Old time stories :)

Posting lots tonight huh :P Music does it to me I think. I could be playing Monopoly Tycoon but then I couldn't listen to music and I'm really in a music mood tonight.

So, the subject. I used to work at BiLo (supermarket for those who don't know) as a checkout chick. The person who trained me was a chick called Selena. I can't even describe to you how much Selena meant to me way back. I was scared shitless being that BiLo was my first job and it was an important one - add money handling to any job and its always important. I remember being raked over the coals for somehow losing about $22.

Anyways, Selena used to do everything from frontend (checkout chick) to bakery, to fruit and veg, to nightfill. Since I used to always be on for close, I was always around at 6:30 - my shifts were 4-6:30pm most days and cos I couldn't work less than 2.5 hrs a day, I was pretty much the last person there even if we finished cleaning out the frontend early. That meant that I was under Selena's wing and I helped her and her boyfriend at the time, Michael from fruit and veg, to clean up F&V. One day I got introduced to Alison who was one of Selena's mates I guess on nightfill. I don't remember ever having seen her before that day but she'd been there a while :)

So yeah, I met Alison and kinda knew her from then - waved at her every now and then and that's about it. So after our store had a refit there were some security issues - mostly that we used to have most of the registers at one end of the store and one mostly unsupervised area where we tried to have one person on register to kind of spread the crowd during busy periods. Unfortunately during quiet periods, it meant basically being alone.

So in late September/early October 1994 we had the first of our cash snatches. Basically a robbery where someone forcefully opens the register and steals cash. Traumatic at the best of times, but you wonder what's going on when its the middle of the day with lots of people around. My good friend Karen was the first. She was a wreck and took time off over it - wouldn't go back on register again. Looking back, I don't think she ever did either. The second one was Vanessa. Now, Vanessa was a very dramatic person but for someone that dramatic, she coped very well. Obviously very upset and stuff, but she coped the best I think - almost straight back on register after some counselling.

October 22 1994 dawned and off I went to work as normal. Was a Saturday - not sure what shift I was doing, but I was there for the lunch rush and the 2pm lull. And I was on register 2 - up the unsupervised end. We were all pretty edgy about that end of the store because of the two other robberies and to be honest, Shona who was the manager that day didn't want to put me there, but she had no other registers free. She was on and off register 3, opposite me.. Mostly off though :) Just came back from lunch and I served a customer in a green tshirt .. the details are a little sketchy these days, but I remember he bought something and then said "hang on a sec" and grabbed some Orange TicTacs. I had my finger in my drawer cos I wanted to order more change and I remember being jacked off cos I just wanted to order my change :) Closed my drawer and put through his orange TicTacs. For those interested, they were 45c back then. He gives me a dollar coin and I get his 55c change at which point he rips my drawer open and starts madly trying to grab notes. Of course, the instinct I'm sure we all have is to protect money - ours or not. So I hit him. Hard and lots. And called him a f'ing C word. Lots :)

Not entirely sure how long the whole thing took but he ran off eventually with pretty much everything out of my drawer. I still had his 55c. I can remember yelling something obscene and throwing his money really hard on the floor, locking my register (god only knows why - there was nothing in it at that point!) and going up to Shona who was doing change orders for others. I said "Guess what". She looks at me: "What??". Me: "I just got robbed..". At this point I got "you're joking?!". Me: "No ... he had a green shirt on, he took everything .. ". I think I stopped coping right about there and she realised I wasn't joking cos I knew he had a green shirt on ;)

She took me out the back where I kinda sat in shock for a bit. I don't know entirely what happened for a while there. I sat in the lunchroom and then the police appeared. I couldn't stop shaking during my statement and they asked me if I wanted some scotch. I asked for a shotgun too ;) Then suddenly my parents were there - they'd been shopping in the store which struck me as really strange at the time but I welcomed the company. Then came the store manager, then came asset control people .. you name it. I had a few rubberneckers that wanted to know why I had been sitting in the lunchroom for most of the afternoon and it seemed to be the last straw for lots of people that there'd been a third robbery.

Later that week, I went back on register. And there was this guy who wasn't entirely there in the head if you know what I mean. He was just too close behind me when my drawer was open and it freaked me out. I completely lost it right there. By the time I got to the bakery section - maybe 10 metres away, I was most of the way through a panic attack and kinda semi-passed out in the bakery section. Alison was there from that moment on :) She took me into the lunchroom, calmed me down and was officially the most important person in my life by the end of that week.

I learnt lots from Alison, both about myself and about my family - Alison's like 6-7 yrs older than me. Been around the block a few times you might say. She supported me when I couldn't cope with work, family, school, friends .. you name it. Many a family argument over the time I spent with Alison. And I quote "why does someone 6 yrs older than you want to spend time with you?". Well gee, maybe she's my friend.

I wrote Alison a letter right before I left for Canada. The only thing I could really say was:
"I don't believe that anybody feels
The way I do about you now
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don't know how"

You might recognise those as lyrics from Wonderwall by Oasis. She hated Oasis ;) She bought the album the day after I left *grin*. Draw what you want from the lyrics - I won't say exactly what I was thinking or exactly how I felt, but suffice to say that whatever it was we had was long gone by the time I got back from Canada and I cried about that for a long time. Eventually I got over it and moved to Sydney and every wound I ever had was soothed by Renee :)

Even now I miss Ali big time. She has cancer now and has refused treatment for it. Last I heard the tumour was going down but that was a while ago now. I honestly thought I'd lost her a while back. Her phone was disconnected, her mum didn't return my call and I had no idea how to contact her except through Selena who now lives in London. So I did it that way :) Ali was fine but then I slacked off again and didn't contact her over xmas/new year like I intended. Its amazing how even after all these years, and all the years I haven't been close to her, I'd be devastated if anything happened to her.

Enough of my rambling..