I’m in a big store hunting for household items. There’s a guy stacking the freezer section. He’s singing at the top of his voice in a faux Irish accent, whistling a fair bit, providing vocal percussion and every now and then doing a little jig whilst he stacks the freezer. His colleague looks utterly miserable – like she’s either got a really bad hangover, or she’s in need of her ‘excessively zippy colleague tea break’.
I couldn’t find what I wanted, so I asked them for help:
ME: Please can you tell me where the kitchen roll is?
HER: I only do the freezers.
HIM: I know where they are! C’mon (adopts Irish accent) Let’s tackle this ‘Dirty Old Town! together’
As I follow him down the aisle, he continues with his song and I tell him:
ME: It’s ‘Jesse James’ next.
HIM: What?
ME: You’re working through the entire album of ‘Rum, Sodomy and the Lash’ aren’t you?
HIM: Yeah! Wow! That’s so cool that you know that!
ME: Yeah. It’s ‘Navigator’ after ‘Jesse James’.
HIM: Yeah! Brilliant! Well, they won’t pay for a public music licence here. So, I like to provide it myself.
ME: You do it very well. The Pogues are a great choice.
HIM: Thank you. Not enough people know the chronological order of albums these days.
ME: I know. It’s a dying art.
HIM: Here’s the kitchen roll.
ME: And I wish more employees would entertain people by singing classic 80s albums in chronological order.
HIM: Well, I wish more customers were like you. I’d let you have the kitchen roll for free, but as you can see, I work with a bunch of miserable sods and musical philistines.
