The Way We Live Now (2), or Never Ask How, Only Why

Another supermarket just yesterday, but it wasn’t Tesco’s. It could just as well have been another organisation, though - let me see now  ... your local council, for instance? I should warn you that this has a happy ending.

 

Lady at the ‘Baskets Only’ till: “I’m sorry, Sir, but you’re not a basket.”

Hang on, let’s start that again. Bloody pikeys.

 

Lady at the ‘Baskets Only’ till: “That’ll be £1.78, Sir. Would you like help packing?”

Myself: “I beg your pardon?”

The Lady: “Would you like any help to pack your groceries?”

I look carefully at what I have bought.

After a while: “No ... no, it’s just two small bags of lemons. I think I can manage.”

I lean against the counter for a short while, breathing as deeply and as evenly – and, indeed, as crisply – as I can. A late autumn fly dances the dance of love and death among the late autumn corporate Christmas decorations.

Myself: “Excuse me, but may I ask you why you asked me if I needed any help packing a total of 8 lemons?”

The Lady: “Our manager says that we have to ask everyone that, however little they buy.” She gurns conspiratorially.

Myself: “So the manager of a flagship branch of one of the most ruthless retail empires on the planet asks its employees either to take time away from serving customers or to call another member of staff away from whatever carefully planned and rationalised task they are supposed to be doing in order to help a physically able man pack 8 lemons in a bag?”

The Lady: “Yes. I did ask him why but he said we just have to do it. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? But I did ask.”

Myself: “Madam, you are a heroine, the golden leaf that fell at the flutter of a butterfly's wing in that northern forest!”

The Lady: "Enough of your sauce, young man!"

More conspiratorial gurnings, this time shared. There is hope after all.

 

The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now, named in honour of that great man Richard Hoggart, will be a collection of absurdities to which I encourage all to contribute.

Any contributions must:
- be true
- have been witnessed by you or related to you by a trusted person
- only be embellished to enhance the original effect, and only if the urge is irresistible
- be linked to a wider theory of why we're all going to hell in a handcart
 

Here's my starter

Scene: a British supermarket (my legal team's advice is that I shouldn't name it, so its initials are M-O-R-R-I-S-O-N-S).

Customer: "I see that your organisation is presently offering to dry-clean 4 items of clothing for what, I must say, is the distinctly reasonable price of £16.00 - that's just £4 an item!"

Deskbound institutionalised automaton jobsworth: "Indeed we are, Madam, and may I say we are proud to do so as a gesture to our customers!"

Customer: "Then I am delighted, for that very purpose and in the spirit you so generously evince, to reciprocate by vouchsafing the requisite number of articles unto your keeping."

DIAJ: "Thank you. Madam ... Ah, I'm afraid that one of them is silken in nature, of material inappropriate."

C: "I quite understand, and thank you for saving me future sartorial empurplement: just the three items then!"

D: "Certainly, Madam! That'll be £17.50."

C: "I beg your pardon?"

D: "That'll be seventeen pounds and fifty pee, please."

C: "Alright, cut the crap: how come it's £16 for 4 and £17.50 for 3?"

D: "The offer is for 4 items, Madam. You only have three."

C: "So you mean you're charging me more for giving you less work?"

D: "The special price is for 4 items, Madam, as our literature clearly explains."

C: “Thank you, and so it does. BUT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO CHARGE ME MORE FOR GIVING YOU LESS WORK?"

D: "Well, Madam, I ..."

C: "Dry-clean THIS, sucker!"

etc. etc.

 

Cut the Deficit!

When I trained to be a youth worker about 15 years ago, I was warned against what was called "the deficit model of youth". This was held by governments, officials, teachers, parents and park keepers everywhere. I always took that to mean that we shouldn't pigeon-hole the young.

Today it seems to me that there is nothing more ... deficitful than, on the one hand, our obsession with young people's apparent low self esteem and, on the other, only working with them because they accord to certain definitions, for example being "at risk of offending" (a condition more often suffered by their potential victims, I'd have thought) or "at risk of abusing alcohol" (by occasionally experimenting with it, as we have done for centuries) or "at risk of having unsafe sex" (as if having "safe" sex weren't dangerous enough these days, as anyone who has ever had it with me will testify).

But such targeted work - and very little else - is what youth services around the UK, including mine, are being told to do in order to safeguard their very existence. I thought we had social workers, youth offending teams and health services to do just that. They are welcome to recruit or contract youth workers to help, but they, not we, are the experts.

Youth work is different and almost unique (there may still be a few educators among the teachers out there) in that firstly, it doesn't select but is open to all who wish to have access to it and secondly, it's developmental, not least of young people as moral agents and creative, curious personalities.

If it is remedial, that is a by-product of this work, not its prime purpose. We should try to keep it that way in case, by the time the recession is over, we've forgotten altogether.