The Shop Girl and the Priest

Huge thanks to Blackrandi1958 for the invite to yet another event and the superb editing.

OK Team, I'm convinced about the whole editing thing. Will be reading William Strunk Jnr and calling on the Boss again for editing next time.

*****

According to my father, I'd left school with nothing but attitude and a world-sized chip on my shoulder. I had been a highflyer right up to the time my hormones had kicked in—probably two years after everyone else's had.

When that finally did happen, it was the most painful thing I'd ever known, I'd taken lots of sick time, and despite the school warnings, I could be found lying in my bed groaning with a hot water bottle and some attention from Mum. Our very old-fashioned family doctor had initially given me painkillers and raised eyebrows, telling me with no empathy, but a large portion of disapproval, that I'd "grow out of it," but the stress I got from the world around me about exams added to the bullying and sarcasm I was getting from my peer group because a year before finishing secondary school I was still without breasts and pubic hair to speak of, or periods.

They eventually turned up, of course, but the relief I felt at my on-going development was shunted into the background by agonising dysmenorrhoea I suffered during my cycle and between three and five days out of 20 I could barely stand. The days off because of period pains meant I fell further behind in revision, my lack of revision led to stress and the stress led to worse period pains.

The world told me to get over it. "It happened to every girl in the school and they didn't make a fuss," I was told by my male head of year. My excessive hormones didn't help.

Just as the final icing on the cake, I "came on" the night before my first exam, and of the ten GCSEs I was entered for, I felt well enough to go to eight, receiving nothing like the grades I'd been predicted to get. In all but history and English, my favourite subjects where I managed low B grades, a C for sociology and a D for everything else, including maths and music, which I'd been targeted for Bs.

Mum hid her disappointment at my grades, while Dad didn't. With the standard man's approach to "women things," he barked his usual disgust at my whiney attitude that it "wasn't my fault." He said it certainly wasn't his, so why wasn't I making more of an effort.

Still smarting from the bullying I'd been getting toward the end of during my last two years at school, I wasn't mad-keen to go back to there for the "duffers year" to retake the entire 11th year and improve on the quite reasonable results I'd got, that weren't quite what the sixth form Head of Year had expected of me, to get me into their A-level programme.

In retrospect, I think they just didn't want to be reminded of that former star player who should have scored straight A's and A star's that would have looked great on the school performance tables but cried off sick.

Quite a few of my friends were going to the local college, as they couldn't stand another year of our excellent school and its strict policies on absolutely everything, but my Dad considered the local Further Ed college a total non-starter, and said it was the embarrassment of the almost pointless "Duffers year" at school, or nothing.

I tried to explain but he shouted me down—quite simply, if I wasn't going back to that excellent school in September to try again and make good on my lack of effort and commitment with the children a year younger than me, there was nothing to stop me growing up and going out to work straight away, was there?

During the first weeks of that summer, I did make a few feeble efforts to look for jobs, but I really wanted to go to college. I had a couple of temporary shop jobs, but my occasional bouts of sickness meant that by late September, I was still unemployed.

Out of pique, Dad dragged me to the customer services desk of the supermarket on the nearby council estate my parents very occasionally shopped at, and asked if they had any jobs going.

"Yes," said the lady, "It just so happens that we do." She gave me an application pack. I left it on the table at home and started to complete it, asking Mum where it had gone after it had been removed from the kitchen table for that evening's tea. She wasn't sure.

It was with a real sense of shock when a week later I received a letter thanking me for my application, and inviting me in for an interview. I showed Mum the letter and she was just as surprised.

"I filled it in, seeing as you didn't," said Dad with smile with a hint of his limitless supply of disappointment.

"I was about halfway thr..." I began. He cut me short with a sigh at my lack of commitment.

"It wasn't difficult. After all, you don't have any qualifications or experience, do you?" he added with a snap and raised eyebrows.

I told him that I was filling it in, but had only stopped as Mum had started laying the table. He rolled his eyes and shook his head at me as he had done for most of my life, as if my failing to complete this task might have an impact on national security.

SI went to the interview. Mum was pleased about it and her usual parental 'don't mess with me' look wasn't needed. I put on a dark blue jacket and skirt I'd bought for a wedding that summer, and there were some raised eyebrows when I presented myself to the customer services desk.

The supermarket was on the edge of a large council estate, but the parking was free and plentiful. The prices were cheaper than the shops in our area, it had a very cheap café and my parents went there for the cheap petrol and for some of the homewares at certain times of the year.

Far from the "sit smartly, look confident but not too confident, think about what you are saying and always have a few questions" interview technique we'd all been taught to expect, I was shown to a shift manager who was talking to me as he lifted trays of soft drinks from a pallet onto a shelf and tearing off the plastic coverings with a box ripper.

It lasted about four minutes and finished with him asking, 'when can you start?'

*****

I was no stranger to my Mum's "don't mess with me" look; both of my parents were quite strict and rather old fashioned in their manner with both me and my sister. My sister was younger than me by two years, and with the benefit of hindsight, was able to learn from many of my mistakes.

Neither of them ever hit me, and I was always the one that got "the look" from her, while Dad would adopt another look: one of a severe disappointment, almost betrayal, that now makes me feel quite angry.

If he'd only done it while I was an menstruating adolescent, I wouldn't have minded, but it started pretty much as soon as I started primary school. Actually it was as soon as I became a little human being, as soon as there was something about me he could be disappointed about.

As soon as my sister Karen cottoned on that she could earn Dad's attention and his very limited praise for it, she started to join in.

We had been really close once, best friends to the exclusion of other friends, but the more recognition and attention it brought her, the more she did it. Eventually, as she headed for her teens, she began creating instances and circumstances that she would report, giving my Dad a "I'm really sorry but..." look that was almost as disappointed as his.

It should have been, she did spend a good ten years working on it, after all, and it soon got to the point that I didn't respond to questions or even wish to get involved in any discussion with her, as I could almost tell that it would end with her innocently wandering off, then a short time later, her dropping into the conversation in the living room whatever thing it was she'd asked me and me getting the look from Dad.

She would back out of the room smiling, waiting outside in the hallway for Dad's response to whatever shit she had created. This was only stopped when my older cousin happened to be around and watched the whole thing.

We were at a barbecue at my wonderful Aunt Polly and Uncle Frank's house, and me and my cousins were having a laugh about current events, life or whatever —something we didn't often get to do at our house; after all life was serious and "the establishment always knew best."

When my lovely sister had enough of an audience she began her exposé, stopped only at the crescendo when our older cousin Joanna told my parents and the rest of the audience what had actually happened, Karen's part in the whole thing and added, "Remind me not to get on your wrong side, Karen. You're a really nasty bitch when you want to be".

It was Karen's turn to get both "looks" from both parents, and we were swiftly bundled out of the party and home in a grim and angry silence, with me, the original victim, getting it from all three. Karen and I didn't really speak nicely to each other for the best part of a year, but her baiting of me did stop.

Her hormones came along not that long after my delayed ones, and were of course, mostly painless. After her "nasty bitch" incident at the party, she realised that her best revenge was to stand back watching, just throwing the occasional coal into Dad's already-lit critical fires, often very quietly finding a reason to drop into the conversation that her period had come and gone and she'd "barely noticed." To make it worse for every poor result I'd ever had, she'd always had a great one.

Suffice it to say, she was never escorted to the local supermarket to get a job the summer after her GCSE exams, which were only slightly better than mine I would find out later.

*****

As Karen headed into her tenth year, I turned up for my real first day's work. I was given a "full induction," which lasted the morning, shown around the store and after the lunch break, was given two pairs of black trousers, four shirts, a quilted waistcoat and fleece jacket, and a badge that announced I was 'Jaime' and was happy to help anyone that needed it.

I was good with people and quite quick to learn, and I was put to work on checkouts first; it was boring, but I got to talk to lots of people, even though I did have the same conversation at least forty or fifty times a day.

Most people were nice, while some weren't. Some didn't speak, while some spoke too much and some even swore. Being the big shop on the big estate, I had a few people whose plastic didn't work in my tills, and instantly that became my fault; I'd call a supervisor and they would try the same and if it still didn't work, the looks I got still suggested that it was still somehow my fault, and I would watch my back when I walked home in case one of those angry people was waiting for me outside.

I was one of the fastest on the tills, but each week head office would send through more advice and guidance about how "we could all be JUST a little bit quicker," and however quick we were, a few weeks later, there'd be more advice and more questions about our "efficiency" and they presented us with our 'items per minute' that went across the scanner.

Although I was one of the fastest, being the youngest, I got the most grief from the grown-up supervisors, especially the most junior ones that were only five or six years older than me and were too scared to nag the older ladies and gents, and just saved it up for me.

I really began to hate the check-outs and asked for a transfer to the crowds of workers who filled the shelves; more physical, but it didn't involve me talking about the weather and the price of something, or the lack of something, getting sworn at because working for the company, the lack of tinned guava halves, frozen kiwi fruit and the price of fillet steak was obviously my fault and something I could deal with or feed back straight to board of directors.

My speed and efficiency was actually the problem; I was good, too good, in fact, and I watched while my colleagues on the tills were rotated around the store as was company policy. I wasn't, and day after day after day I sat there and did my thing, getting more and more pissed off. I asked my shift supervisor for the 7th or 8th time, and she promised me I'd only be on the tills for a few more weeks, but seven months on I was still there.

After a shouty one-sided row that ended with an entire trolley of stuff being tipped across the aisle because all three of the lady shopper's cards were refused, people were walking away as she shouted, but then as the threats and the food started to fly, colleagues were suddenly there again. Once she'd stormed off, escorted by a couple of the older lady checkout operators, after a couple of minutes in the ladies room to cool down, I asked the 'collar and tie' shift manager about a my 'overdue move,' as that had shaken me up a bit.

He told me that the best thing was to get straight back to it, like falling off a horse.

I'd already been told he seriously lacked people skills, and it was quite evident. He looked at his watch and simply said for me to get back on my till, and that the security guards were always around.

I said that they hadn't been around when she was calling me all of the names under the sun and threatening to 'have me' -- in fact it was a sixty-year-old checkout lady who appeared at my side.

He looked around, and of course the elderly man in the white shirt and black tie couldn't be seen at all.

"According to Lauren!" he said looking across to the next till was, "it was just a bit of bad language!"

"She threatened me, she got right in my face! Ask Heather!" Heather was the older lady that had come to rescue.

"Checkouts get threatened al the time, man-up and grow a pair why don't you!" he snapped again.

I made to open my mouth but he wasn't having that. He shouted out that I was employed to do what I was told, and there were plenty of other thick and useless unemployable seventeen-year-old kids like me out there with no qualifications who wouldn't moan about helping out the customers that were paying my wages.

I was about to angrily point out that I actually had more than him, but that was evidently wrong and it really didn't help; he must been having had a bad day already and took a deep breath, shook his head and let go a rant at me like I was a ten-year-old, suggesting that I got back my frigging till and shut-up 'effing bitching about everything, unless I actually wanted to be unemployed, then he could arrange that, and I could hang around on street corners until I got myself 'effing pregnant and get my first council flat that he would 'effing pay for.

Far more wound up now, he completed the scene by telling me he was sick of 'effing snowflake millennials who couldn't or wouldn't get on with their 'effing jobs, and wouldn't know an 'effing hard days' work if it bit them on the 'effing arse. He stalked away growling and grumbling, and was in a foul mood for the rest of the day, causing some of the other checkout assistants to throw snide 'thanks for that Jaime...' at me.

I thought I was out of a job for sure, and went to the bathroom again and cried, something I hadn't done since before my exams. I'd lose my job and Dad would have another reason to be disappointed in me for.

It turned out that a husband-and-wife couple the other side of a display rack had listened to his entire rant and had written it down almost word for word. The couple were retired professionals, one a management executive and the other a personnel manager, and to make things worse they were also shareholders and rather than just grumbling and walking away or asking to speak to a manager, they went straight to the top and reported it to the Company Head Office via a huge email.

It went from Shareholder Support to Corporate Public Relations, then to Corporate Human Resources, to the area manager, down to the store general manager, each reading about how the little girl (Jaime) had been sworn at and abused, then threatened by an irate and violent non-paying customer while her colleagues looked on, then reduced to tears a second time 'by that brute' and they had never witnessed something so disgraceful in this day and age.

However bad or short-tempered my team manager might have been, the general manager did realise and recognise his ability to get work out of his shift, so put him to work with the night shift: the same kind of work with more pay, but less opportunity for interfering customers to overhear his particular style of 'to the point' management.

I was asked what 'the incident' had been about by the scary lady from our store HR team, and I told her, embarrassed that I'd caused a truck-load of shit but did explain I 'just wanted to come off of the checkouts for a while, like everyone else had and he shouted at me', I even added a rather pathetic 'sorry' at the end.

The HR lady smiled what I took to be a mirthless smile, saying, "all done sweetie," pausing only to tuck her pen into the bun of hair perched on her head, before walking away with a superior tilt of her head and a look at me, the trouble-making kid, that spoke volumes, or so I thought.

The new work was hard; just as boring but not overly taxing on the brain or receiving anything like the amount of grief the checkouts received. The real bonus came when I became good friends with the ladies and the old boys on the shift, more than with the grumpy clique on the tills.

They were all mostly lovely and I mixed well, being regularly but gently ribbed because I was so well-spoken, young, sweet and single, but their parental instincts towards me won out and it was like I'd inherited a dozen extra parents and grandparents. It was just a shame they seemed to like me more than my own did.

They watched me and warned me off a few of the boys and younger drivers, and occasionally recommending young men of their own, but I stayed single. Nice girls didn't get involved with boys, that was how I'd been raised at least.

*****

The best change in my life came when I sat in the lunchroom, and taking the large amount of Ibuprofen I'd just bought, just as I'd been recommended by my doctor two years before.

"I wouldn't take that many, sweetheart," Trudie, one of the white-overalled pharmacy assistants I'd gotten to know, said. "They will mess your stomach up."

"It's for my period pains," I said, smiling through the twinges I knew that would turn into agony in the next couple of days. I already had a spare pair of panties and work trousers in my locker for the regular accidents I had, even with maxi pads, "My GP said I'd get away with it once or twice a month."

"You're taking that many brufen for... for period pain?" the older lady said.

"Yeah," I said, "I've suffered severe dysmenorrhoea since I was 15," I put a hand back to my tummy, "It's misery." I forced back the emotion I was feeling at the pain I knew was to come, that I'd have to work through the next day and the inevitable 'well it's just period pain, we all get it' from Trudie.

She narrowed her eyes. "Come with my honey," she said downing the last of her mug of tea and reaching out a hand to me.

Five minutes later I was chatting with the pharmacist who suggested that a CHC (combined hormonal contraceptive) could help ease my symptoms considerably.

"I can't prescribe them for you, but if you speak to your GP..."

"Or the Contraceptive Clinic at the Hospital on Tuesday or Thursday evenin's," added Trudie.

"Or the clinic," nodded the Pharmacist, "but I'd be minded to speak to your GP if it's health related."

I got home and with my Mum away at a church meeting, I rang the GP number in the phone book and asked for an appointment, explaining to the receptionist what it was about.

"Would you prefer a female doctor?"