My New Calling...

Every Wednesday and Thursday, four hours of my precious young life are taken away and I'm kidnapped by a supermarket, a supermarket with an agenda: to educate their staff! That's right everyone, I'm getting a qualification in Retail!

It was around 8pm on a warm, autumnal evening. I was expecting my break. I'd worked over half my shift and I was getting a little bit dehydrated. Suddenly, my moment of triumph came - the close sign was carefully put on the end of my till in what felt like slow-motion. An epic moment in my time of need. Only, I was wrong to assume that this would be my salvation. I was told to head over to the public cafe (OF ALL PLACES, what's wrong with the staff room?) and was met by a middle-aged woman who was just a little bit over enthusiastic about everything. Her digital pen was the best thing since the filing cabinet in her office, her drive from Basingstoke to Southampton was "thunderous" and the news she was about to tell me would seemingly complete my life. It didn't.

She explained to me that ALL of the kids in school were doing a qualification in retail and that the only way to be "down with them" would be by doing one myself. She asked me for my GCSE results, I can barely remember them, it's been four gruelling years since the rosy days of school finished for me. Instead I offered her my seven A Levels. She was not interested. She wanted my GCSE's and she was going to get them regardless. I reassured her that to even be able to do the A Levels I chose I would need at least 5 A-C's. Nope, not good enough. In the end she settled for just Maths and English, but still not my English A Level. Just the lower qualification, to which she later said would not be relevant next year anyway.

By this point my brain had switched off (probably down to both boredom and the dehydration in equal measures) as she rambled on and on and on about the two different qualifications that I could achieve and how "hard" I would have to work to get them. The one thing that I made VERY clear was that I have too much on my plate already and that I was not prepared to do more work at home for something I don't even want. Ignoring this, she tried to throw me into an apprenticeship in retail, despite the fact that I told her that I was studying for an intensive degree in Journalism. I asked her to explain to me how I could apply retail to this entirely different subject. Her reply? "You can write about shops." Brilliant. Now I need a sodding qualification to even consider writing about... Shops. That's it I'm afraid, I just can't blog about getting a pint of milk any more. It's. Far. Too. Complica... Complic... Complicated.

As riveting as it may be if you're planning to slave your life away in a shop, this qualification simply is not for me. At the risk of sounding snobby, I hope my life has far better things in store for me than that. In fact, if I could hang up my apron tomorrow I almost certainly would, and I suppose a lot of my colleagues would too, but that's not the case, so instead I was enrolled on the new NVQ equivalent of this course as it's apparently "compulsory." Still, I'm not even going to put ten minutes into the crappy handbook I was given, I'd much rather invest my time in selling dolphin snow-globes. I can't see how a qualification in Retail is going to improve my quest to become a Superhero Journalist. It simply isn't worth my time.

Hours later, at half past eight, the woman stopped going on and let me go for my break. Head buzzing, I headed towards the back of the shop to the staff room. One thing you will notice whilst walking through the less-than-luxurious yet exclusive Staff Area, is that the walls are covered with slogans promoting teamwork. It's a little bit like The Office where you have a chubby little man who finds them hilarious. He's wrong, of course. What's so funny about a picture of a mountain with the words 'work together' randomly slammed underneath it? Not once have I heard David Attenborough describe how two mountains team up to help a hill reach it's full potential. Nor have I seen two rivers communicate with one another, not even about fish. This, more than anything else, exhibits what is wrong with working in a shop. They gee you up to attempt the impossible.

Take earning a promotion, for example. As a checkout operator the next step for me would be checkout supervisor, where after a shift at work you are expected to volunteer your own time to finish cleaning the department, unpaid. Glamorous. If this barrier doesn't break you, the next one definitely could: the position of checkout manager. Your job would be to organise the shifts of the entire department, dealing with holidays, illnesses, tramps and anything else that stood in the way of a factory-esque work rate. If that floats your boat you could suck up a tad and maybe, just maybe, become a duty manager. I'm not going to pretend to understand what they do, nor what the store manager does, but I'm sure it doesn't involve the helpful mountains and talking rivers that their posters suggest. None of this is for me.

A qualification in Retail is about as useful to me as a sari. I'm never going to use one or even need one. So what is the point of me throwing my time away when I could be sat here reading more Bertrand Russell, instead of whittling my time away moaning on this blog.