monotone

Sometimes it's nice to be indistinct, to blend in. Sometimes I like, at work, the feeling of not really mattering. The whole cog in a machine thing; I'm not really here, I'm just beeping. My favourite customers are the ones who ignore me. The ones who show up with two trolleys worth of shopping that it's gonna take me ten minutes to beep through and pack for themselves, with their spouse or whatever helping them. Customers like that, I don't even have to look at, I just sit there and daydream.

I think a lot about domesticity (one of the best words ever). I want to go shopping with my husband and my kid and buy washing powder and fresh veg and lots of yoghurt and bottles of coke. One of the nicest things I've ever seen were this old couple that came through my till, hugging each other and teasing each other like newlyweds. It was sweet. You get so many depressing people, people who buy meals for one and brocolli one floret at a time. People who buy their milk in one bottle pints. People who make a fuss of counting out their change and making conversation with everyone in the queue because they're lonely. They're the nicest ones, but the saddest ones. But this couple were just super. They came bustling through and bought their meals for the week: toad in the hole for two, haddock and chips for two, spaghetti bolognese for two. That made me smile.

Back in October I got a lot of students coming through. They buy all the cheapo household stuff, wastebins and spoons and mops and cleaning products. They have lists that their mums have written and they giggle when they pay with their Electron cards and double bag their baked beans. I like students, I'm gonna be one next year and I can't wait.

I carry a label which I pulled off a bunch of spring onions in my pocket. I'll stick it over the clock on the screen of the till so the time goes faster. I'll say, right, I'm not gonna check the time until I've served nine customers. I tend to lose count and cheat, so when I look at the clock only 25 minutes has gone by instead of an hour. I hate that.

I repeat song lyrics in my head. One day I got through the whole of Michelle Branch's Spirit Room album, although I did get confused and combine the verse of You Set Me Free with the chorus of If Only She Knew. Today I did Eminem, Lose It, Lose Yourself and Without Me.

I make lists. I write them out (when I can) on bits of till roll: top 5 blokes at college, top 5 books I'll make sure I have visibly displayed in my room at uni, songs which should've been best of the last 25 years instead of Angels.
Things to do, things to buy at the end of my shift, customers to go before I can check the clock again, how much more money I could make if I worked both days of the weekend, how much more money I could make if I was working next door at marks.

Bible quotes, how many do I know off by heart? Words of wisdom, prayers, things I should get involved in.

Top ten things I wish I hadn't done, including entering 500 for a £10 note meaning that (according to the till check reading and the fact that I gave the man the change he should've been given) the till is now a fiver down.

Top 7 complaints I wish I'd have remembered to bring up in my appraisal.

Top ten elaborate and witty ways of telling the girl who didn't cover my shift last Saturday to fuck off and die without actually telling her to fuck off and die because that would be mean.

Top ten female celebrities to add to the Big Brothel experiment (my friend Emilie has decided to write the most sexually eplicit Big Brother parody possible to publish in our creative writing anthology. Emilie, you do know that the anthology will be published in the online magazine for students and teachers to read? Yeah, so?)

Here are the only lists I completed today:

Top 5 cola brands (yes I can distinguish them all).
1) Pepsi
2) Coca Cola
3) Pepsi with Lime
4) Pepsi Max
5) Diet Coke

Top ten things that prove, simply by existing, that we do indeed live in an evil world.
1) 24 - I'm Jack Bauer - shouldn't I be dead by now?
2) Go Ahead yoghurt raisin treat bars (just typing that brings the taste of vomit to my mouth.
3) The Sun, The Daily Star, The Daily Record, The Daily Sport.
4) The Daily Mail, but for very different reasons.
5) Diet Pepsi.
6) The Hamiltons - apparently seen pole dancing in a tv stunt to get us all in the mood for valentine's day. What's more repulsive, the repulsive mixture of blatant commercialism (V.Day) and blatant fame grabbing (the H-tons) or the repulsive mixture of the Hamiltons and ANYTHING TO DO WITH SEX. Eww.
7) The fact that I never got to meet Marilyn Monroe or Arthur Miller.
8) The Terminator Films.
9) J-Lo.
10) People who reply, when asked "Do you have a Clubcard?", with "No thanks".
No thanks? What did I ask?

I'm listening to: Sarah McLachlan, Afterglow.
I'm feeling: Tired. Kind of Celtic. Easily listenable.