Working In a Shop...

David Higgins

Wrote this after a day working in a shop:

Any feedback is welcome

Border jumping Russian cosmopolitan types, who smell like latex - with the cheap leopard print fur handbags and the fake Dolce Gabana shades. They buy their cheap wine and their croissants, then **** off cold-style without even saying goodbye. Status-hungry busy professionals who buy six packets of Cadbury's Mini Rolls, and then go home to scoff them infront of MTV cribs. Smelly students with too much money, buying 3 cans of red-bull and 2 packets of chewing gum for 'lunch'. The oh-so particular housewife who complains about the lack of Red Frosties, and says: "That's all he eats". As if I'm going to buy that terrible excuse for you not admitting you want the sweets for yourself.

Rugger bugger 'cleaned up scangers' who've substituted cannabis with sports come in, buying ridiculously overpriced Lucozade sport bottles. [****'s sake, just add glucose to diluted orange concentrate, and you'll save 10 grand a year you moron]. Fat people: not 'generously proportioned', or 'of the larger variety', but fat blubbery cholesterol fiends - they walk in, with the guilty face; as if I care whether you want to over-indulge or not. They buy popcorn and a can of Diet Coke. Seems they buy the heart-attack stuff in Tescos or something, where there's nobody looking. Then there's the backwards grandaddy type, who refuses to live in modern-day society: he complains about the 22cent bag levy.

Still can't grasp the concept of scanning things through the till for convenience. The only brand of cigarettes he knows are Players and Major. Twit armies of scangers with their clichéd-to-death Nike hoodies and Meanies crisps, giving dodgy stares when you look at them for more than 1.57 seconds. Big groups of sweet-smelling Teenyboppers, looking all pristine and bimbish just stand there chatting. Every word seems to revolve around "Anto's text message", or some other mindless juvenile twaddle. Then there's the 'femme independant' jaded raver type who buys King Lites and a bottle of Ballygowan. They wear their forever-in-vogue pastel sports-casual stuff, and give a nice girley 'see ya' when they leave.

EileenG

Is there any person that goes into the shop that you approve of? You've got a sharp eye, but the nastiness of the voice makes it hard for me to enjoy this.

I'd like to see this going somewhere. Rather than just a cast list of characters, put some of them interacting in some way. And stick someone in there who is sympathetic. Even the narrator is not sympathetic.

Bookslug

Do you work in supervalu?

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yep, it's pessimistic ,cynical and borderline hate but I liked the rat-a-tat-tat popgun style and the jittery prose style. No coffee or cigs today.

I'd imagine that was quite therapeutic to get that off your chest.
Kinda reminds me of a comedians rant, bill hicks (ish)

storker

It sounds like the intro to a story about a shop worker who's about to go postal...trouble is, he does sound like a bit of a judgemental pr1ck. Of course, if he hates his job that might be a side-effect.

Stork

cobsie

wow - you spent a day working in a shop and you discover that people can be irritating. if you want to be more interesting, why don't you take that insight and think how someone who has worked in a shop for 7 years might feel.

service jobs suck - imagine how hard they suck if you can't get out of it. now, that might be something worth writing about...

storker

Just to develop on Cobsie's point a little (or at least, my interpretation of it): having worked in a customer facing job myself in the past, what I found the most stressful aspect was having to remain polite and professional even when dealing with the most obnoxious gobsh1tes.

Your character might appear more sympathetic if he reserved his contempt for the ill-mannered people he encounters, rather than getting wound up over what they are, which doesn't actually affect his life one bit. It's not his labelling of people that's the problem for me (I imagine we all do that to some extent), more the spite which seems to accompany it.

Stork

Antilles

Wait, you started working in a shop, then later that day wrote this "short story" about a delusional sociopath who also works in a shop... and then you joined a public forum to post it under your (presumably) real name?

Are you not at all concerned that a future/current employer will google your name, read this and assume, correctly or not, that this isn't so much a short story as the verbal diarrhoea of a delusional nutbar?

me-skywalker

I would to say I think this as a generallt correct snapshot of human profiling but it was just venomous, cruel and had no other motivation other than to insult and clear your head of the thoughts. Breathe, count to 10, let it out.

Bullchomper

More!! I like the sardonic attitude, it fits with the exact sense one gets from working with the public (I worked in a call centre for a year, I barely have any teeth left). I disagree that the aggressiveness of the piece should be toned down. Creative writing surely gives allows hyperbolic disgust to be expressed?? I say go for it.

FreezeUp

Clerksesque