Am I Right or Am I Right? Read Online Free PDF

television. She just dusts the screen occasionally. But I was excited. We couldn’t afford the movie channels, but even so, my viewing options had increased enormously. The first night, I sat down with the remote control and two pounds of popcorn. It was terrific. It was hypnotic. Four hours of surfing later, I knew that instead of four channels of undiluted sewage, I had thirty-five to choose from. There was a documentary on the history of lead miners’ wives in the early twentieth century, an American soap opera in which no one could act but everyone’s hair was immaculate, a sports channel featuring international synchronized tiddlywinks, and a shopping channel where, apparently, viewers were scrambling for their credit cards to buy ghastly jewelry at inflated prices.
    And then, like a gold nugget in a bucket of diarrhea, there was Discovery. Did you know the male seahorse gets fertilized, carries the babies to term,
and
looks after the offspring? The female, I imagine, goes to the pub with her mates to watch football on a plasma screen.
    I was hooked.
     
    It would be an exaggeration to say my first evening at work was an unqualified success. But the near-hospitalization of a customer strikes me as an accident that could happen to anyone. Nonetheless, the incident was not one I would have chosen to have witnessed by my supervisor. On the plus side, though, there was Jason….
    Okay. I’ll just tell you what happened.
    I fronted up to Crazi-Cheep at seven-thirty, half an hour before my shift was due to start. The timing was fortunate because I had to get a uniform and suffer a twenty-minute induction on what the job entailed. This was delivered by my supervisor, who, I was dismayed to learn, was none other than the gum-chewing bump on a log who had ignored me on my first visit. Her name was Candy, which struck me as appropriately lightweight. She ran through the basics in a monotone, her eyes never making contact with mine.
    Basically, I wasn’t going to be operating a checkout until I had proved myself stacking shelves. I got the impression that being on a register was considered the dizzying height of career ambition—not something I could even aspire to until I had three degrees and fourteen years’ experience. I tried to look suitably serious, as if being promoted to the checkout was a distant goal, like winning an Oscar for best supporting actress. Not that my expression made any difference—my face was a nonstick surface as far as Candy was concerned.
    I was given a checked, sack-like uniform. It hung dispiritedly just below my knees. Then we went to the warehouse area behind the aisles. I must admit I had always wondered what was behind those big plastic curtains, which shows you what a sad life I’ve led. Without wishing to destroy the romantic dreams of those who’ve been similarly curious, the answer is: rows and rows of toilet paper, pasta, and jars of stir-fry paste.
    My job for the evening was to check stock on the shelves and replenish any items that were dwindling. I was hoping to get a pricing gun so that I could go around yelling, “Give me all the money from the registers or I’ll mark down everything in the store.” But it seems they don’t use price stickers anymore.
    Anyway, I set to with enthusiasm. Before long I discovered the shelves were woefully low on baked beans. I tell you, it was a good job they had employed me. I was right on the case. A woman with a mission. No customer was going to leave Crazi-Cheep with a cold lump of disappointment stemming from a fruitless search for cheddar-flavored baked beans.
    I loaded one of those carts that always seem to get in the way when you’re a customer and headed for aisle eight. The front left wheel spun at crazy angles and the whole apparatus had an alarming drift to the right. It was all I could do to avoid crashing into grocery displays just asking for annihilation. Finally, though, I lumbered to a stop halfway along aisle eight and