The Horrors of Kwiksave: Last Christmas
‘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
Chapter Eighteen: 'Buff-It-up'
Chapter Nineteen: The Demise of Ian Banks
Chapter Twenty: The Date (Part One)
Chapter Twenty One: The Date (Part Two)
Chapter Twenty Two: Dire's Lunge)
Chapter Twenty Three: 'Eggy-Poos'
Chapter Twenty Four: Adele, The Hot Minx
Chapter Twenty Five: Last Christmas
'WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE BELOW'
“Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away”
Not bad I thought… for a Christmas song. It contained a tinge of melancholy, or as musicians would say, minor keys. The day was freezing cold, and Christmas was just a few days away.
Source
...'if I was to like any Christmas song, it would be this. Unfortunately after too many hearings, it's like the rest, overplayed'...
I prefer the other side, 'Everything She Wants', I mused trudging my way back to Kwiksave dejectedly, new purchase in hand and leaving the Woolworth store behind.
Later that day…
“Ze lawwww has been changed and from next years.., Kwiksave will be opening on Sundaysss so youz will have to work”, piped up Dire in an unusual spontaneous bout of conversation.
He stared at me in anticipation of a response, but was one needed?
This was a fucking statement, an unwanted one, and my froggy-eyed, pallid-skinned boss who only needed to emit a single croak to convince anyone of his amphibious heritage, had successfully added to the visible raincloud of doom over my head.
As if I spent enough of my life in this torturous hellhole already? Barbara had left a month ago, having clinched another uninspired job as a checkout operator in a local shop within walking distance from her parent’s house.
From her point of view, she no longer needed to tolerate the leers of Dire, pay for bus fares, and could tumble out of bed and fall into work.
I suspect she was happy to be free of the ridiculous burden of remembering every single price in the store because Kwiksave was too tight-arse to buy those sticker guns and place price stickers on every can of beans, and other foodstuffs.
Source
...'even a rotting pie would have been preferable to fuck all. Is this wetting your appetite?'...
In the five Christmases, I had endured, neither Mort nor Dire had ever given me any concession, gift, or even a box of green-tinged, three-months mouldy out-of-date Mince pies. Even Asda gave their employees a cheap bottom-of-the-range Turkey, but here, forget it, fuck all.
Dire must have noticed something in my expression and continued unabated…
"I goes drinking in zee pubs on Sundaysss as I has to escapes the wife, so I likes it no mores zan you", he added with a frown, which added a thousand creases to his already wrinkled forehead layered with beads of sweat.
“Wes will have to see vot happens, I thinks youz will have to work alone”, Dire concluded, and without warning pivoted like a ballerina version of ‘Big Daddy' and waddled down the aisle toward the office, arms tossed out and oversized arse wiggling from side to side.
'...Dire was not foreign but communicated in a very broad local accent and so I am accentuating his dialogue with some exaggeration for effect'...
Source
...working on Sunday.., you can shove that up your fat arse, you corpulent, beer-guzzling, girlfriend-lunging, pot-bellied, overweight, flabby mother-fucker...
"Work alone?", I knew what that meant. That fat cunt was going to leave me, lock up the store, and get pissed at one of the locals. Rawtenstall had no less than EIGHT pubs in 1984 and one was even close enough for Dire to waddle too, though no doubt he would be driving, pissed or otherwise.
I have to get the fuck out of here, or I am going to be committed and be seen as clinically insane, I thought as Dire vanished into the office, though I was quite aware he was watching me seconds later through the one-way glass windows.
“Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away..”
An annoying earworm was starting to form in my head. Could it eclipse that even more irritating Shaking Stevens song that was playing throughout the store, 'Snow is falling, all around us…"
What was worse, the new Wham song I had just purchased, or some ripoff Shaky song that was terrible to start with?
Source
...'the humble Cornish Pastie. Better eaten hot, but very filing and ideal snack food for starving poor stock lands'...
Slouching in resignation, I made my way to the back-shop in search of a stolen Cornish pastie to munch on, anything to brighten my decaying mood.
Why couldn’t Kwiksave employ some other mug to stack their shelves on Sundays?
I knew the answer right away, in the fact that nobody wanted to work here, and in my five years tenureship, only Welder had been employed full-time.
The rest had been those YTS mugs with about as much combined brain power as one of Dire's farts' methane content, actually that was a poor metaphor and placed those dimwits in good light.
“Did you hear the news…, more time down at the pub soon”
Source
Welder shook me from a walking slumber and I started looking around with a guilty stare.
My pungent, stinking overall, co-worker was proudly wielding a large board attached to his arm, a pen nocked between his fingers and trying to look important.
He noticed my face flushed red, bulging cheeks and give me a disparaging look.
My anger flared and I hastily started toward the back-shop door.
“Fuck you, this will be my Last Christmas at Kwiksave”, I mumbled, storming out and back into the store spitting a mouthful of pastry.
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. Some images produced using Bing AI.
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Thanks bro for this content. I always like reading your contents. Hope to see the next part. Thanks
I'm on a diet since March because covid damages...but that rotting cookie made me stop and crave! Over and Over, I was drolling...pfff...I like your energetic writing style. It's like a moving picture right in front of my eyes. It's an angaging piece of lecture. I might read the other ones when I will find more time. For now: Merry-merry Christmas!
Thanks, I like to entertain though I find myself repeating at times. That's the authors curse, always trying to keep things fresh and changing your style a little.
I’ve never heard about that Christmas song you uploaded
It sounds very nice though
Well, I still like All I want for Christmas is you by Mariah Carey
I hope it was the last one! Weekend working was typical of the swine who cared not a jot for those under them!
The weekend work never transpired, at least while I was there. I will have to look it up to see when the Sunday working hours came to be, I know it was a lot later. Still, Dire did tell me this all that time ago. You know how long laws take to change in the UK.., years sometimes!
And sometimes they just don't ever. Although I remember Sunday working coming in in a few of the guff jobs I had. Blegh
Check this out..
Defeated in 1986 and yet that cunt was telling me it was gonna happen next year (1985). What a presumptuous twat!
After this defeat, fuck all happened until 1996. You might remember shops opening and ritually getting fined, eating the fines as they made load of cash because nobody had anything to do on Sundays!
Yeah Sundays were a dead zone bank them so some of them just chanced it. It is amazing how things have changed so late which seem as if they were like that forever
This is like an ode to everyone who ever had a job they hated. I've had some bad jobs, but mostly they were part time and temporary, and that made the difference. Five years. That will give you nightmares for a lifetime :)
The statement about nightmares has happened but not for a long time. The relief when I wake up from dreamland is palpable, it was a nightmare, but I can relive it now in comfort.
That's a long period of time to spend in a working place that you are not enjoying. Happy you made it through sane, lol!
It is, but what I do now (IT), did not exist then. There was literally nothing else but the factories and they were even worse!
If we move just one more year to 1985 I managed to get a foot in that door. Times then were bleak and a lot different from the modern workplace.
I bet they were but what matter the most is the present and I'm glad you are in a better place now 🤜🏻🤛🏻
I don't like working in the weekends, Saturday or Sunday. I had to work once upon a time...
Saturdays was a must work day then, the half-day when they were forced to close was about all I got.
!WOC
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You reminded me of my 10-year show at some warehouse, from 17 to 27, first years where something like that.
That's far too long, I suffered around 4.5 years and that was enough.
Well, being young and needing money will keep you in a place.
@tipu curate :)
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 53/63) Liquid rewards.
Some people are just horried.
Just like the scammer from the fake futures learning site still has the audacity to ask me for money last night and kept telling me that "they will wait for me" until I come up with the money to "patch the data"
I feel for you, it's best to treat any unwanted intrusion, such as emails as scammers. Assume they are and ignore them all.
The Christmas scenes were very good. I am very encouraged to see such a nice post. The celebration of Christmas is very famous. The festival offers a variety of content that is much more enjoyable. Sir, I wish you a lot of good luck.
$WINE
Working on a Sunday feels like torture, and it might as well be from how you've described your work environment. The boss pushing all of the work to you so he can drink is very typical behavior.
It never materialised in the end, and happened years later. By that time Kwiksave were insolvent and gone!
I was not there for the advent of sunday opening, the late night 8pm thursdays and fridays were bad enough
The bill was rejected in Parliament in 1986, and only got passed in 1996.., a lot later. The upper management had told the bosses to tell us minions in anticipation of the original bill passing.
We Brits value our Sundays, church worship and all that crap. How I loved the church.., just for a bit and for the wrong reasons.
The 8pm openings, now you are bringing back memories. As well as dinner, there was a 30 minute 'Tea' break around 6pm, so I must have been roped into the late nights.
I daren't ask if you were an altar boy!!!!!
It seems strange now that most stuff was shut on Sundays. It's not like they would sell that much more over a week. I'm happy I never worked in a shop.
Merry Xmas.
Working was the worst thing I could think of then, but later I hated the fact the shops were not open on that day. It was such a bore-day.
Working on holidays is so frustrating.
I've been working in a shop too at the beginning of my working carreer. I have a lot of good memories though. Must have been lucky.... !WEED
@slobberchops!
@svanbo passed you the virtual joint!If you do not want to receive these comments, please reply with !STOP
Ohhh this brought back some memories of my part time job at a grocery store. Staring out the big plate glass window in front at the gas station across the street - where my boy friend and his buds would fill up their motorcycles and head out for an afternoon of fun in the sun...
Sorry to hear you ever worked there. Sounds like a nightmare... I've had a job or two like that but I never stayed long. I hate people like that who expect you to work on a holiday out of spite when they themselves won't be there. Glad you are no longer employed in that dump!
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