Page 7 of Hearts of Stone

“Clean up on aisle five,” I said down the PA microphone. “Clean up on aisle five.”

After a night of paranormal hijinks and many wines and pizza slices, there was nothing like a child getting sick in a supermarket aisle to bring you rocketing back down to earth. Thankfully my days of being on the end of the mop handle were over and I nodded to one of the girls gratefully as she hustled down the aisle with a bucket in hand.

“Did the kid projectile vomit green pea soup?” I turned around to see Daniel had sidled up. “Did their head turn around and around? Did they start cackling in a really deep voice and calling for the Dev—” I pressed a finger to his lips and then scowled at him, looking warily across the floor at the customers slowly pushing their shopping trolleys around. “—il.” He finished the word as soon as I pulled my finger away and then grinned madly. “I don’t have any holy water or a cross, but there was this hot seminary student who filled me with the holy spirit.”

“Oh my god…” I said, between gritted teeth. “Shut the hell up.”

“Or… and stick with me on this, we could go back to Gargoyle City.” He started to sing and swivel his hips around sinuously. “Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty—”

“Stop.” He jerked away when I tried to physically stop him. “Seriously, Daniel. Jackie will make me write you up again and—”

“Jade?” We both spun around to find the store manager, Jackie, standing there. She was an older woman with iron grey hair and a no-nonsense attitude. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she took in the sight of the two of us. “Can I have a word?”

“You’re i-in trou-ble…” Daniel muttered under his breath in a sing-song manner, as I pulled away from him.

“Yeah, of course. What’s up, Jackie?”

She gestured for me to follow her. When we went to her office, I knew whatever she had to say was serious. And so, when she instructed me to shut the door, I did so with every muscle locked down. Office, closed door: that meant she had something to tell me she didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“Take a seat,” she said, gesturing to the chair with thinning upholstery on the other side of her desk and I did so quickly.

“What’s this—?”

“The store is getting automated,” she said, with little fanfare. She sat back in her office chair and leaned her elbows on the arm-rests, lacing her fingers across her stomach. “That means we’re looking at cutting some positions.”

My back went ramrod straight; my heart pounding in my ears. More and more stores were installing self-serve checkouts, a cost-cutting exercise reducing the need for staff down to just one person, who was supposed to run around and see to all the errors that inevitably happened as people scanned their own groceries.

“A lot of positions, actually.” Jackie’s lips thinned. She leaned forward, picked up a piece of paper from the desktop, andhanded it to me. I looked down at it with a frown. “I need you to have a chat with each of the people on the list and then…”

She had a whole lot more instructions, but they all seemed to fade away. I was running my eye down the list to see who’d got the axe, feeling sick at seeing way too many people I’d worked long and hard with. I wondered what they would do with this sudden news, what that would mean for them and their families. I sucked in a breath, ready to ask just that, when…

Daniel Ross.

His name was written about two thirds of the way down the list, and I couldn’t bring myself to read any more. I looked up at her.

“Daniel…?”

“I know you two are close,” she said, with a sigh. Then she shook her head. “I told you not to do that, didn’t I? We’ve got a tough job and it only gets harder when we start making friends.”

I didn’t bother looking at her any longer, instead looking back at the list to finish scanning the names of all the people I’d need to talk to. I skimmed down another couple of names. Isabel, who’d had a baby only six months ago and was just off maternity leave. Nelly, who’d quit university for the meantime and was trying to make some money before going back. And me. My name was there, too, clear as day, almost at the bottom. I looked back up at Jackie, narrowing my eyes.

“So, this is easier for you, because we’re not friends?” I asked, seething.

“Look, Jade—” she said, leaning forward.

“No, it’s fine.” I got to my feet, feeling like every cell in my body was quivering as adrenalin pumped through me. Working at a supermarket had never been my dream. There was nothing wrong with it as a job, except for the way people treated you.

People assumed you were replaceable, expendable, not worthy of respect, because your job was so ‘easy’. If it was soeasy, why was it always so hard to find long term staff? Dealing with pushy customers or demanding ones, people who openly stole shit off the shelves, and the guys who refused to look for a single thing themselves, assuming you were their unofficial personal shopper. We were an essential fucking service and no one seemed to recognise that. But why would the general public do that, when our own employer didn’t?

“I’ll let people know,” I said.

“At the end of their shifts, please, Jade,” Jackie said, with a warning look.

“Sorry, Jackie, I don’t think I can sit on important news like this.”

“Jade…” Jackie jumped to her feet. “Jade, I know you’re angry…” Oh, she had no idea. “But the writing’s been on the wall for some time. Automation is in, people are out.”

And as a result, theft was rife, with people scanning avocados as carrots, or just walking off without paying, while the distracted team member was dealing with something else. I didn’t even care about that with the way the economy was going.

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