A Proper Job

What a week! I started at the roadhouse on Monday. I assumed it would be a pretty straightforward job, maybe half an hour of learning how to use the touch-screen register and where the diesel drive-off shotgun is located, but no. Because it's part of the Coles Express supermarket chain, they have training and Customer Policies. Unlike the Overlander, at this roadhouse you are expected to (a) turn up for work and (b) not be drunk and naked in the bushes out the back.

First you have to do something like 79 online training modules about things like how to deal with robberies ("Do not attempt to wrestle the gun out of the robber's hand or manhandle them to the floor as this may endanger the customers"), how to react calmly to a massive LPG gas leak & explosion, memorise the 276 different discount combo deals that are on offer, then learn how to flog these (or as we say "upsell") to the tired, roadweary customers who really just want a toilet, a pie and somewhere to abandon the 4 children fighting and throwing up in the back of the family car.

The hardest part is the customers. People come in and say things like "I'd like a pack of Winfield Red no Blue no hang on I'll go ask Mum, can I get the sausage roll deal if I pay for the fuel separately but still get the flybuys points on my husband's card if I bring it in later oh here I forgot this pack of gum YOU KIDS PUT THOSE TIM TAMS BACK oh bugger OK add the TimTams, no, yes, how much is that and do you take these obscure home-made looking ATM cards from the Russian People's Market Bank? By the end of the day you can't remember your own name and all the butttons on the touch screen seem to say things like "Glerp", "Krutzgl" and "Wheee!".

But it's a good job - very organised, nice people, and I get to meet everyone in town. After the insanity of training it becomes more manageable, I'll just be doing twenty odd hours a week, which is good because I have to get home in time to stop Gary from randomly festooning the shed ceilings with kilometres of 12-volt wire (he's on a mission, but it's not a very tidy mission). At the moment it looks like we are having an old-fashioned 1880's electricity party, perhaps with a bit of radium-handling and chloroform fun thrown in for good measure.