I'm not a racist

But do I really have to be civil to cretinous gobby scousers. Seriously. Is that in the MAHL charter? Where?

Phut!

We had one in tonight who did a small shop; enough to feed and 'water' herself tonight. Sadly she hadn't enough left over to purchase a birthday card for her son. Late at night, underage operators who can't sell alcohol (or potato peelers) unsupervised I'm on my own and I get this fucking woman at the tills. This is all I need.

Can I help her find a card she can afford? Hm, I think to myself. Perhaps I refund that cheapo bottle of new world plonk you've purchased. With that money back in your hand you'll be able to purchase both a reasonable quality birthday card for your son and a top quality bottle of ale or beer that will have the kick of three small glasses of Peruvian chardonnay without the bonus hangover. Do I suggest this. Er, no. Customer services doesn't allow for the customer ever being wrong. Even when she's a gobby cretinous scouser. Even then.

So I follow her to the birthday card stand and start to explain the price marking system to her.

"I do have a degree", she insisted - to which stupidly though entirely truthfully I replied "and I'm not trying to patronise you."

The problem, as I discovered, is that her degree hadn't equipped her to grasp quickly that card prices are indicated by a symbol usually but not always a figure enclosed in a circle printed on the back of the card.

In her increasingly agitated state she was distressed when I attempted to drag myself away from her and return to supervise (yet another) alcohol sale, notwithstanding my promise to find someone at liberty to spend as much time as required undistracted by the demands of other staff and idiotic customers, in the search for a card sufficiently cheap and nasty to enable her to have her cheap and nasty bottle of zinfandel or whatever fashionable tipple it was in her bag of purchases.

In the end she stumped up a colossal £1.20 for a card for her beloved son, being unable to waste any more time she could better spend getting pissed.