by A. E. Radley
‘But didn’t you have, I don’t know, a recruitment process, interviews…’
‘It’s my job to find the talent in my store. So I wangled it a bit. Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Em. You’re a step up on the ladder. It’s a good thing.’
‘But I don’t want the job. I’m leaving!’ she said with maximum drama.
Martin laughed, long and deep. ‘You’ve been saying that for years. I heard you say it on your first day. When was that?’
Emily knew the answer and Martin knew it too. But the sadist was going to make her say it. ‘Four years ago.’
‘Right. So maybe it’s time to just lean into your success, eh?’
Emily didn’t consider a promotion to team manager of the electronics department at Sampson’s supermarket to be success. Quite the opposite. But somehow, it had happened anyway. Emily blamed her degree. She had a first in English from Cambridge and at Sampson’s, that might as well have made her Stephen Hawking. But she’d drifted here, just like the rest of them. The only difference was that she had an expensive and wasteful piece of paper framed on her wall.
Paper or not, she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. The job was supposed to be short term until she figured out what to do with herself. Just a few months. While she started her novel. But after a few days of opening word documents and not knowing how to fill them, she gave up on that one. Then she thought, OK, maybe I’ll teach. Until she remembered that usually involved kids. And kids, although semi-reasonable individually, were bloody evil en masse. She knew that because of her own school days. The thought of intentionally stepping back into a school without being forced by the law was laughable. So time passed with no solution presenting itself. And then she’d been there a year, which became years, which became more than half her twenties, gone.
Now she was twenty-six and still at Sampson’s. All the while, people acting like she was there to stay, no matter what she said, no matter how often she threatened to quit.
And here she was, failing up, yet again. ‘Alright, fine’ she conceded.
‘Good girl’ Martin said, turning away.
‘Hang about’ Emily said, her big IQ only just putting something together. ‘It’s December!’
‘Yes?’ Martin said, turning back to her.
‘Electronics is hell on earth this time of year! The Christmas rush!’
Martin looked as though this were new information. ‘Oh. I guess that’s why the last guy quit, eh?’ And he walked off.
That bastard, Emily thought, shaking her head. The fruit and veg team, her current department, was one thing. People were going wild for sprouts right now. But electronics at Christmas put sprouts in the shade. She’d watched it from afar, the tears and recriminations. And now the place was hers to command. To fuck up, quite possibly.
It was going to be a shitty Christmas.
CHAPTER 2
Emily’s first day on the job was the fifteenth. Not quite peak lunacy but getting there. Nine on the dot, she was in the back, making herself known. ‘Right, I know most of you from about. But now I’m - I don’t know the least dick-ish term for it - I’m in charge. But it’s really just in name only. Probably leaving in the new year, as a matter of fact. So please don’t act like I’m a boss. Because I’m not, really. I’m mainly just a rubber stamp.’ She stopped there to get the general reaction of what she’d just said. Her staff of seven looked like they’d been hit by a bus. Emily was alright with that. ‘Right, let’s crack on. Fill me in, would you?’ Emily asked of anyone. A middle-aged guy named Jeb stepped forward. ‘New hire due any minute. Managers do inductions.’
‘Fine’ Emily shrugged. ‘Gotta earn that extra pound and a half somehow, eh?’
Emily heard a light chuckle from a few people, but Jeb shrugged sullenly. Emily knew from the grapevine that he’d had his eye on her new job. She didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten it, but she wished she could sign it over to him, like a car.
And then the new hire walked in. Kat Crenshaw, twenty-two, nervous. She was tall and she looked aware of it, almost stooping to shrink herself. She had shoulder length chestnut hair, her fringe hanging in her eyes. Emily wondered if Kat knew how absurdly cute she was. She had an idea that she didn’t.
‘Hi, I’m Emily. I’m doing your induction today’ she said to the girl, keeping her leering to a minimum. It wasn’t alright to hit on staff, Emily knew that. And they’d had a seminar about it, in case of moral failure.
‘I’m Kat’ came the reply from beneath the fringe.
Now, Kat Crenshaw was no more pleased to be at Sampson’s than Emily was. But her downward spiral looked a bit different than Emily’s. A few weeks ago, Kat had been working in the family business. Second hand furniture and knick-knacks, ranging from genuinely antique to cheap crap, at a place called Pretty Things. She’d been in the job since sixteen, assisting her mother. After six years, Kat knew the place inside out. Shy as she was, she was comfortable there and people knew her. Which was good because Kat had no desire to go anywhere else. She had her mother and that was enough. Her dad had been out of the picture since before she could speak.
And then her mother died. Six weeks ago. Cancer of the pancreas.
If the shock of that wasn’t enough, the shop - that haven that Kat had always believed would pass to her - had turned out to be deeply in the red. Her mother had never told her. Kat knew why. Her mother was not one to look things in the eye and deal with them, she considered that sort of thing quite gauche, preferring to sweep uncomfortable topics under the rug along with the dust from the shop floor. That also applied to the vicious little tumour that took her off. So she’d lost everything, including her own life, essentially out of a sense of embarrassment.
Pretty Things shut its doors for the last time two weeks after her mother’s death, after the lawyer had called and explained a few financial realities to Kat. So Kat had no job, and no reference. But she knew she had to get another job and she’d written a few emails to local antique shops, hoping to get by on her mother’s reputation in the community. But everyone knew they’d gone under and no one wanted to touch her. The stink of failure was too strong. There was no time to feel sad about that, however, time was running out. She had to get some manner of job, it didn’t matter what. Because the house was on its way out too. Up for sale to satisfy creditors. She had to find something or sleep in the street in three months’ time.
And then Kat walked past Sampson’s, who were permanently hiring. And she thought, ‘Right, if they won’t have me, there’s officially no hope’ applying almost as a way to sink to the bottom. But they had taken her. Still, Kat was unsure about the hope part. Because she was a twenty-two-year-old virgin with no life experience, on her own for the first time. Working in a supermarket at Christmas, a day which she’d be spending alone. She was dreading it.
Where Emily had gotten somewhat cosy in her race to the bottom, Kat was shocked to be where she was. It was a fresh hell that Kat inhabited, and everyone at this place looked like they had a pitchfork hidden behind their backs.
‘Let me take you to the break room’ Emily said, and Kat nodded and followed, sure she was about to burst into tears at any given moment.
‘Right, so we get ten minute… Hey, are you alright?’
Kat had believed herself to be just about holding up. But her new boss was looking at her like she was on fire. ‘What? I’m fine’ she muttered.
‘Really? You don’t look fine. Look, I know this place is a shithole, you don’t have to pretend for my sakes that you’re happy to be here.’
Kat’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’
‘I talk about quitting every day of my life’ Emily went on cheerily. ‘I’m not the person you have to do the whole ‘Yay, I love Sampson’s’ shtick with.’
Kat had no reply to that.
Emily thought maybe she’d read the girl’s face wrong, that this was the wrong tack to take with her. She shouldn’t be scaring her, she was supposed to give off a good vibe,
make this place seem like a reasonable place to work.
But Kat was nothing but grateful. She’d been so alone a few minutes ago and then this person, her boss, a woman who she’d assumed had worked hard to climb the ladder here and would absolutely be suckling on that corporate teat, had looked at her and seen her. Understood. It was the soothing touch of an angel to poor Kat.
‘So anyway, this is your locker…’
And then Kat, feeling suddenly raw, burst into tears.
‘Oh shit’ Emily exclaimed. She’d broken the new girl. ‘I’m sorry… I’m just a bit miserable at the moment, don’t listen to me, it’s not all that bad. Honest. I got promoted recently. This morning, and it’s a bit… You know what, I’ll shut my trap.’
‘No, please, it’s alright’ Kat pleaded. ‘It’s not you. My mother died recently, and we had a shop and it went under after she died…’ She stopped, ashamed of herself for blabbing her troubles. Her mother would have hated that. ‘God, you don’t need to know any of this. You must think I’m a mess.’
Emily was horrified. ‘Your mother died? When?’
‘About six weeks ago’
‘Fuck me’ Emily gasped. ‘And I thought my Christmas sucked.’
Kat gave a sort of sob-laugh at that. Emily didn’t join her. The poor girl was indeed a mess. But it was the sort of mess she should have been. From extrapolation, Emily understood that Kat had lost her mother and her job in one fell swoop. And now she was at Sampson’s, where optimism came to die. And here she’d been whining about a promotion. ‘Hey, why don’t you come back tomorrow. We’ll try again.’
‘Oh, no-’ Kat sputtered.
‘I’ll make sure you don’t lose a day’s pay, don’t worry. But I think you need some compassionate leave.’
‘But I only just started!’ Kat exclaimed.
Emily shrugged. ‘I’m the boss, apparently. If I can’t abuse my power for good, what’s the point?’
Kat looked at Emily with eyes wide. She hadn’t expected this. In the shop, she’d been safe. Outside was chaos, mistrust and general unpleasantness. That was what her mother had warned, day after day. So today was an entry into the belly of the beast. And she’d come to her new job and right away, run into kindness. It was absurd how touched she was by it. And surprisingly strengthened.
‘No. That’s OK’ Kat said, gathering herself and wiping her tears from her cheeks. ‘I think I just want to get on with it, if you don’t mind.’
Emily smiled, impressed. If she’d been on the other end of this, having a boss offering to send her home for the day, you wouldn’t have seen her for dust. ‘OK, well, any time you want to ditch, you’re welcome to.’
Kat nodded. ‘You’re very kind.’
No one had ever told Emily she was kind before. She sort of liked it. But she didn’t know how to respond so she just said, ‘Alright then. Let’s check out the toilets, shall we?’
CHAPTER 3
It was Kat’s first day on the till, three days in. The first day Emily had insisted she simply shadow a few people. The second day was inventory, in the back. ‘Count up the stuff and check it off against a list. Just to make sure people aren’t nicking things. And by people, I do mean the staff’ Emily said, with a smile. Kat returned the smile shyly and got to counting. She knew Emily was taking it easy on her and she was grateful.
But eventually, a week before Christmas day, Emily was forced to put Kat on the tills. It wasn’t frontline, where people paid for their groceries, and that was better. In a way. Because although the front tills were incredibly busy and watching that line stacking up could break you out in a sweat, the electronics department got more moaners. Emily could only hope that Kat was ready. Because she didn’t have any choice. Jeb had been making gently passive aggressive comments. ‘I notice the new girl’s not on the till yet. Does she need extra training? Because I could take care of that?’ So Emily’s hand was forced. If she kept giving Kat special treatment, Jeb would go over her head, she knew he would. His nose was well out of joint about his lost promotion and any chance to make her look bad, he’d take it. Emily didn’t really mind that, but a conversation with Martin about ‘Best Practice’ was a pain in the hole.
So that was how Kat found herself looking down the barrel of a broken iPhone. ‘It doesn’t take photos’ the middle-aged woman with hair like she’d stuck her finger in a plug socket complained, plopping her phone on the counter. Kat could tell the woman was angry already, spoiling for a fight. ‘I bought it for my husband and I tried it out before I gave it to him and thank god I did! I paid hundreds for this and it doesn’t even take a photograph. What kind of place is this?’
Kat was baffled. If the phone was malfunctioning, it was malfunctioning. But why was this person acting like she’d personally sabotaged the phone? This was capitalism, which, if nothing else, was essentially dispassionate. ‘I’m sorry, Madam’ Kat said, a little scared. ‘Can I just see your receipt?’ she began, trying to remember procedure in the face of a stranger’s anger. But the woman didn’t take out her receipt. ‘No, I don’t have it. I lost it.’
‘Oh’ Kat said. She tried to remember what happened when they didn’t have a receipt, but it wasn’t coming to mind.
‘So what are you going to do?’ the woman demanded, her rage unbroken by her inability to produce proof of purchase.
‘Err…’ Kat muttered, glancing over the woman’s shoulder, looking for Emily. Emily was safe. She’d help. Jeb would also help, but he’d make her feel dumb while he was doing it. ‘Have you got the box?’
‘No’ the woman said, almost happily. ‘But you should be able to check the serial number or something. I googled it.’
Kat wasn’t at all sure about that. But her mother had always told her that if you didn’t know something, the worst thing you could do was pretend you did. That usually made people more irritable. But of course, that had been in a knick-knack shop. People didn’t come in guns blazing. They came in polite, almost expecting disappointment.
But this woman had come into a supermarket. She seemed sure she was owed something. Money, blood, the souls of the staff, whatever it was, she was due. And she was going to collect. ‘Well? Are you going to check the number or not?!’
‘Could you just wait while I find a manager?’ Kat asked, amazed she could even struggle that meagre sentence out.
The woman huffed. ‘You can’t even do a simple return?’ she asked nastily. ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be working here.’
Kat swallowed, feeling her cheeks going pink. ‘I… I…’
‘Can I help you, madam?’ asked a voice from behind her and Kat turned to see Emily. She did her best not to let her relief look too obvious.
‘Oh, another one? I hope you’re more use than this one’ the woman cried, gesturing at Kat with incredible disdain. Kat felt her pink cheeks turning fire-engine red. She was being humiliated. That wasn’t so unusual. She could get embarrassed at the drop of a hat. But she didn’t like that it was happening in front of Emily.
But Emily wasn’t thinking badly of Kat. She’d heard this woman shrieking from the back and she’d known precisely the manner of person she was going to find in front of the counter. ‘Can you tell me what the problem is?’ she asked evenly.
‘Yes, my phone doesn’t work!’ the woman said, forced to match Emily’s quiet tone.
‘How so?’
‘The camera doesn’t work’ the woman said with satisfaction.
‘You mind if I take a quick look?’ Emily asked. But it wasn’t a question. She already had the phone. After examining it for less than two seconds, she said, ‘I see the problem.’
That broke the woman’s stride. ‘What?’ she asked.
Emily began to pull the case off the phone, ignoring the woman till she had it off. And then she opened the camera app and took a snap of the woman, showing it to her. The woman looked at her own angry, confused face. ‘I don’t understand-’
‘The case you put on isn’t for an iPhone.’
>
‘But it’s the same size’ the woman immediately responded.
‘Yes, but different phones put the camera lens in different places. You covered the lens with the wrong case’ Emily told her, nothing in her tone to indicate malice. But Kat saw a look behind her eyes. She was enjoying the hell out of this.
‘Oh’ the woman said, irritably. ‘I suppose it’s fine, then. I guess I’ll have to find another case’ she added, finding something fresh to be angry about.
‘Yes. Maybe in future you should check what you’re buying before you buy it so you don’t upset yourself so. Have a wonderful Christmas’ Emily said, her teeth out in a smile that Kat found herself admiring very much. Seconds ago, she’d feared this woman’s rage, feeling like it was going to break her down into a sobbing mess. And Emily was sending the complainer on her merry way feeling like the shit she was. All without breaking her polite façade. Or not in a way anyone could pin on her, anyway. But the woman knew. Emily knew. Kat knew. It was brilliant in its subtle savagery.
‘Yes, thank… Thank you’ the woman mumbled and walked back out of the electronics department with her head low. The second she was gone, Emily turned to Kat. ‘You did well there.’
Kat turned in astonishment to her boss. ‘What? You’re kidding, aren’t you?’
‘Not at all, you held it together. But next time, just come straight for me. That’s why I get paid the big bucks, to deal with dickheads like that’ Emily said with grin.
‘OK. I’ll do that’ Kat said, finding that she was able to return the smile.
‘Cool. Anyway, you coming to the Chrimbo thing?’
‘The what?’
‘Christmas party on Friday. It’s crap but they feed you and the booze is free. It’s what passes for the event of the season at Sampson’s.’
‘Oh. I don’t know’ Kat said, aflutter. She’d heard about the party but she hadn’t thought for a second that she’d be going. It was for the people who worked here and Kat barely did. She wasn’t part of the Sampson’s crew. She was just a newb who was sure she was going to be sacked at any given minute for being too much of a wet blanket. She didn’t speak to anyone, could barely look customers in the eye and had no idea what the hell she was doing half the time. The only thing that was alright about the job was Emily. Because Emily never made her feel stupid or weak. In fact, Kat thought Emily was sort of alright, as humans went.