The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops - Part Three

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

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KwikSave,Church_Lane-geograph.org.uk-_350688.jpg

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

CarpetSave was at the front of the Kwiksave store and they rented store space from the supermarket.

The guy who owned CarpetSave, Clive Nuttall was extremely tall and walked with a permanent limp. He seemed to think of me as a nuisance and employed at least two other people.

One was named ‘Mike’ and seemed to run the upstairs branch of CarpetSave, though he didn’t appear to do very much.

Mike was a rather dopey character whom I couldn’t seem to connect with. He spent most of his life partially sleeping as customers upstairs were rather a rare breed.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesfred/14025781060

The other staff member was named Iain Smithson, who would later become a stock lad himself. At this time he was a YTS (Youth Opportunities Scheme) employee AKA a slave. Clive named him ‘Boy’, and the name somewhat stuck.

Clive has now retired and I have heard has sadly died due to a condition that was related to his height. I have nothing bad to say about this guy, he was one of the good ones.

I didn’t get to know any of the members of the booze store as they never seemed to venture upstairs to the canteen area.

There was also a greengrocer’s shop at the bottom end of the supermarket ran by an aging man named ‘Sid’. Sid was quite a character and very approachable. He did get rather fed up of me frequently screaming, ‘Siddddeneyyyyy’ from the back shop which overlooked his storage area. I was rather annoying in those days.

Let me explain the ‘Back Shop’. This was an area where all the goods were kept. Generally pallets full of boxes which contained mostly non-perishable food.

Twice a week a huge truck would arrive sporting the words ‘Kwiksave’. Myself, Mort and the truck driver had to empty the contents which were on pallets into the back shop, aka storage area. It was usually very untidy and somewhat akin to the picture below.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Messy_storage_room_with_boxes .jpg

The Back Shop had a roofing area which overlooked Sid’s greengrocer back area. From this vantage point I sometimes used to taunt Sid. He mostly thought of me as a mindless moron. There was also a walk in fridge which contained the overspill stock of pies, pasties, cheese, yoghurts and basically any other perishable foods.

Sometimes I used to sneak in here when I knew Mort was otherwise engaged somewhere to eat a sneaky pasty. My lesson from Asda had still not been learned at this point.

The back shop was also used to store ‘damages’. Damages were damaged goods. Smashed jars of jam, opened packets of biscuits, out of date Mr Kipling cakes, packs of sugar that had been slashed open… you get the picture?

I was warned early in my Kwiksave career by Carrot, not to eat damages, however I sometimes did.

Mort sometimes used to offer to sell me out of date cakes for less than the original value. I did buy them sometimes, but I can’t quite shake the feeling that the miserable bastard just pocketed the money himself.

As well as regular goods deliveries, frozen goods were part of the stock at Kwiksave. They arrived in a separate consignment. Handling large boxes of frozen goods is not funny at all. For example a box of frozen peas contains around 24 large packets of the goods, a load of ice, they are solid and heavy.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frozen_French_Fries_1 .jpg

Unlike most other goods, the frozen goods were not kept in boxes, they had to be emptied and placed in nice piles so the customers could access them easily. Without any gloves I was expected to empty a full pallet of frozen goods into one of around 12 large chest freezers on the shop floor.

I hated this job, my hands went numb and I still shiver thinking about those memories.

The excess items had to be stored in a walk in-freezer next to Sid’s place. Whoa Betide if you ever got locked in there, death would come swiftly.

The worst delivery however was the dreaded Sugar truck. I used to literally fear this delivery which was around once every two weeks. You see unlike the big delivery, the one with ‘Kwiksave’ written on the side, also known as ‘the load’, the sugar truck was an independent operator.

Most delivery vehicles have a platform, you place the pallet full of goods onto the platform, the driver presses a button and the hydraulic vehicle loading platform goes up or down.

Not so with the sugar truck. This vehicle even by standard of 1981 was positively ancient and did not have a loading platform. Now you might think sugar is light and easy to transport, not so!

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sugar,_Downpatrick,_September_2010 .jpg

Sugar is packed into thick brown paper for transportation. In this paper there are 24 x 1kg bags, so that’s 24kg per brown bag. The sugar guy seemed to take intense pleasure throwing a bag that is 24k in weight from his truck, to a hapless me at the bottom for me to stack on a pallet.

Around 60 bags later, I was bruised and red faced with the sheer effort needed to keep up with the grinning sugar bloke who just kept repeating every now and again, ‘Come on you wimp, it’s not that bad’.

These bags come down with speed, jolt into your arms, and then hit your chest at speed. These days this would not be allowed with all the health and safety checks…, but in 1981 it was the Wild West.

I still get nightmares about the sugar truck, shudder.

Source: Source: https://pixabay.com/en/shopping-cart-man-woman-running-3225130/

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.