At a till. Bagging groceries. An average day. Until the cashier starts talking to the customer. Or at least, attempting to.

It's not that the cashier in question suffers from an inability to speak, but english - it is painfully obvious - is not Marianna's first language, and her incessant Polish-pidgin ramblings in combination with her total inability to shut the fuck up make it hard to believe that anyone can bear it for more than thirty seconds at a stretch. In point of fact, we can't bear it. I bravely throw myself on the grenade of Marianna's broken tirades in the hopes that I will be able to expedite the poor, trapped customers' departure from the store, and spare them as much of this mockery of the english language as I possibly can. The pitiable customers, imprisoned before Marianna's babblings, exchange looks of disgust and discomfort with me, and I do my best to look apologetic, while silently willing this imbecilic cashier to please, for the love of everything that can reasonably be said to exist, CLOSE HER GODDAMNED MOUTH. I wince at one of Marianna's more insensitive and possibly offensive comments, and the phrase "indecipherable castrating whore", thanks to Tycho's inimitable writing, drifts lazily to mind. Again and again. I try to pick up the pace of my work, attempting to load the poor customer's purchases back into their cart in record time, but I've been thwarted. Marianna has become more emphatic than usual, and in lieu of actually ringing through this particular customer's purchases, she is punctuating her broken english by madly waving about the asparagus that she should be scanning. Having had enough of this torturous ordeal, I remorsefully slink away. This unfortunate customer will have to fend for herself.

My heart sinks as I realize just how limited are my options for intelligible, stimulating conversation. To my left stands Josephine. Constantly complaining to customers and co-workers alike about her various ailments, the time frame of her shifts, the fact that she's tired, the imagined injustice of another two hours of work, and anything else that happens across her "mind", Josephine's Spanish-accented pidgin complaints are almost as incessant as Marianna's inane chatter. Seemingly born without the concept of an inner monologue, she says whatever occurs to her, regardless of relevance, taste, or the comfort of anyone around her. Really, if you, as a customer were bringing your purchases to a till, preparing to pay, and the first thing you heard from your cashier was one of: "I'm tired", "I'm thirsty", "My throat hurts", how would you feel? "I'm so sorry that I impinged upon you, y'know, asking you to do your FUCKING JOB and all." "I'm sorry you feel so down, why don't I do my shopping at a time MORE CONVENIENT FOR YOU?" Josephine also has the most fucking annoying habit of snagging a handful of my bulk candy without asking, and after I've paid for it, whenever I come through her till, so fuck her. If another poor sot feels like enduring her idiocy long enough to pack her customers' groceries, good for them. But it's not gonna be me.

Working at the (in this case) inappropriately named Customer Service desk is Martin. A terminally happy import from Hong Kong, Martin bastardizes the english language just as much as the other two, and has a substantially creepy habit of giggling like a little girl while he does so. I don't really want to rag on Martin, because I think he's a great guy - especially since we occasionally get customers who speak ONLY Cantonese, and it's always good to have someone around who can resolve a situation like that. My only problem with Martin is that his greying hair and seniority with the company belie the length of time he's been in Canada - and he obviously hasn't taken the time or effort to better his language skills. I don't know any second languages particularly well, but you can bet your left nut that if I ever live in a foreign country, I'll do my damnedest to master their language within eighteen months. It's just common courtesy, the way I see it.

Unable to bear any more, I walk, head hung low, to the break room. Martin pages me - or at least I think he does - over the intercom, but I can't really tell, so I keep walking. Feels more like trudging, though. Besides, I can always tell him that I couldn't understand the page if he tries to chew me out later. I wonder as I walk - where do these people get off bastardizing my versatile, my phenomenal, my artistic and expressive language? At other times in my life, I have been fortunate enough to have met some very intelligent people - people who have come to this country and made a concerted effort to learn well the language of the realm. After surmounting its initial difficulties, many of them speak and read english as well as I do, now. So what right do these pidgin-speakers feel they have to maintain this level of mediocre linguistic proficiency for years, and sometimes decades after coming to Canada? Even the people who work at this store have done so for years - Martin, Marianna and Josephine have spent the better part of a century between them in this country, and their jobs involve speaking to fluent Canadians, both co-workers and customers, virtually every minute of every day. I cannot conceive of how one can be so immersed for so long, and remain so PISS POOR at the simple necessity of intelligible speech. My beautiful language - the language passed down to me in faith by Chaucer, to Shakespeare, to Milton and Wilde and Frost, to Ashbery, to Djuna Barnes and Christian Bok, now rests in the hands of these people. People who are hardly able to conjugate, or properly pluralize words. It makes me want to cry.

Ian has brought it to my attention that, due to my unapologetic slackass-ing, the entire frontpage of Stocker Mentality consists of his posts. This will not stand. Two reasons for my absence from the aether are the trips I've taken this summer, one with my band, down to Illinois, and another with Ian, to Vancouver. Another reason I could list involves being too busy working to actually bitch about work, and the fact that I've been **SHAMELESS PLUG** working on something new and special for the Monkey Alliance **SHAMELESS PLUG**. Interestingly enough, our trip to Vancouver, via the bedsore-inducing Greyhound Busline, involved a stopover or two at local BC Safeway stores.

Maybe I'm just biased against my store, but walking through the clean, smooth-sliding doors of a Safeway in Vernon felt a little like stepping through the airlock of some glossy, sleek spacecraft which just happened to be filled with food. From the welcome coolness of the air, to the gleaming white floor, to the friendly staff who not only took the time to converse with two curious out-of-towners, but actually seemed to enjoy being at work at 10 am, the place seemed the ideal to which all Safeway stores aspire. Fresh, hot croissants in hand, Ian and I departed this mecca of supermarket superiority, pondering the differences we had seen.

Everyone at our store, save a half-dozen sadists, presses through their shift with at least some degree of resentment for what feels like wasted time. The cleanliness of the place definitely leaves something to be desired - the crudely masked smell of rot and filth emanating from the area around the loading dock is repugnant at best, even if you've gotten used to it. Mop water is left to fester in unwashed buckets, sometimes for weeks at a time. Breaks taken are too frequent and lengthy. The entire store can seem to sink into a squalid yellow hue at times, mocking the pristine blue-white aura of our British Columbian counterpart. I am at a loss to say whether the sheer laziness or poor training are at fault for our lack of initiative, and lack of overall commercial hygiene, but I do know this - we have a lot more fun.

Management is our great adversary - they are the ones who demand that work be done, who require us to be bright and cheerful and have a spring in our step, even if it means actually grafting springs to the soles of our feet. Finding a way - any way - to circumvent their requirements of us is a minor victory. Damaged merchandise finds its way to the break room for us to use as we see fit. Courtesy clerks can shirk their responsibilities for hours at a time to take a little bit of the load off of our overworked grocery staff. Bringing in carts from the parking lot is often an excuse for lengthy personal conversations between Courtesy Clerks, as Ian and I can proudly attest. On late night shifts, I've debugged computers, caught up with friends, and even played one end of a game of Starcraft thanks to Safeway's free and abundant phone system. And if, in the midst of this, the store falls into disrepair, so be it. Our customers remain jovial and bright, for the most part, and our employees get to relax a little, knowing that the sun doesn't rise and set depending on whether or not someone took the time to scrub every square inch of every checkstand. Besides, the store has that nice lived-in look now.

That's right folks; the secret to happiness is lowered expectations.