‘The Horrors of Kwiksave’ is a candid recollection of my memories working at Kwiksave (the now-defunct discount supermarket chain) as a 'Stock Lad'.
I wasted over FOUR years of my life in this maggot-infested hellhole and still occasionally wake up drenched in sweat after enduring a nightmare in which I am working there still.
Some of the names have been slightly changed simply to save my arse in case anyone takes offence at some of the details regarding my facts or opinions.
Many of the people mentioned are now dead as this happened so long ago, but their siblings are not.
This is the 'HIVE Special Edition' of a multi-part autobiographical story (with a little over-embellishment on some of the details) I posted on STEEM over 2 years ago.
It contains a LOT more detail and content than the original and will fill in many gaps that were missed the first time around.
Chapter One: A Prelude to the Best Job in the Land
Chapter Two: The Job Centre
Chapter Three: The Interview
Chapter Four: Christmas is Coming
Chapter Five: The Changing of the Blades
Chapter Six: The Staff
Chapter Seven: The Auxiliary Staff and The Load
'WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE BELOW'
Besides the authentic Kwiksave staff, there were a few other stores tagged on the main one with similar-sounding names.
So long as they did not compete with Kwiksave merchandise these other businesses were allowed to hold on to the coattails of the illustrious 'big store' and make a few quid for themselves.
I would guess that Kwiksave was charging them some extortionate fee for the renting privilege but as a lowly Stock Lad I was hardly privy to such information.
The Auxiliary Staff
’CarpetSave’ was at the front of the Kwiksave store and owned by a well-educated bloke named ‘Clive’ who was skinny, extremely tall, and walked with a permanent limp.
The ‘well-educated’ presumption was just that. His equally lanky girlfriend, Judith looked, dressed, talked like she was a member of the Royal Family, and did not even give scum like me a second glance.
Clive seemed to think of me as a nuisance, but he was never unkind. He also employed several other people, none of which appeared to do any work.
One was named ‘Mike’ and ran the upstairs branch of CarpetSave, if you can call it that.
Mike was possibly 19 or 20 and an extremely dopey character that I couldn’t seem to connect with. He spent most of his life sleeping as customers upstairs were an almost non-existent breed.
To gain access to the upper canteen I had to walk through ‘CarpetSave’, and Mike was almost always there, generally asleep with a line of drool running down his chin that dripped intermittently on to the floor.
The other staff member was named Iain and who would later become a stock lad himself. At this time he was a YOP (Youth Opportunities Programme) employee otherwise known as legal slavery (I will explain all of this in a later episode).
Clive named him ‘Boy’, and the name somewhat stuck. 'Boy' was a likable lad, and someone I would get to know a lot better in the years to come.
Clive has since retired and I have heard has sadly died due to a condition that could be related to his extreme height.
The comment in the article did make me laugh and is appropriate.
‘bought a pair of leather sofas there, one arm collapsed and the credit charges were high.’
I didn’t get to know any of the members of the LiquorSave booze store, as they never seemed to leave their little cabin and spent most of their time gassing about which bloke they had pulled and shagged the night before (from conversations I overheard when passing by).
They reminded me of a gang of desperate middle-aged female cackling vultures on steroids.
There was also a greengrocer's shop at the bottom end of the supermarket run by an aging man named 'Sid'.
I loved Sid as he was the only real person outside of the canteen I could talk to, and what's more, he hated Mort which was something we had in common.
I do regret annoying the fuck out of him by repeatedly screaming 'Sidddnnnneeeyyyyy' from the back-shop quite often to alleviate my frequent boredom. I could be a somewhat tormenting twat in my youth.
The Load
The 'Back-Shop' was an area where all the goods were kept. Generally pallets full of boxes that contained mostly non-perishable food.
Twice a week a huge arctic truck would arrive sporting the words ‘Kwiksave’ full of foodstuffs on pallets otherwise knows as ‘The Load’.
Mort, I, and the truck driver had to empty the contents which were stacked to the maximum and on pallets into the Back-Shop, aka the storage area.
The truck driver pulled the pallets on to the hydraulic lift with some manual 'wheels' which sank around 3 inches with a crunch due to the extreme weight, and skilfully turned it around 180 degrees, releasing the handle and pulling the wheels back into the truck interior.
Thinking about it, it was incredibly dangerous and done on a very busy 'A-Road', the arctic truck causing severe queues of cars to build up frequently as one lane was effectively blocked.
One false move by the truck driver was all that was needed.., that is the wheels go a little too far near the edge and the 6-feet high pallet contents would be falling on the nearest unlucky motorist, smashing the windscreen and decapitating the unfortunate driver.
Amazingly it never happened during my entire tenure at Kwiksave. Those truck dudes should be shown some respect and could do more than drive.
Mort had the most difficult job of all…, that is pressing a black button to raise or lower the hydraulic lift which left me to manually pull these massive pallets full of jam, beans, tin meats, peas, and whatever else alone.
'Hurry up, we haven't got all day you know', was the pet quote as he watched me, sweating profusely tugging at these dead weights of food with another set of wheels, the look of complete disdain very much apparent.
The Back-Shop was generally very untidy, never empty (as the loads were constantly arriving), and full of metal cages that contained flattened empty boxes.
As a Stock Lad, I had to rip up these boxes, flatten them, climb into these cages and jump up and down to compact them often.
To this day, I am extremely efficient at collapsing any kind of cardboard box, knowing where the weak spots are, and can compact them into a flat surface within seconds.
Another completely useless skill I picked up compliments of Kwiksave - Thanks.
To be continued...
Cover Picture is a combination of free sources from here and here, combined and edited with Luminar 4. Any unsourced images are my own.
Oh how true!
Whitchurch, my last store was in an old hotel building (very rare to see KS in a Purpose built store). Right on a busy road that was a hill as well, because of that the drivers union refused to allow the driver get involved in unloading, lazy twats.
Because of said hill often when one of my stock lads was swinging the pallet round onto the tail lift it would go arse over tit over the end resulting in several of us chasing after escaping cans of beans,whiskas cat food or other such items.
Health and Safety was non existent, and if I complained to the area manager about having to put up with shite like this he would always come back with, “ stop moaning I gave plenty of trainee managers who are looking for promotion’
Oh yeah? Well great that just means a whole case of red salmon is going in my boot after hours ( they were the best selling item in the pub).
Wankers
Haha, hilarious.., I never saw it happen.. and it would have been disastrous if it did!
When the Area Manager came (named Elton Welsby by us for some reason), Mort would start pretending to do some work, we didn't give a shit if he was there or not.
...and I got shit about eating damages... more on that later.., Im getting ahead of myself!
Love this series. I agree with @justinparke you do a very good job with characterisation! I particularly love Clive and Judith. I think we've all encountered a Judith in life.
Reminds me of a neighbour we had when I was a kid in the early 80's. We lived on a council estate but somehow our neighbour thought she was royalty. She was a cat breeder who was also oddly obsessed with America which was unusual in those days. So much so she named her two daughters Charla-Dee and Bobby-Jo. Even at the age of 7 or 8 I could tell she didn't like me playing with them, she made it quite obvious I was beneath her. I think she could easily have been best mates with Judith!
Thanks, @jacpl, I find these quite hard to write, more so than the UX posts. I haven't met a 'Judith' in a while, but I know the type and they still exist!
What can I say? At least Mort had a job to do rather than just hollering at you.
I drove a mail truck for a time, so put in time with the hydraulic lift gates. The company I worked for had good gates, but some of the other drivers weren't so fortunate...
The best was the places that had a loading dock. You could angle the lift gate and make gravity your friend. Only 2 of 8 stops on my route.
Another fun episode in KwikSave. Thank you!
He yapped a lot to the truck drivers as well as hitting the black button, does that count?
They could take a lot of weight but visibly move down when a huge pallet of stuff went on them. These antics would not be allowed in today's world!
I have some strong visualizations of some of these characters.
You’re a very good writer. Cheers.
Thanks @justinparke, appreciate the words!
YOP!!! Oh that takes me back, my brother started on a YOP. One of my mates started on a YTS shortly after. Tory buggers getting the poor to work for almost nothing!
I can honestly say I was never a YOP or YTS, it was frankly embarrassing to own up to such things. I worked with several at Kwiksave, most of them were quite dense. Hope your brother doesn't read this, I'm not trying to stereotype.
Oh don't worry. The stereotype was all too real. My brother is not the sharpest tool in the box!
I was never one either. In fact I took a succession of awful jobs to avoid any such nonsense but at least they were real jobs with real money!
It must have kept you fit at least. There's a whole world seems to go on in retail that I missed out on. I do remember playing with a pallet truck at my dad's work. Much amusement in raising it and standing on it whilst letting it down again. I can imagine the potential for injury whilst unloading trucks. Seems you survived though.
I was very fit, and remember coming home and crashing frequently. It was the only 'perk' I got, and if Mort could have taken that, he would.
My son has a job at Sainsbury's which may be a better version of what you did. He gets a staff discount card and that's a nice perk to have.
It's not the same as back then, @bingbabe gets a store discount card from Morribobs, and I have one too. I know Tesco offer their staff 15%, not sure about Asda. Mort would have made it so I had to pay 5% extra if he could!
Did you guys ever ride the pallet jack around like a scooter? I think I did that once or twice at K-Mart but got in trouble eventually. They can be a bit wonky to steer. Was there ever anything at the top of the store above where it says kwiksave or did they always just leave that empty and blank?
That would have been instant dismissal, Mort had eyes in the back of his head!
There was, a Kwiksave sign once!, then they moved to another part of town (way after me), and then went bust.
See, you could have spared yourself all that heartache and pain.