When I run out of cigarettes a horrible shudder fills my body. It signals the start of an Indiana Jones-style mental assault course at the local shop: provider of sugary things and judgement.
As I push the door it will usually clang. When I hear a bell I turn around; not so the local shopkeeper. In there it seems no sound carries. I stand at the counter, clutching my tenner to prove I can pay. The man stands there, always on a phone. Nothing happens. I stand on tiptoe just to be sure he can see me, yet he turns to look at the television. After what seems like an hour I reverse into the standard English response. *Cough.*
The man looks at me, as a fat pigeon views a fag butt. The phone remains in place and he glazes over, seeing right through me. I look down. I don’t seem to be invisible. Maybe if I wave the tenner and smile.
“Yes?”
Ah ha, finally. “Twenty Marlboro Lights please.” Winning smile flashed.
“Ten?”
Oh my God. Every fucking time. Ten? Ten! I quite clearly said twenty. I buy twenty every bloody time I’m in here. Ten?
I feel my face blush with fury. I said what I wanted very clearly, but you…you cannot tear that fucking phone from your ear to listen to me. I am a smudge on your patent vinyl floor, my words are nothing.
I pay an extra 30p to support this local business but you make this transaction unbearable. There are only two of us here, I issued a polite response, yet you barely notice I exist! There is just me and you here. Would it kill you to give me a little bit of attention? Just 10 seconds, so this is all over quick and easy.
Every day I work as a beast, sat in pod I can’t even call my own, ignored by suited wankers every living moment. Some days I barely speak just to see what will happen. Nothing happens. No hello, no how are you. I struggle with a constant desire to swan dive under a train just so someone notices my existence. In your face commuters, you will now be ten minutes late and it’s all down to me. Problem is I know I’d fail and just roll into the gap between the rails, to become a citadel for mice.
As my mind rolls into a spiral of passive aggressive rants at my own futility he reaches for the pack. Not THE pack you understand – bloody ten. My eyes widen in horror as his arm arcs back towards the counter. He looks at the note, I look at the pack, then back at him, all the while gaping like a goldfish. Somehow I mouth in incredulation “tweeeeennnnty”. I even throw my arms around like John McCririck having a stroke.
The cunt tuts loudly, turning back to the shelf of nicotine muttering insults to his phone as if I’m not there. Again I fall into the gloom, blinking back metaphorical tears, wishing desperately that someone, anyone, would just say “Hello, how are you today? Can I help?” He freezes as he touches the white and gold, lost in a conversation as I stand stuck in time. I consider how much I am aging at this moment, what experiences I will now have lost, people who may have died, what I will look like as I stumble out wrinkled and dried up inside.
Finally the glorious pack is retrieved and thrown on the counter. “£9.60.” This must be a joke. I pass the note over doing my best fake laugh, only to be passed forty pence in shrapnel. Not enough even for a can of ginger beer. Great, so I am now also paying for the insult. Take my money and my dignity. I’ll take these outside and smoke them all in one go in the faint hope that they really do make you die young.