learned. That numbers are heavier, and less evil, than spoons? Or simply that the world children are being prepared for by TV is a very strange one?
Though no stranger than my mind, I suppose. I had a dream that three dogs were asleep in my room. I chucked them out into the garden, but the last one suddenly turned into Sid James. Let sleeping dogs lie is the phrase that sprung to mind, though it seemed a peculiar way of illustrating it.
On one occasion when I did not manage to avoid being behind the counter, I had to serve this aggravating woman who is notorious for changing her mind in the midst of a transaction. True to form, she first wanted points added to her loyalty card, then, no, she wanted to redeem the points already on it to pay for the books she’d just bought, which meant refunding the original transaction and doing it all over again. And, she added, she was in a hurry. Well that’s just what you do if you’re in a hurry, isn’t it? Ask, on a whim, for a shop assistant to do something really complicated.
At first I thought she was a con artist, then just insane. Now I think she’s a renegade mystery shopper, who has lost contact with HQ and has started to believe her own cover story. Hopefully they’ll ‘bring her in’ soon. And shoot her.
Paula encouraged me to start unpacking the other day by telling me that I would be able to ‘get the snakehead out’. This curious phrase was in fact a reference to the many copies of Anthony Horowitz’s new kid’s bestseller Snakehead which were waiting to hit the shop floor. Later, a complete ban on innuendo was announced by Barbara, after a discussion on the sexuality of a job applicant got out of hand. Then, only a moment after this, she said - in all innocence, re the Lynx delivery guy - ‘Is he coming in the front or the back?’
Well, we fell about. Just for the record, he came in the front and went out the back.
I’m supposed to be doing the ‘CDP’, or ‘continuous development plan’, but so far I’ve only glanced at a few of the questions it poses. ‘What would you use a ladder for?’ Hmm. Challenging. CBeebies haven’t covered that yet.
Mind you, if they did, it would probably turn out that you use a ladder to make soup. I found myself idly watching something called Numberjacks the other morning. This is a bit like Thunderbirds, only with anthropomorphic numbers instead of the Tracy family. They are sent on rescue missions out into the world, the idea being, so I assumed, to teach kids how maths helps in everyday situations. Except the everyday situation in this case was that a malevolent spoon was floating around exchanging heavy objects for light ones. And vice versa. The problem was resolved when the evil spoon decided to take a rest from her (for the spoon was a she) evildoing on one end of a see-saw. The numbers simply jumped on the other end and catapulted her off into the stratosphere, leaving me wondering what I’d learned. That numbers are heavier, and less evil, than spoons? Or simply that the world children are being prepared for by TV is a very strange one?
Though no stranger than my mind, I suppose. I had a dream that three dogs were asleep in my room. I chucked them out into the garden, but the last one suddenly turned into Sid James. Let sleeping dogs lie is the phrase that sprung to mind, though it seemed a peculiar way of illustrating it.
posted by martin at 11:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home