Customer Non-Service: Part Two (May Contain Swearing)

 I went into Morrison’s because I am running low on this, and I can’t quite bring myself to try the Aldi version even though it is cheaper and my brother informs me you get used to the taste after a while:

Proper Marmite. No arguments. And whilst I was there I had a mooch around, like you do, and picked up some seeded wraps for His Lordship Malarkey’s packed lunches this week, and a lipstick for me. I want to say, also, that I hadn’t gone specifically into town for the purchase of Marmite only, but that I’d taken some clothes to the Sally Army clothes bank in Morrison’s car park, and dropped some spent batteries into their battery collection point because it is BAD to chuck a spent battery into your general household waste on account of it being a potential and very dangerous fire hazard to the waste collection lorry, and I have NEVER done this before…EVER…ahem…

Anyway, there I was at the self-service tills with my three items (the wraps and lipstick were impulse buys - I know, shocking) serving myself. Blipped through the Marmite. Blipped through the wraps. Blipped through the lipstick (‘Sugar Plum’ by Rimmel, since you’re asking) but because the lipstick was very light, it didn’t register as having been blipped when I placed it in the bagging area.

‘Please place your item in the bagging area,’ said the till.

‘I have,’ said I, but the till wasn’t having it, so I looked around hopefully for some assistance. 

Two shop assistants were having an in-depth, gossipy conversation. They weren’t discussing important Morrison’s customer service type stuff because they were standing quite close by and I could hear them, and there was a lot of ‘she said this, then he said that,’ shizzle going on, of the sort you usually conduct down the pub with a Pernod and black in one hand and a Marlborough Light in the other. 

I smiled in their direction and raised my eyebrows in a hopeful way. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, although goodness knows why I was apologising, what with me being the paying customer and all, ‘but the till is stuck.’

Dear Reader, I kid you not, but one of them sighed, and rolled her eyes at her colleague, before deigning to stomp to my till. She cast a cursory, sneery look at my bagging area, then tried to tap in her passcode on the till. Only she couldn’t tap it in because she was wearing long false nails which, it is a well-known fact, somewhat hampers the efficient tapping of any sort of keyboard. And of nose picking. And cleaning up your doo-dah after a large poo. Too much exposition? Ah well. 

‘For f*ck’s sake,’ she said, tapping away at the till like an angry wasp trying to escape a jam jar.

Well! I wasn’t quite sure how to react to that. I mean, she did manage to tap in her passcode eventually, and my lipstick was accepted by the bagging area, and then she glared at me like I was a complete and utter waste of her time, before stomping off like the short, fat, lardy-arsed, miserable, middle-aged spotty dollop she was (tell it as it is, why don’t I??) but crikey O’Reilly. Was that entirely necessary? No hint of a smile, no ‘Happy to help’, no witty banter or comment about my lovely shade of lipstick choice.

Rest In Peace, Morrison’s customer service. 

Maybe she didn’t like Marmite?