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Evil shop assistants

Clare is a 22 year-old graduate of Performing Arts from Middlesex University. At the moment she's working in content development for a B2B publishing company's website in Greater London. She's starting a TEFL this year with the aim of inflicting herself on other parts of the world in the future. She reads lots, likes lying in bed stuffing crisps in her face, watching videos, and moaning about what everybody else does wrong. She also has an encyclopaedic knowledge of 20th Century serial killers.

Clare Riley has had a bad day at the shops, and she's about to let you have it. Look out.

They are the cold-blooded velociraptors of society. Soulless eyes, a telepathic ability to sense fear, and chapped lips from the constant lambasting of shopping centre air conditioning: Shop Assistants.

I wouldn't mind if their Texas-sized superiority complexes were justified, but they only work in retail for God's sake. I try to remind myself that I too would probably have a face like a cat's arse, and walk as if I'd sat on a broom handle, if I had to serve the public for a living. However, the gossamer-thin empathy can't be stretched any further - Mother Theresa I ain't.

Recently, I made the mistake of going into a certain electrical retail outlet. A Peter Stringfellow look-a-like, who was obviously under the delusion that he was Don Johnson from Miami Vice, immediately cornered me. He punctuated his sentences with finger clicks, gesticulated like an actor from a Greek tragedy and adopted a bizarre wide leg stance, as if to indicate the size of his member. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and I couldn't help but feel that at any moment he was going to make a dash for the exit and jump into an Escort XR3i convertible to the roar of Kenny Logan's Danger Zone (thankfully the 80s are gone).

He had a thinning mullet and a paunch, but I think he thought I fancied him because I was staring with my mouth open. In fact my bewildered expression was due to his constant winking, which I mistook for Tourette's Syndrome. He blinded me with science and left me incapable of buying an alarm clock. Even as I left he was trying to convince me that yes, I really did need a five-year insurance policy for that extension lead.

Cutting my losses I tried to purchase some CDs, only to be sneered at by a couple of acne-ridden, middle-class socialists flicking through a copy of Empire, desperately trying to be working class and arty. Ignoring my existence, they spouted how they detested mainstream films, and tried to name bands that the other one hadn't heard of to prove their alternativeness. Hopefully they'll end up becoming unemployable philosophy graduates.

Licking my wounds I went clothes shopping ' big mistake. Two hawk-eyed pterodactyls, posing like matadors, stared at me as if I was wearing C&A and swooped as soon as I entered. "Can I help you?", really meant "Piss off short arse."

I retreated to the supermarket but was greeted with hordes of middle-aged women waddling up and down the aisles, jabbering about their kids scabs, rashes and nosebleeds, oh, and about the lottery. If young people went about their job with such apathy, they would be fired. No doubt the menopausal mafia would go on strike if Doreen got sacked for sorting the teabags into size order when she should have been on the shop floor.

Everything has its hierarchy, shopping included. The abused kick downward, and I'm the sort of person automatic doors ignore. But I will have my revenge - next week I'm taking everything back and messing up their shelves. I know, I'm crazy.


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