Tesco

by brokenrecordbaby

So, GG has been in New York for a week and she’s obviously been doing amazing things with her time spent there. Meanwhile, I went to Tesco…

A couple of Friday’s back, I was 7 hours into my 17 hour shift. I didn’t know at the time it was going to be 17 hours but in some way that makes this story even better. It was 6pm, the roof was piling up with customers and we were running low on bottles of Soft Drink. There were about 4 or 5 strong men working but, no…Caleb thought that I would be the most appropriate person to go and do the Soft Drink run. So with our already stolen trolley from Tesco I headed into Shoreditch High St with my list. Caleb said it was fine to grab what we needed from an Off License but of course an Off License wasn’t going to have 20 x Lemonade, 10 x Tonic etc etc. I tried anyway! Pushed that trolley right into the narrow door before quickly leaving again after the Off License guy tried to tell me he’d give me a good deal on 8 bottles of Sprite.

So I’m pushing an empty trolley towards the Tesco opposite Liverpool St. station. For those of you that haven’t tried, this is a hard enough task in itself before the trolley is actually full.  Especially when it is 6:30pm on a Friday night and everyone has finished work. One million comments and looks get thrown my way before I enter Tesco. Once inside I sigh a big fat sigh because however busy it was on the street, it’s 100 times busier inside. Quickly filling up my trolley I begin lining up.

Once in line, that is when the real hell begun. Tesco have maybe the most poorly designed trolleys in existence. So as I am trying to twist and turn my way around the cue that weaved itself around basically the entirety of Tesco, I’m purposely keeping eye contact with my fellow customers who are looking  at my to be purchases and my outfit up and down. I decided that my best option was to have one line and repeat it over and over. That’s what I would answer their looks and comments with. After all, I am a broken record baby. When the hoards of people questioned my trolley fulla mixers I would answer again and again. ‘I’m just REALLY thirsty’.  ‘Where’s da party at bebz?’ , again…’I’m just REALLY thirsty’ . Eventually it is my turn for the self service check out. Realistically I knew that going through the self serve with about 45 items was going to be a bad idea, but the self serve line was shorter than the operator checkout line, wasn’t it?. Before scanning my items I ask a ‘friendly Tesco employee’ for some much needed assistance. ‘Excuse me miss, would you be able to grab me another trolley?- I’m just going to put these items straight back into a trolley, no need for bags’. Miss Tesco disappears momentarily before returning to tell me there are no more trolleys. Right. Okay. Scanning away another friendly Tesco employee volunteers to assist me. His assistance was -scanning (or what I thought was scanning ) three cartons of orange juice (Tesco own brand, 3 for £1.50. As we all know, the Queen is all about quality). He gave up after that and told me I would have to scan each item individually because they weren’t grouped correctly in the trolley. SOZ. What seemed like three hundred hours, two hundred grunts from the rapidly expanding cue behind and just a few creepy winks, I was done.

The trolley was a lot harder to manage now that it was full to the brim. Two steps out the door security approaches me. ‘Miss, would you come over with me for a minute?’ . So let’s skip a few details. When the friendly fucker tried to help me with my self serve experience he in actual fact, just put three cartons of orange juice on top of my self-serve checkout, without scanning them…so that means I’m a criminal and I’m about to be arrested.  The next twenty minutes, ten minutes. Whatever. Was sooo unnecessary. I was questioned, insulted, argued with. Stupid security guard with a god complex using me as his victim to make himself feel more important in his role that he was playing to society. Fuck him. After we had taken every item out of my trolley, ticked them off the receipt and I had paid for the three cartons of orange juice I fled out of there.

Desperate to return to the safe confinements of the Queen I pushed that trolley as hard and fast as I could. With great difficulty I got through the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of people that were spilling out of every bar in the street. Numerous comments were made, looks exchanged. I soldiered on. My favourite was an especially haggard looking old chav. ‘Darlin’ you get all the best jobs dontcha? That trolley could be fulla men but instead ya just got diet coke’. Well she certainly could read me like a book, I did indeed wish my job was to push a trolley of men around Shoreditch. I had a few offers of help, ah I needed help, that was for sure but nothing that any of these kind strangers could offer. The next person who would slow me down was an aggressive and incredibly persistent homeless man. ‘Miss couldn’t spare us a bottle of coke couldya? I’m so thirsty’. I felt like an absolute twat. ‘Err, no…sorry I can’t’. Yes I fucking could, I had about 45 bottles of soft drink in my trolley. I had a trolley full of drinks but the homeless man wasn’t getting a single drop. Understandably he was very unimpressed with my decision to be a selfish soft drink slut. He did what anyone would have done, he tried anyway, following me for a little bit before just diving right in the deep end and trying to take a bottle out of my trolley. So I became incredibly aggressive woo on his ass and he backed off. Fuuuuuucking heeeeeeelll.

Obviously my thoughts now were that there wasn’t possibly any room left to have any more comical elements added to my ‘simple Tesco trip’. Wrong. As I was waiting for the little green man to flash. (I wasn’t prepared to die this way) I started to cross, just minutes walk away from the Queen . Out of nowhere a speed demon on a bicycle suddenly arrives at the scene, trying to swerve my trolley out of her way (why? I’m crossing when there is a green man and she can obviously cycle AROUND ME) I was successful in my attempts to avoid crashing into her but instead she has tried to avoid me and fallen off her bike. Fuck. I mean, really? I’m very emotional woo at this point and trying so hard not to laugh hysterically (I laugh hysterically when something really bad happens or similar) I asked whether she was okay, two people walking past…ask if she is okay. She gets up, rides away. The two men ask me whether I am okay. I pause for a second, then answer. ‘No I AM DEFINITELY NOT OKAY’. I had a fit of hysterical laugher, then walked into the Queen, ready to brave an angry Caleb and repeat my adventure for all to hear.

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