Chain Reaction

 

I just need bread and yoghurt so I pop into Morrisons.

They have red pepper and mozzarella piazza, on special offer. So I take one, then two, then three. I can freeze them and use them later with soup.

Soup!

Before too long I’m buying soup, and so it goes on a chain reaction of purchases that once started is unstoppable until my basket will hold no more and my arm aches.

Soon I’m at the self-service check out till with the bread and yoghurt buried in a basket I can only just heave up the scale.

The assistant readies a bag for me.

I begin.

But this self-service check out I’m at isn’t working properly and needs the assistant to hold her plastic key fob against its metal heart.

“Oh dear doesn’t it like me?” I ask.

“It doesn’t like anyone,” she says.

I’m halfway through when I realise that I don’t have my debit card. My trousers have no pockets so there’s no money either.

I tell the assistant and rush out of the supermarket to the car park in the hope that it is there.

It isn’t. I’ve lost it.

I think back to what I really need: bread and yoghurt, and I root around in the car to find a few coins so that I can at least return home with what I went for.

Back in the supermarket I speak to the customer service lady behind the desk. I explain that I have dropped my credit card somewhere in the supermarket and then I ask if anyone has handed it in. She opens up her till. She has quite a collection: green ones, blue ones, red ones. I’m hopeful. She flicks through them like a dealer in Las Vegas, but mine isn’t there. I’m impressed that so many have been handed in and I’m guessing that mine has yet to turn up. I leave my name and telephone number and dash back to my till.

The assistant has kindly checked out the rest of my basket. My bags are waiting ready for me. Someone is trying to move onto the till. I apologise and explain that I haven’t quite finished and he backs off.

The assistant is on another self service machine which isn’t working properly; and then she comes over to me. She’s expecting me to be wielding my credit card, and manages to remain calm when I show her my handful of coins and say I can only take the bread and yoghurt.

The machine doesn’t like undoing everything one little bit.

I daren’t even glance at the queue that is building up, but I can feel its looming stillness.

Eventually, I am back to bread and yoghurt and my chain reaction bags are whisked away.

I attempt to scan these items through again and the machine goes wrong yet again scanning the bread twice.

“It’s because I’ve done this,” the assistant says, and takes away her key thing that she’d left magnetically attached against its heart.

I’m about to finish and pay when the lady next to me says, ‘Is this your credit card?’

She’s picked it up from the floor from just behind where I’d initially placed the basket.

I’m delighted. Her name is Sue. I thank her and explain to the weary assistant that I’d like to have all my bags back again.

She returns them and I have to scan everything once more. The machine of course still doesn’t work properly, and the assistant constantly has to step back to my machine to use her key fob.

Eventually though, I have the whole lot packed. I pay, and then thank one and all. I expect cheers as I leave, but there is only the reluctant sound of the next person shuffling forwards to chance their luck on the machine. As I leave, thinking of soup and red pepper and mozzarella piazza, I know without turning that that machine’s red beacon light will be already flashing red.