Security Issues

Greetings, shoppers!  Here I am, blogging at you live from Colmart, where I have been given a rare half day off the air while security try to identify the source of a shrinkage crisis, meaning a group of swaggering primates who keep two-way radios holstered like pistols in their pants have commandeered my studio (well, closet) for their complex sting operation.  At least it’s keeping Coll, head of security and the Columbo of Colmart, busy and out of my face.

For those who don’t know, Colmart is the major supermarket in my neck of the woods.  It’s risen to the top of the Food Chain food chain by rebranding itself from a massive conglomerate to just another family corner shop – except, y’know, bigger.  Colmart’s employees are one big, happy family – kind of like the Mafia, but without the job security, and worse pension prospects.  My job as a Greeter is to make tannoy announcements aimed at disguising the relentless dreariness of the shopping experience behind a manic enthusiasm for mundanity.

This means I spend my day sitting in a five foot square annex to the security office, thinking of friendly and personal ways to tell customers that buying an extra pack of bog roll will significantly enhance their lives, and waiting for lunchtime or death, preferably death as there’s less chance of being collared by Coll at the exit.  I don’t know what ingenious little quasi-legal scheme of hidden cameras and planted RFIDs he’s concocted to take down the international shop-lifters’ conspiracy this time, but I know he’ll want to tell me all about it before I get through the door.

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