Well, it might be (just over) two years since I last worked there, but you will never guess where I am working again?

Oh yes. You guessed it, but how did you know?! I am, once more, reinstated as an employee of The Supermarket That Must Not Be Named. What is more, I am a Checkout Girl. I believe the official name for it is Customer Assistant, but I am not one for dressing up my job title. It doesn't look like I will be in possession of a more fancy job title for quite some time either (possibly never, indeed), after several months of job hunting, doing temp work, and sheer desperation at times, since I finished Uni in June.

I ummed and ahhed (not for very long evidently, considering I only had my induction today) about whether to start this blog up again or not. For the time being, at least, I have decided I will. I think it was whilst a Strawberry flavoured Muller fruit corner was sailing through the air towards me during a lovely little game of 'Training Supermarket Sweep' that I decided that my blog would live to see the light of day again.

I haven't done very much so far. My induction session only lasted for four hours (though this felt like a lifetime, especially whilst we were watching a video about sales of Restricted Items, complete with terrible acting). Mainly, I filled in a lot of forms, watched training videos, and played the aforementioned game of Supermarket Sweep. What larks that was, though. Training has certainly got more, er, interactive, since my first time around. There we were all stood, in the middle of an aisle, making the place look untidy, and the manager who was leading the training started giving each of us an item to locate within the store. When she got to me, there was a lot of thoughtful gazing and head scratching, and then!

"I had better give you something that has moved since you last worked here (challenging employees talents from the word go, eh), find me the HOO MOOSE, please".

"Oh, the houmous?"

"HOO MOOSE".

She was very enthused.

So, off I trotted, on my HOO MOOSE mission. I then brought it back to her, and slowly the others began to return with their items. Once everybody was back, things got really tricky.

"I am going to give you each a DIFFERENT ITEM to the one you picked up, to put back on the shelf".

Before we even had time to gather our thoughts, the manager began THROWING the items at each of us. Fair play, a few were safe bets, such as the bathroom towel and the batteries, but I really panicked when she threw a bottle of bleach at somebody, and I thought I was going to have to walk through town looking like a small child who'd just eaten a lot of strawberry jam had vomited all over me when the Muller Corner came hurtling towards me at breakneck speed. It is, clearly, all fun and games at TSTMNBN.

So, my first official shift as a Checkout Girl is tomorrow. I am giddy with anticipation.

Well, I only have one week left of lectures about cerebral oxygen consumption and social loafing to fight the urge to sleep in. Then I have one week of 'reading', then a week of exams and then I am done with uni for the year. Which means that in just about a month's time, supermarket-that-must-not-be-named's budget and staff numbers permitting, I will probably be gracing the checkouts once again.

This thought is playing on my mind somewhat. Taking over my life, if you will. I lifted a bottle of Pear Koppaberg before to pour a drink and thought to myself "wow, those bottles have abnormally large barcodes in comparison to the bottle size, I bet they are easy to scan through a till".

Also, I went in to a branch of the-supermarket-that-must-not-be-named around the corner yesterday and found myself furious at a block of cheese as I had to yank the wrapper as hard as my weak arm muscles could muster the energy for, to straighten out the barcode because it was stuck on the corner of the block of medium cheddar. I even imagined that the cow on the front of the packaging was grinning at me malevolently. As though he himself had planned it. I attempted to apologise to the screen in front of me until I realised I was only keeping myself waiting as opposed to an angry member of the public.

Self serve tills incidentally, are nothing like normal ones. Far more difficult to operate, in my humble opinion. Except at least all you have to deal with is a computer, as opposed to an agitated human being.

Roll on June....good times ahoy!