The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Eight

This 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 horrible dump, and still wake up with nightmare's occasionally thinking I'm still there.

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 will be a multi-part article as there is simply too much to tell in one sitting. I hope you find it as entertaining as I found recalling it from my brain.

Other articles in the series:
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part One
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Two
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Three
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Four
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Five
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Six
The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Seven

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‘Some kids are best left to fend for themselves, and others were born to stack shelves’ – Steven Wilson

January 1983

I don’t know what it is with Kwiksave managers named ‘David’. Both Mort and Dire were christened with this name and both were lazy, obnoxious wankers.

In the case of the latter, this was not immediately obvious. Unlike Mort, Dire seemed to be quite friendly, but when your back was turned he badmouthed you.

If anything I preferred Mort’s direct arsehole approach to this two-face podger that had invaded the store and now held the management reigns.

Much like Mort, Dire’s idea of hard work was to fill the yoghurt stand. He was an older balding middle-aged bloke and would not have had the stamina to grab a pallet of goods and stack the shelves. With three stock lads now it was almost paradise as he lived in the shadow of Mort with his feet up in the office and did little else.

Dire informed us that Kwiksave were very kindly digging deeply into their coffers to employ some floor cleaners. Before we knew it a huge welsh bloke that might have weighed 22 stones and towered above even Martin loudly entered the store with his lackey, an ageing very slight built lady who we would come to know as Jean.

The huge bloke was Colin but quickly gained the handle, ‘Buff-It-Up’ due to the buffing machines he brought with him, and the way he used to quietly hum ‘Buff-It-Up’ to himself when he thought nobody was listening.

Kwiksave had employed somebody quite insane this time.

‘Buff-It-Up’ looked remarkably like this guy.

‘Buff-It-Up’ was approachable to us but looked rather like my persona to some extent, and berated poor Jean quite often. We used to hear him scream, ‘Jeeeeeeeeaaaaaaan’ across the store frequently in his strong welsh accent, only to see Jean who was like a little scurrying mouse come running up to him in response. I felt a little sorry for her.

Martin was far worse than me for giving people ridiculous names, and it was him who was responsible for the name of yours truly, Slobberchops, who I have already talked about so I won’t repeat this story.

After dishing out some money for cleaners, Kwiksave decided that THREE stock lads were now not enough and decided to employ another one on a part time basis.

Ian Banks joined the ranks, and duly became Martin’s new sycophant. As much as I liked Martin, I could not abide this ‘fresh from Grammar school’ jumped up little shit.

It seemed like Banks liked to create as much hassle as possible for the likes of myself and Welder, whispering into Martin’s ear much like a mischievous imp would to his semi-accommodating master. I say this as Martin would go along with his irritating ‘plans’ sometimes while trying to appear autonomous.

Overalls would go missing, cheese snacks and crisps in the canteen vanished, stock knives that were there one minute would be gone the next. Nothing serious, just general annoyances.

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After several weeks of tolerating Banks, myself and Welder strategised a revenge plan, which worked out rather better than expected.

The back shop contained a huge ‘cage’ that was full of cardboard, broken up and flattened. Every so often one of us would need to climb in the cage to jump on the boxes, thus creating even more space by flattening them some more.

One day we waited for Banks to enter the cage, to do his jumping. He was well inside the cage at this point, back turned and was not expecting the top cage bar to be closed while he was inside.

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As confusion reigned inside his head, we had beforehand prepared some handy jam pots and cracked eggs that were stacked in the damages section.

We quite freely reigned these down on his head through the top slits of the cage in delight, while he helplessly howled his frustration at us in the form of every expletive known to man. The horde of food relentlessly continued until we simply had exhausted our eggy and jammy weapons arsenal.

Martin did not witness the incident, nor did Dire. Banks managed to free himself from the cage after we felt we had gained a justifiable sense of retribution.

He was almost crying when he left the back shop, destined for the bogs to clean himself up in an effort to look semi presentable, while squawking muttered words of revenge.

Nobody said a word, and if Martin or Dire noticed the horrible stench coming from his overall that day they cared not to notice. It was simply as if nothing had happened.

If there was one thing I can commend him for is that he didn’t snitch. Banks left shortly after his ‘cage incident’, I still cant figure out why?

Like nearly everyone who escaped Kwiksave, we never heard or saw him again.

Martin’s tenure was also due to end; I think he had simply had enough of the travelling combined with the pittance of pay. I was sad to see him go and we were now down to two stock lads again.

The original stalwarts were to stay a little longer and @slobberchops was about to fall in love.

To be continued...

All stock photographs I have used are filtered as ‘Labelled for reuse’ or 'Labelled for noncommercial reuse' and the sources have been cited.