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I’m sorry… are you blind?
The strangest thing happened to me in the Co-Op last night: I was asked for some ID.
The girl in front of me - a svelte young blonde thing who could easily have passed for twenty-one - had been asked for hers and, since she hadn’t had any to hand, had left her single bottle of wine and wandered off.
So I stepped up to the plate, gratefully heaving my weighty basket into place. The lady on the counter looked at it, saw the bottle of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc perched on top and nasally went “got any ID?”
At this point I assumed she was joking and laughed. Then she pointed at the sign on the other till which points out that the store has one of those “under 21″ policies.
“I’ve got to ask everyone,” she explained - in direct contradiction of the sign, it has to be said.
I was, frankly, speechless. To the mad, unhinged point of asking questions:
What sort of ID? “Driving Licence?” “I don’t drive.”
“Passport?” “I didn’t think Co-Op was a foreign country.”
And so on. But she was adamant. And frankly, since the last thing I needed - after a long day and a horrible journey home and a lengthy queue in the supermarket - was an argument about this, I am afraid I got a bit minty about it.
“Fine, sod it then,” I sighed wearily. And I left the queue and the basket behind me and stalked out.
You might think that, in retrospect, I should be flattered by her request, but I know the cashier of old and she is frankly a little bit insane. Her obsessiveness extends to great lengths sometimes - on one occasion when buying a bottle of wine she insisted on triple-bagging it despite my protests - so I know that it was more that she’d got the idea lodged in her head and wouldn’t let it go than it was about any possibility I was looking oddly youthful (because, frankly, yesterday I had awful skin and looked about ninety).
I had found myself earlier wondering - whilst disengaging myself from The Device - why the elderly gentleman in the tweed jacket two places afore me had stormed off without his shopping and now I knew why: he must have been checked as well.
Still, as I left, I noticed the most curious thing: next to the cashier was a growing pile of abandoned shopping which the other cashiers were now starting to look at in a puzzled way.
So there’s something else to add to my list of pet hates: someone who’s got the wrong end of the stick and then pursues it doggedly to the exclusion of all reason.
I will, in future, make the extra effort and shop at Sainsbury’s or Budgens. (And take my passport just in case.)
Posted on June 7, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life
Comments
Response left by Pandemonia on June 7th, 2007
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Gosh. I’d have started having fun. I would leave my basket, return to the till and then - upon being asked if I had ID - I’d have left the items again, and round and round again until someone noticed the huge pile of shopping.
Essentially I’d have ensured that your ‘assistant’ would have made almost no money for the shop and would have given everyone else extra work. And it would have been fun!
I like tourturing the mentaly frail - if they’re annoying with it!