Alex Kapranos was right. I don’t give a damn…. but today I made an effort to show my contempt after I walked out of the Hammersmith Tesco with a bemused look on my face.

Allow me to set the scene:

Afternoon quick stop at the Tesco metro below work in the oh-so-un-inspiring Hammersmith Broadway Shopping Centre - frequented usually by old biddies and mobile phone obsessed school girls (sometimes, nay, often overweight) who usually hover around the Millies Cookies ye olde style cart feeding their faces….providing onlookers like me with welcome relief from their high-pitched screaming and out-of-key singing to lame ass mp3 versions of Chris Brown’s ‘Run It’ or Mario’s ‘Let Me Love You’….Ugghh someone cut my ears off.

Going into the Tesco there is never a pleasant experience, even at quiet times.

Today I make a brave attempt at purchasing a tube of Colgate toothpaste and a bunch of bananas (presumably genetically modified to be yellow as opposed to British beige, but trying not to think about that possibility)

Stand in line behind a bunch of loons who are attempting to purchase baskets of stuff because the express lines wind around the back of the store like a badly formed conga-line at the worst party you’ve ever been to. (Probably because its inside the Tesco). Bad description.

Anyway….. It gets to me in the line. Oh my god…Light at the end of the tunnel….The attempted purchase may just become a real one without me having to dip out at the last minute and throw my goods down only to storm out unsatisfied. Looks like I’m on a winner here.

Then, the crucial transaction…

I hand over a £10 note. Checkout chick who clearly loves her job turns to the guy sitting down operating the till beside her. (I love how they sit on their arses at the checkouts here….and how you have to bag your own goods. In sync with the general British work ethic really.
This chick clearly was a graduate of the ‘Do As Little As Possible’ School for the ungifted.

So yes, she turns to the guy next to her and says,
‘Scuse me, uh, what’s yer name? Sorry I’ve fergot yer name….Gottteny fivas? I’ve only got coins.’

He hands her two five pound notes. One of which I presumed she was going to give to me.
But I was thinking logically. What a fool.

She puts the two notes in her misery draw of British money and then hands me five kilos of coinage. Hmmm. Interesting.

I open my mouth with -
‘Um excuse me, can I have one of those notes instead of all this change?’

‘Oh well I don’t have enough in my draw’.

Getting frustrated now… ‘But that guy just gave you two notes!’

‘No you’ll just have to wait’.

I look the other way and feel like stabbing myself in the eye. Then I feel like stabbing this lame excuse for a human being who’s working in a supermarket but can’t be stuffed to even stand up in the eye. Both eyes.

So I wait. With my handful of change and my bananas and toothpaste while she serves the next person.

They pay with a five pound note. Here we go. The end is in sight.

Lame-arse takes the money and proceeds to place the five pound note in her draw of misery. Then hands back the woman her change and receipt. Then takes the five pound note out of the draw to hand it to me in exchange for the five pounds in coins I was still holding.
ARRRGH!

Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any more infuriating, she snatches my receipt for the bananas and toothpaste from my left hand to check the amount…
God only knows why because the five pounds I was clearly giving her in exchange for a note that she should have given to me in the first place wasn’t going to be documented on that rubbish bit of paper. LOSER.

Complete base level loon. An anenome. Actually they are probably more active, I take that back. A dead cell. A hair. A singed hair that’s been swept up with other bits of dirt and been shoved in the bin.

I walked out of the Tesco in a bad mood.

Then I walked back in two minutes later and filed a complaint.

Clearly I am assimilating. It is the British way to complain and write letters. A duty almost.

I documented the scenario in a more brief and less colourful fashion on the back of a business card.

I so hope I got that dropped-on-her-head-as-a-baby IDIOT in big trouble.

The sucker that employed her owes me some free bananas and half an hour of my life back.