More Who's Who

It's been a while since I last blogged about my colleagues in any sort of depth. Well, there's Sandra, but I don't need an excuse to bitch about her. There's also been a few new staff since I wrote my original Who's Who post - and then there's the people I missed out the first time - so I feel it's time to update you on the people I work with.

Without further ado...

Lisa
She's the most remarkable of the new starters. If you've ever been looking to the original dumb blonde, you needn't look much further than Lisa. Example: I was standing behind her till waiting to check her change one day, just as she happened to be filling a pod with money. She put it into the air chute and watched it shoot up the tube. She turned to me:

"Andrew..."

Feeling she was on the verge of asking a stupid question, I was cautious: "Yeeeees?"

"You know when I put the money in those little pods and put it in there..."

"Ah-huh..."

"Where does it go?"

Oh my God how dumb can you get? "Well Lisa...they shoot up into the ceiling, then down through the wall, underneath the ground and all the way to Head Office."

She stared at me for a moment and said: "Oh. Right." Before I burst out laughing and called her a silly bint and informed that it's actually nowhere near as MI5 as that - they really just travel through the chute and drop into the cash office at the other end.

Despite her empty-headed moments, she does have quite a good sense of humour though. Well, maybe that's the wrong way of putting it. It's got more to do with her saying things in a certain way that makes them sound funny - so I suppose you could say she has a good sense of comic timing. An example of her cracking me up over something very minor was when Cleo remarked to her one day "oh my God, you look like hell Lisa!". Lisa came to tell me about this and said: "I wouldn't care, but I actually made an effort today - put my makeup on and everything and apparently I look like hell!" Don't know what I found so funny about that...I just did.

She also called Alex a cheap man-slut. Classic.

Enid
The second dumb-blonde we have. Her name makes her sound like an old granny, when she's actually only about 29 - named after her great-gran it would seem. Anyways, she's just plain dippy but, again, in a funny sort of way. Like the day she set off to walk to work and walked right past Food Place and didn't realise until she got to the roundabout, half a mile down the road. Or, less amusing, the time she walked off and went for her break leaving her cash drawer lid wide-open. It sat like that for about five minutes until I noticed. Amazingly, no cash was missing when I checked the till.

Alex
There's already been a lengthy post about Alex, so I'll make this brief. He's a tart. He straightens part of his hair each morning to get his 'do looking just right. He wears his uniform with added accessories to make sure he doesn't look "too naff" and spoil his image. He makes it a hobby to go around everybody in the store, find out what buttons he needs to press to really aggravate them, and presses them. I have no time for the little dweeb.

Rhianna
Or Lady Macbeth as I tend to call her. She works on the frozen foods which is ironic since she's a bit of an Ice Queen. I don't think I've ever seen her smile - at all - and she rarely speaks to anybody and if she does, she doesn't make eye contact. Her eyes always have this, sort of, glazed over look as though her brain is another realm. I actually find her pretty scary and certainly wouldn't like to be alone with her behind a locked door.

Jane
She's actually an ex-colleague, but speaking of Ice Queens reminded me about her and I felt she was worth a mention. I was having a laugh with Marjorie about her the other day as it happens. She used to work on the checkouts, but only one shift a week - on a Saturday afternoon. This was back in the days when I was just a lowly student till-body and because I always started an hour before her, I usually ended up on the till in front of her. Well, trying to get a conversation out of her - you might as well have chatted to the carrier bags. She was very snobby - completely above speaking to any of us - and was the most miserable human being you could ever imagine. A customer came to my till one day and whispered "I came to you because you were smiling - I didn't like the look of that mardy old trout behind." Me, indiscreet as ever, turned round, looked right at her and started giggling. I don't think the Mardy Old Trout was very amused.

Kiera
She's the first of the supervisors to transfer from closure-threatened-Ellenfoot to our store. She's obviously one of the better team members they had as everybody's instantly taken to her. She's so friendly and genuinely pleasant that it's quite humbling. She likes nothing more than laughing at herself. Like the first staff night-out she came on with us. She'd had several million straight vodkas and fell flat on her face getting out of the taxi. In true Only Fools and Horses style she didn't even have the reflexes to put her hands out and break the fall. Most people, considering the state of her face the next day, would be feeling sorry for themselves. Not Kiera - she thought it was absolutely hysterical and spent most of the day admiring the damage in the mirror.

Ed
It's maybe a bit of a foolish idea to start talking about Ed, because I could go on all evening. He's the Grocery Supervisor which he takes to mean Store Manager. He thinks he runs the place and has the idea that he's one notch higher than all the other supervisors. Example:

Last Saturday I was busy refilling the magazine section and he came stomping over: "Andrew, are you keeping your eye on your department, 'cause I don't think you are, there's queues up the aisles, get over there!"

My face fell in horror. Who the hell did he think he was? He was bloody lucky I was in a reasonably good mood, otherwise he might have ended up face first in Hello magazine. But he wasn't finished. When I failed to react adequately to his outburst he started blathering away about being the 'Floor Supervisor' and that it was 'his duty' to keep the store running smoothly and I 'wasn't supporting him'. I walked away from him, inspected the checkouts and found that none of the tills had more than 1 person waiting to be served. And then went back to stalk out the evil Ed and give him a piece of my mind:

"Right Ed, for starters there was nothing wrong with the checkouts. For seconds, you seemed to be implying I was skiving when I was actually filling up the magazines - you know, so we can, sort of, sell them! - and, you seem to forget, you're on a level-pegging with me mate. Any feedback you have about my performance is appreciated, but speak to me like that again on the shop floor, in front of customers, and you'll find yourself the subject of a formal complaint. Right?"

It's amazing how self-righteous and over-defensive I can get over work, but there you go. I was actually quite proud of myself for standing up to him like that - because I'd been dying for an excuse to knock him down a couple of rungs. If I had my way I'd shake him off the ladder altogether.

He expressed interest in the Grocery Department Manager post, vacated last week by Sean, and he was so confident that the job was his, he didn't even bother handing his application form in. Well he's got another thing coming. He'd be lucky to pass the interview, let alone the aptitude tests. This is the person who put of POS advertising, among other things, "Specail Offers" and "Redused to Cleer Items".

Hmm. I try not to get too wound up by him, because I know he's just a moron.