It was a job role that I was neither tailor made for nor enamoured by. Aged 16, during a longer-than-expected part time stint in ‘retail’, I had been promoted to become a ‘C4C stock controller’. As grandiose as the job title was, the position entailed manually going from shelf to shelf, in a supermarket, and counting how many items of each product they had. Clearly in the days before computerised stock control systems, it took me a day to get from the Alpen to Quaker porridge oats before I was shown a graph as to my ‘inefficiency’. By the butter fridge I had handed my notice in, never to darken the Sainsburys HR department again.

Thankfully now on the other side of the counter, I watch with wonderment at retail staff techniques and chutzpah. The front of house staff are poorly remunerated as the bosses attempt to ‘improve’ efficiency by having us do the work on the self-scanners (that rarely work). Meanwhile we beg for carrier bags and wish they’d pay their staff more handsomely while employing a lot more of them.

When I can’t be bothered with unpaid retail labour, I go all old school and queue to be served. My bugbears include the assistants who continue to put the change on the receipt, fuelling a game of get the money into the wallet and ditch the receipt one handed. The most baffling is the staff member ­— and this continues to confuse me ­— who, once given a note of any description proceeds to throw a load of numbers at you ‘ah, 2,4,6,89 and 52 makes 10, have a nice day’. It’s as if the Vorderman woman lives on in shop staff now her mathematical niche TV slot has been filled by Rachel Riley.

I actively avoid one particular local shop assistant who has a penchant for giving a running commentary on the goods you wish to purchase. Recently a poor punter preceded me in the queue where said worker extolled the virtue of the bananas ‘they’re good value, only 69p’, which she swiftly followed by holding aloft a bottle of Vagisil, like it was the Olympic torch, before asking ‘ooh…what’s this stuff like, looks great! Does it work?’ as the poor afflicted woman looked mortified.

There is the retired ‘go slow’. It is fraught with danger using his till as, even after a 14-hour day, it is rude to admonish someone who is only trying to be friendly despite an output of two items a minute.

There is the commandant worker. I encountered one of these tonight in a pub who, after taking an hour to serve us our dinner on ‘Tuesday steak club’ night, then, informed us at 8.45pm when I ordered puddings, that children had to ‘vacate the premises by 9pm’. I retorted by telling him to get his skates on then, otherwise he would have the miniature Kray twins running amok after hours high on E numbers.

Then there is the misery, the grunter, the ‘I won’t open your bag but watch you struggle’ while moaning about having 45 minutes left of their shift until clock off. The misery also occasionally bemoans the fact that I have forgotten my bag for life, which usually gives up the ghost within a week, as I ask her to pipe down when the heaters by the main entrance are kicking out enough emissions to keep the US industrial heartland in rapture.

There are the easily confused staff. If your shopping comes to £3.02, try handing over £8.02 in change and see panic reign as they cannot comprehend you may want a note back. The same goes for those who give you £20 worth of change as they have ‘run out of notes’ as you ask why the heck they could not have informed you before purchase and then casually enquire where the nearest fruit machine is.

No, I don’t miss working in retail and, if truth be known I wasn’t very good at it. Customers can be rude, obnoxious and demanding yet they smile and crack on with good spirit as they see a customer roll their eyes and burst into tears a few feet away as the self-scanners continue to not work. Well, that’s enough for now. Expect more inane nonsense in, ah 2,4,6 and 1 makes seven days.