‘The Horrors of Kwiksave’ is a candid recollection of my memories working at Kwiksave (the now-defunct discount supermarket chain) as a 'Stock Lad'.
I wasted over FOUR years of my life in this maggot-infested hellhole and still occasionally wake up drenched in sweat after enduring a nightmare in which I am working there still.
Some of the names have been slightly changed simply to save my arse in case anyone takes offence at some of the details regarding my facts or opinions.
Many of the people mentioned are now dead as this happened so long ago, but their siblings are not.
This is the 'HIVE Special Edition' of a multi-part autobiographical story (with a little over-embellishment on some of the details) I posted on STEEM over 3 years ago.
It contains a LOT more detail and content than the original and will fill in many gaps that were missed the first time around.
Chapter One: A Prelude to the Best Job in the Land
Chapter Two: The Job Centre
Chapter Three: The Interview
Chapter Four: Christmas is Coming
Chapter Five: The Changing of the Blades
Chapter Six: The Staff
Chapter Seven: The Auxiliary Staff and The Load
Chapter Eight: The Sugar Maniac
Chapter Nine: The Accusation and "Big Lad"
Chapter Ten: Naggy
Chapter Eleven: Shit & Noise
Chapter Twelve: The Death of Mort
Chapter Thirteen: The Time of Many Managers
Chapter Fourteen: The Calm before the Storm
Chapter Fifteen: David Dire
Chapter Sixteen: Bad Totty
Chapter Seventeen: Tracy, The Wild One
'WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE BELOW'
"Who's that new fit girl.., is it Clare Grogan's sister?", I said to Martin. He was looking equally astounded at the sheer quality of this tasty new checkout girl.
You have to understand that up until now, besides Sharon and to a lesser extent 'Linda of Little Brain', they had all had been blessed with a hefty whack of the Biffa stick.
...'in the early eighties, I seriously wanted to go to Skye for my holidayeeee..., but only if Clare was coming with me'...
Source
“I don’t know mate, but I want to know and will soon”, he replied, eyes sparkling and with a sliver of drool emanating from the corner of his mouth.
Welder was standing behind us in a similar state of shock and we both turned giving him whimsical grins.
“You’d be better off chatting up Girl mate, look she’s staring at you!”, said Martin not unkindly.
“Hmmph”, said Welder noting the blank gormless look from the empty-headed checkout girl. He stomped off into the back-shop in a huff sending us into chuckles.
It was quite true, this Tracy as we were about to discover reminded me of Clare Grogan from Altered Images, wild but very desirable.
The new ‘Till Totty’ that had suddenly appeared before our eyes, was arousing our masculine hormones, and making us dribble at the mouth in ways we had never known before.
Within days Martin, who had that distinct squinty-eyed look, similar to Morten Harket of soon to be pop band A-Ha was chatting avidly to Tracy who appeared to be lapping up the attention.
Source
While Tracy was desirable to yours truly, I was this shy, unassuming lad, and had a lack of confidence amongst the beauties of the world so knew that I was not going to end up in bed with this one.
Welder was moping around trying little smiles every now and again when Tracy was on checkout duty but it wasn’t working.
Unfortunately he was far too pungent, never washed his circa 1972 well-used overall and was reminiscent of a homeless vagabond which left dopey Mike, the Carpetsave bloke as the only other valid contender.
Mike had a real crush on Tracy, had woken from his semi-permanent comatose state, and had been seen trying to chat to her every time she walked past the upper Carpetsave shop which he was supposed to be managing.
Within days, Martin managed to ‘score’, had taken her out, and repeated this feat on concurrent days, much to the disgruntlement of Mike.
The next thing we were hearing is that Tracy was wild in bed, highly adventurous and Martin had shagged her repeatedly. If it was an empty boast, then it was convincing and we believed him. He also revealed that she had a rose tattoo on her left tit.
We were all a little gobsmacked at this news. The fact that he had got his end away was expected but… girls simply didn’t have tattoos in 1982, never mind ones in such places.
We had the information from the horses' mouth and it wasn't long before the news went store-wide. The mutterings could be heard in all places, amongst the other checkout operators, and even those stuck-up Liquersave women.
...and then it happened, wild Tracy was gone as quickly as she arrived and the reason was shrouded in mystery. Was it that tattoo, jealousy amongst the other checkouts, had she opened her legs too quickly, or spurned Dire's podgy advances and refused him fellatio?
Martin and Dire had some kind of connection that appeared to still be fine, so I guess the fat twat had felt this one was out of his league like most of the rest of us.
For a while, Martin became subdued, sulky, and refused to discuss the leaving reasons, while Mike had seemingly wakened properly from his eternal slumber was now constantly scowling at Martin. I don’t think they ever spoke to one another again.
Normality had returned to the workplace and the eternal tedium of Kwiksave life was about to continue.
To be continued...
Cover Picture is a combination of free sources from here and here, combined and edited with Luminar 4. Any unsourced images are my own.
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Did you ever find out why she was fired? It was the 80's perhaps tats weren't allowed? Maybe she wouldn't show off her tattoo to the wayward manager?
Poor cashiers! Is that what young hormonal guys thought of cashiers?
Yikes.
We never found out, Martin refused to tell and pushing him was not a good idea. It could be that she was demanded to show in the office in front of the letching Dire.. I did not think of that. I would have walked too!
Only the tasty ones.. which were in short supply hehe...
I imagine they would have wanted to be presented here in jobs that required dignity and presence. Like Quik-Save! :)
Tasty ones! Yikes. That is almost worse. LOL
This was 1982, there was no dignity or rights then, ask @grindle.. he will tell you!
Didin't girls really have tattoos in 1982?
Absolutely not! Only the local hard cases and ex-Army/Navy/RAF dudes had tattoo's in those days. We were shocked, and yet intrigued.
Strange
Lol, Clare Grogan was hot hot hot in the heads of every young lad back then. Its such a true thing with the tattoo back in those days. I knew a girl who had a tattoo on her inner thigh and I almost fell over when I saw it. We were all chasing her like mad!
Ha.., it was so different that it made you chase. The tattoo craze started around the noughties I think. Before then it was clean skin and large bushes hehe...
Oh dont get me started on the large bushes. I have seen bigger bushes than Rhino have sheltered under from a storm!
You got me watching Gregory's Girl now, talk about dated!
A great movie! I should give it a watch again myself!
LOl. yes the liquorsave women were always up their own arses. I thought it was just mine, but obviously not!
They rarely spoke, didn't use the derelict canteen and seemingly had their own little one behind their very small shop front. I guess you didn't have CarpetSave and a Veg Man?
depends on the store, had veg/butcher/ car parts, that was fun (congleton).and a few other random shit concessions
Ah, young love. Sounds like there could be a movie from your stories. That retro vibe would go down well with the love of nostalgia.
I see you are milking 'lassie'. I can't be arsed.
@shanibeer mentioned it once some time ago.., a comedy series. There's a little too much truth in my stories for that. Some people would not be happy if they could read these.
I see @dickturpin has also done some stories about people he worked with. I'm a bit wary of that, but it is unlikely they would see it. Can still make us smile :)
I was just reading that...
I don't know why but this feels like a sad story to me. Maybe grocery store jobs just give off that vibe to me because I worked in one as well when I was younger. Frozen hands of the dairy department - bad memories... lol
I never really thought of that but yeah, tattoos in the 80s would have been super rare. They definitely existed but way less accepted and much more rare.
It was truly a terrible place to work, but we did have a few laughs. For some of my tenure I was the only one filling the shelves. If someone left, often they would not get replaced for weeks. Not fun.
That does not sound good lol
Sadly working at the Radio Shack I did, there were very few female employees. They tended to gravitate towards the mall stores. My store was in a strip mall and didn't get the traffic like the other ones. We did have one "looker" and she was pretty fun to work with. Eventually she ended up transferring to the mall...
Radio Shack is far too mannish to attract the hot babes, but then again.., we didn't do much better. Maybe its because Kwiksave was a cheap-arse store aimed at pensioners.
Yeah, that is probably likely. This girl was probably one of the cutest I have known in my life. I remember her quite well. Never had a fraction of a chance with her, but she was fun to work with.
I pissed myself when I read about the "shagging"!
Shagging was on all of our minds, that's what you do when you are teenagers heh...
@tipu curate
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Story telling is an art and you sure have it @slobberchops This is the first page of an interesting story unfolding for me. Not sure if you would find the girl again in subsequent chapters of this story/life.
Back in the days there was no internet but now you can search for her online maybe she has an online presence on social media like fb or who knows here on hive?
I have tried to find a few of them without success. Women get married and change their names which does not help. As this was almost 40 years ago, many of this generation don't do social media. I was a tech geek, so do.
rip clare grogan lol
Brave explorer slobberchops!
Cryptocurrencies are ephemeral candy wrappers, the value of which is created by people like you. I wish you good health in the New Year, successful trades and human happiness!
I added a few tokens to the effect, I will continue to support you.
Dear @slobberchops I wish you and your loved ones a very happy new year.
In addition my personal wish for you is that the nightmares of Kwiksave stop bothering you and may the memories of that pain and hardships never disturb you.
Actually when I started reading this post of yours I thought I would continue reading the rest of the posts in the series for a later time.
However the narrative sucked me in and I felt like being part of the story I felt like the main protagonist of the story line Mr @slobberchops myself!
I was curious as to how things unfolded and adding those images to give us an idea of the personas that were part of your life.
The description of Tunafish made me realize how many such people I have myself encountered in my own life.
The use of that music video is really interesting and it surely tales one back in time to those younger days.
Even though the storyline is autobiographic yet it is told in a very objective way.
These posts sure can be re-read for sure for there are plenty of minute details and nuances that one could notice on a second or third read.
That makes me wonder have you ever considered converting in to one or multipart e-book? something you could sell on kindle?
Current times are very challenging for a lot of us and one outcome of the series pf post is surly this that "If it does not kill you it only makes you stronger"
A message we all need to understand.
Plus it could generate some royalty for you as well.
Take care and stay safe