A House Of Optimism

Have you been injured at work? I haven't, although I do come away from the place suffering aches and pains after constant hours of manual labour. Maybe it's because I've been away from the glamorous world of discount retail for just over nine months and I've gotten used to lazy weekends filled with freedom and me time and doing whatever the Hell it is I want to do. Mostly nothing, but it's been nice to have the option. As of two days ago, however, I've been back to the fluorescent light emporium for the purposes of trying to have money as a student who doesn't know any better, and for each of those two days, I've left the place and come home feeling like my spine's had a run-in with a baseball bat and my feet have been stabbed numerous times by a croquet mallet... and I don't even know how that would work. I suppose I never noticed the life-diminishing pain and agony before because I'd simply "gotten used to it", but now it's nine lazy months on, and I've got a lot of pain to make up for.

If you've ever worked in retail, you'll know the feeling. You'll know how your place of employment is essentially a soul-crushing factory line disguised as a house of optimism. "Good morning, and how are you this fine day, dear citizen?" beam the faces of the company. The voices of the masses, however, often seem gruff, confused, loud, and every fourth word is 'fuck'. That last one was even picked up on by another customer, who I assume "isn't from round here" and noted what a lovely town this is where 'every word is a swear word'. True story. Maybe it's just prevalent where I'm located, which would make sense since, after nearly a year away, I'm suddenly seeing how the rest of the country sees the Scouse accent. Honestly, the amount of 12-14 year olds who've been about this last weekend with mouths and voices and words-that-don't-really-sound-like-words-but-rather-a-continuous-stream-of-noise has been immense; half of them sound like they've just eaten Cilla Black, John Bishop and Sonia for breakfast, washing it all down with 57 cigarettes and a kazoo. The sad thing is I'm still able to understand fluent Scouse.

Fortunately, I've not had to deal with the typical, monolexical attitude of some. You know the ones, the ones who approach from behind unannounced and throw a single word at you and leave you to interpret the rest of the sentence.

"Crackers."
[internal processing... calculating question... *BING*]
[smooth calm female voice: "Could you tell me where the crackers are?"]

Thank God they manage to pick the word signifying the thing they're looking for. Imagine if they approached me armed with just the word "Could". My poor brain would probably get stuck in an infinite loop and explode right there and then in the middle of the shop floor. The soothing female voice would go into overdrive. "Could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could you tell me where the could y-" *BRAINSPLAT* [bing-bong] 'Clean-up on aisle two, please'.

I do hope, however, that one day someone will approach me with "Mouthwash", therefore I'm justified in assuming they were just simply telling me the title of their favourite Kate Nash song. I could do shifty-eyes and lean over towards them as I give my response. "Wuthering Heights". The confusion in their face leads me to realise what I've actually said. I need to pick up the ball I've just dropped. I let out a forced chuckle and pat my adversary on the shoulder as if lightly batting them away. "Oh-ho-ho! I got it wrong, didn't I? That's Kate Bush, isn't it? God, I am a silly-moo! Ah well..." I wipe a fake tear from my eye "...you win, thanks for playing though, I had a great time."

That one could probably also work with "Foundation".