Saturday, July 23, 2011

Not one of Mine

Fronting the cashier console at the truck stop, Mine Host plops his late night snack purchases on the counter.

The attendant is most unappealing. This young slattern is dressed in a particularly ill-designed tracksuit, is overweight & has the dead eyes of someone who cares not a whit for the world. Though she is barely old enough, Mine Host hazards a private guess that she is a single mother, as likely was her own mother.
She has that dead, dullard, unmotivated demeanour one expects from the terminally entitled & terminally unintelligent.

The usual staff appear like a jack-in-the-box. Filipinos all, they are her antithesis. Dressed in pressed uniforms, with a cheery demeanour & a bright sparkle in their eye.

As a trio they are a clear example of why employers are desperate for overseas workers. The bottom of the barrel has been well & truly scraped in Australia.

Anyone who doesn't have a job in Australia plain doesn't want one.

A charming Filipino lad is training the puffy faced & unwashed female caucasian. He supervises as she processes Mine Host's purchase of three separate items.

A sausage roll,
A pie,
A bag of Smith's chips.

She lethargically picks up the nearest item,the sausage roll, and waves it in front of the scanner.

*beep* *beep* *beep* She waves it back & forth, registering it three times.

She then pushes all three items back to Mine Host, & quotes him the amount shown on the cash register....

..... the Filipino lad smoothly & unobtrusivly presses a few buttons on the register to void the latter two of her scans, then asks her to scan the pie & the chips as separate items in the sale.

She has no idea why he "stopped" her sale. There is no confusion or misundertanding in her eyes, just dullness. If he wants her to scan it this way, fine. And while ever he is standing there beside her, she'll probably do sales "his" way.

It is patently obvious that she will never understand what was wrong with just picking up the sausage roll & scanning it three times. After all, there were three items in the sale.

2 comments:

Brian said...

What I would do for a A sausage roll,
A pie,
A bag of Smith's chips.

hard to find plain chips anymore over this way too.

Getting a good laugh out of your recent postings, but I new where the 'stolen ute' was going.

Mine Host said...

Hehe, thanks for reading Brian.
Perhaps we can send you a care package one day!