Fun and the Butter Fridge.

While I was in Sainbury’s today I remembered the time when I used to work in a supermarket during my teens – for four months while I was waiting to take up my cadetship at Dartmouth. As well as performing general warehouse duties, my shop floor work consisted of keeping the butter fridge stocked.

It was a daunting task. I’d sweat over loading case upon 36lb case of Lurpack Slightly Salted Scandinavian Butter onto a trolley, and then take it down to the shop floor where the greedy shoppers were waiting to pounce. They’d be grabbing the damn stuff as fast as I could put it in. It made me angry. I wanted to yell at them:

‘Look, just back off, will you! Give me some space. Let me load the damn fridge. C’mon, back… back… Further. C’mon. Let me do my job.’

I imagined them retiring to a respectful distance, watching with nervous eyes while a crowd of butter maniacs gathered behind them like zombies, swelling their ranks in exponential certainty until the job was done.

‘OK. The fridge is full. That’s what you want, isn’t it? So demolish it, why don’t you?’

And then they would shuffle forward and grab, while I stomped off in a huff and repeated the operation over and over again until nightfall mercilessly ended the torment.

*  *  *

I made two friends during my time there. One was a sandy haired lad who had an assignation with one of the shop girls one night. She was pretty enough, but she had terrible teeth. I asked him the next day how it had gone.

‘Horrible,’ he muttered gloomily. ‘Er jumped on me like a bloody monkey! Couldn’t get her off.’

The other was a young man whose surname was Rose. He was a bit effeminate so we called him Rosie for short. As far as I recall he never had an assignation with a shop girl.

I did, though. Her teeth were fine, but her legs weren’t up to much.

Fun comes in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? It does.