Littersweet Symphony

Wayne had called a meeting, first thing on a Saturday morning. We were all in, Alex, Steve and I, ready for a busy day ahead. Well, all us were ready, bar Steve.

‘Steve, what are you doing?’ Wayne asked.

‘Making a brew. D’you want one?’

‘The first thing I said when we came in was that we’re only going to be a few minutes.’

‘Yeah, but we all like a brew in the morning, don’t we? Tea? Coffee anyone?’

Steve was holding out two mugs that he’d snatched from the centre of the huge table we were all sat at. We hardly ever came into that room, it’s mainly used for managers to chat in and show their overhead projections. They would drink tea and coffee, but now was not the time.

‘Put the mugs down. We’ll only be a few minutes.’

Steve sighed heavily and threw himself down on the chair. The room was the first room I went in when I first started working here. There were about 12 of us, all smiling broadly, being over polite and playing team building exercises. Even then we had tea and coffee, we weren’t even fully employed then.

‘Right…’ Wayne sat down with us. ‘Basically, we’ve had a few complaints.’

Steve burst out into, what looked like a mix laughter, excitement and childish panic that startled us all. Even Wayne had to re-adjust his glasses. Steve’s face stretched out as he glared over the table at Alex.

‘Ohhh busted!’

Wayne and I looked at each other in confusion whilst Alex looked down at the table, red faced, fiddling with a bit of leftover paper.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘Who’s busted?’ Wayne added.

‘Alex.’ Steve held his mouth and nodded.

‘Steve, leave it.’ Alex managed to say.

‘Take your own advice, mate!’

‘What should he have left?’

‘His fiancé.’

‘Shut up, Steve.’

‘Tell me, Alex.’ Wayne said.

Alex didn’t tell us. The person who did was probably, in Alex’s mind, the worst person to tell the story.

‘Well, Fran and him took their break at the same time the other day.’ Steve giggled. ‘They met up for a little bit of…you know…’

Being English, Steve couldn’t actually say what he meant. The idea of sex is something to be sniggered at, of course. So, when Steve left his sentence unfinished, he rounded it off by scrunching up his lips and pushing them up to his nose. That’s just one of many actions used to describe sex in this country. Some raise their eyebrows or the standard pelvic thrust, to fill in for the simple words no one could ever say, in fear of their grandparents overhearing.

‘It wasn’t in the toilet or anything.’ Alex said, still looking down. ‘It was in our stock room.’

‘Oh, that’s fine then!’ Steve leaned back and chuckled.

Alex and Fran in our stock room. I go in there every week for the shopping bags. I felt dirty.

‘You and your fiancé had sex in the stock room?’ Wayne asked him.

He said the dreaded word. Finally we could start talking like sensible adults again.

‘Not sex…. just a bit of…you know…’

And we were back. Back to childish euphemisms and ludicrous physical actions. Alex’ physical action nearly make Steve explode with laughter.

‘You know that’s wrong, Alex. But that’s not what the complaints were about. We’re getting complaints from the shot next door.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Steve held out his arm. ‘Is that it? “You know that’s wrong”? Aren’t you going to do more?’

‘Like what?’ Wayne stared at Steve from above his glasses.

Steve couldn’t think of anything. What is the punishment for a head of department to give a colleague that’s been caught doing a whatsit with his fiancé? Oh, even I was doing it, now!

Next-door was a hardware shop about the size of our supermarket. Basically, if you’ve got an empty house you can go there and get sorted. Just like IKEA but when you leave, you still have a working credit card and money in your pocket.

‘Their trolley pushers have were complaining that we leave our trolley’s in the bays.’

‘They’ve got their own trolley pushers?’ Steve asked.

‘Yes, they’ve got trolleys. They need people to push them.’

Seemed to make sense. We just hadn’t noticed them before. It turned out they’d only started a few weeks ago, going outside every hour or so to clean up. Steve accused them of being lazy, but with three colleagues and about fifteen trolleys between them, there was hardly enough work to go around.

‘So, from now on keep the far end clear for their trolleys.’

As we all knew, the far end bay was officially Steve’s Zone. But Steve didn’t moan. It was a chance for him to do less work that he did before, this time at the hands and the approval of Wayne.

Alex and I filled up the bags on the checkouts. It was around 9am and as the colleagues trickle in, so do the customers. I made Alex get the bags from the stockroom alone, of course. I may never go in there again, maybe after sterilization, I didn’t want a lot of details as to why him and Fran got up to some hyjinx, just why they did it.

‘So, what the hell were you thinking?’

‘We were just bored.’

Remind me the next time I’m bored. I normally start reading a book or look for jobs on the Internet. Sounds a bit boring, now.

‘And how did Steve know?’

‘He came in to hide in there whilst we where...you know...'

Oh, for God's sake, just say it!

'He does it a lot. It’s his place.’

‘Sounds like your place now.’ I said.

‘He swore he’d never tell anyone.'

'You just got carried away, then?

'Yeah, especially when she found the litter picker.'

As he said the words, his eyes lit up, as if someone else was speaking for him, and he had no control over it. I didn’t want to know what he and Fran had done, but the mental image was now burnt in my mind. I pretended I didn’t hear it.

‘I suppose he didn’t really tell anyone. He thought you got busted, in his words.’

‘I know.’ Alex hung his head low. 'He didn't see us with the litter picker, though.'

We finished stocking up the bags and headed outside. Steve was stood by the trolley bay, in my zone. My Zone. It wasn’t his zone, or our zone.

‘What are you doing, Steve? In my zone?’

‘Looking at him.’

Steve nodded over to his old zone, at the trolley bay that now occupied the D.I.Y shop trolleys. Stood by the bay was a face I recognised. A scruffy man in a uniform that looked like it had been stolen. Clean and fresh as opposed to his face, which was leathery with long greying hair around it, and a beard which…I knew this man. From the homeless shelter. The brummy ex-rocker who stole Grace off Steve. What was his name? Oh, this is going to kill me! Don’t you hate it when this happens!

‘Lads! Good morning!’ He bellowed over to us, waving his hand. ‘It’s me. Brian!’

Brian, that’s the one! I’ll sleep tonight. We all waved back, bar Steve. The burn from Grace still fresh on his mind, of course. How the hell had he gotten as job? Like i said, he wasn't wearing any shoes two weeks ago! His CV must be amazing, or full of lies. After all, my CV is full of lies. According to that I'm fluent in French. I'm never going to work over there so it doesn't matter. But Brian must have really pushed it, making up a home address for one.

 At that second, two other lads walked over to him in the same uniform. One of around my age, with the same brown hair and look as if he didn’t want to be there. The other was a lot shorter, with glasses and short dark hair. We must have spent the next ten minutes eying each other up. God knows what it must have looked like to anyone on that car park. Maybe a mirror image of ourselves. Brian looked a lot like Steve; I knew that on the night at the homeless shelter. Three trolley pushers looking at three trolley pushers. It was like a shit episode or Dr Who, had we morphed into workers from a different shop? I was about try and lighten the mood with more conversation between both camps, when Wayne walked over to us.

‘Right lads, let’s split up. I want a litter pick doing. Who’s doing it?’

Me and Alex looked at each other. There was no way I was touching that litter picker. Oh the endless disgusting possibilities that stick held. No way.

‘Do you want to do it, Steve?’ I said. ‘Since you’ve no zone anymore?’

‘Yeah, go on then.’ He sighed.

Wash your hands, Steve. Before and after. Just in case.