Have you ever tried Jager and Coke? You should. Few kinds of alcohol merit the term "delightful" as sincere praise but since pioneering this concoction myself, I struggle to find another word to use. Jager and Coke is essentially a party in liquid form - well, if your kind of party comprises of staggering behind the cashier desk at 10am the next morning, hands still shaking as you enter the digits and watching the shop go round and round. It might not be yours, but apparently it's mine.
Speaking of "shop", that's a thing now - "I was looking for a job and then I found a job". No longer are my weekends spent sitting at my desk in gross cotton knickers, desperately searching for the right words to finish a short story I should have realistically abandoned months ago. Instead, I have found myself working in the starry industry of retail, namely Superdrug. Indeed, these days I'm a small, thoroughly unimportant cog in the corporate machine, offering you beauty cards and Star Buys before you can mutter "I'm actually in, like, a bit of a rush?". I exist exclusively in the backdrop of your retail experience; literally, I am the poorly paid extra in the movie of your life. But in turn, you are an extra in mine; the difference being, your movie probably doesn't have any Jager and Coke in it. Are you convinced yet? Have you jumped out of bed to run to the nearest bar? I hope so.
But the honest truth is that I'm actually a bit shit at my job; no good on the tills, that is. Truly, I take the "pro" out of "proletariat"- ask my boss, who just this weekend exclaimed in surprise "I was just thinking, you've not had to buzz for me for around two hours now!"
Because, well, yes - that's an unusually long time for me to not need help. It's all the numbers and the adding up and the rounding up and rounding down. Christ, I'm an English student, numbers may as well be riddles. The place might be called Superdrug but I surely bring nothing Super to the whole situation. Should be called Sorrydrug for the amount of times I have to mutter it, embarrassed and resisting the urge to mention my A Level grades in a last ditch attempt to prove that my brain is not totally filled with Maryland cookies and the Kardashians.
And it isn't, it really isn't. I also successfully applied for a marketing internship for a jewellery business, which is a genuinely wonderful, worthwhile way of spending my only day off. I sit in front of a laptop next to a kitten called Beau and a bag of Haribo, scanning through social media and planning blog posts and marketing strategies. I have no witty tales to share from the experience so far but it is massively fulfilling. On Friday I walked out of the office with eyes twinkling like the necklaces they sell, already looking forward to what next week might bring.
Hmm, other things?
I went on a terrible date with a terrible boy in the name of journalism. That was pretty crap, but like all those with taste buds, I love Irn Bru sorbet and would probably endure hellish things to get some of it - and 800 words, of course. I also went on OkCupid as half-research, half-"if it's good enough for Anya..." and ended up speaking to numerous guys, some of whom live infinitely more interesting sounding lives than me, some of whom need to acquire something close to actual lives. I booked a holiday to Berlin. I smiled and laughed my way through a horrible time of the year, because that fixes most things - or so it seems.
Just like my dad fixed my broken window, so I will no longer lie awake at night and be forced to wonder if I'm taking on too much, if my hair is too dark or my current outlook on uni even darker.
No comments:
Post a Comment