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I hate it when I’m paired with Darcy.
They don’t take being a Tesco cashier seriously at all. It should be a beautiful job, a chance to showcase efficiency and skill with a polite but impersonal smile.
Instead, they chat boisterously with customers, mixing up items as they ring them through, holding up the queue, then piling them haphazardly in the bagging area, making my job as difficult as possible.
I pride myself on my abilities as a bagger. When I first started at this Tesco I was awkward, dumping items into the bags willy-nilly. But I did my research and honed my skill, timing myself and learning proper stacking technique. Now I’m the best out of the baggers, hands down, even better than Mabel who acts like she’s been bagging here since the King was in nappies. Call me Tesco Tao Xu, grocery bagger extraordinaire.
Except when I’m paired with Darcy, that is. If their small talk and clumsy fumbling and general unseriousness only slowed themself up, that’d be fine, but a slow-moving queue makes me look bad, too. After the first time, I sent one strongly-worded DM to our manager, but it only made him pair me with Darcy more, something about “team bonding” and “learning to work with others.” Pshaw.
The worst, the absolute worst, is when they meddle. They’ll spot two people waiting in the queue, then lean over to me and whisper “Just my gay intuition, but they’d be cute, no?” Before I know it, they’re mixing up their targets’ items on purpose. They love to craft a meet-cute - and make me do a bag-ugly in the process.
It’s almost as bad when their girlfriend comes through the queue (and she always picks ours, however long the holdup is). Darcy flirts, Tara smiles, and they gossip and banter for so long that customers behind her start pushing their trolleys towards the adjacent registers. As though Mabel, of all people, needs her numbers boosted.
Think about what you’re saving for, Tao, I remind myself as I’m forced to watch them canoodle. A new camera, a gift for Mum, a resume that lets you work somewhere other than Tesco.
There was one time, on a slower day, when I made a massive mistake. Two guys came through our checkout, blushing, bumping shoulders and talking with hushed voices. Darcy rang up their two whole pineapples, canned pineapple rings, package of pineapple-flavored sweets, and several cartons of pineapple juice. After their groceries were impeccably bagged and off to the car park, I made the error of asking Darcy why they thought someone would buy so many pineapple products in one go.
The explanation I got was mortifying, elucidating, and so loud that not only did the whole queue hear it, I know Mabel two registers over learned as much about pineapple’s alleged effects as I did.
But today, for once, it’s my turn to hold up the queue.
It happens when I spot her, two customers back. I’ve seen her before, basket over one arm, but she’s never come through my register. She’s so beautiful. Glasses perched lightly on her nose, braids piled high on her head, tall and soft and stunning.
Literally stunning, it turns out, as I find myself standing there with an aubergine in hand, mouth slightly agape. The current customer clears his throat and Darcy raises their eyebrows. (Of course they’ve clocked me. Darcy can smell the first hint of a crush from thirty kilometers away.)
I get back to bagging, only losing a few seconds to my own inefficiency, I swear.
Once she steps up to the register, I recognize my mistake. Darcy starts making small talk, first about her reusable grocery bag, Trans Rights are Human Rights emblazoned across it, then about the beautiful customer herself. She replies, soft-spoken, interrupted very intermittently by the beep of the scanner. If time hasn’t slowed down for me already, Darcy’s dragging it to a crawl, keeping Elle (when she says her name, Elle, I swear I hear bells chiming from somewhere deep in the store) there by the bagging area, my bagging area, for agonizing minutes, as I place the red onions and houmous into her bag.
Darcy chucks a bottle of apple juice onto my workspace, and says, “Oops, sorry Tao!” with not an ounce of apology in their voice. Then they’re introducing us, “This is Tao, he’s the best!” and I have to smile like I’m not making eye contact with a visage handcrafted by a Renaissance painter.
When I hear, “Nice to meet you, Tao,” and see her smiling back my way, it takes everything in my being to keep my grip on the apple juice and place it securely and precisely in the bag.
Soon, too soon, to the sound of Darcy’s trademark “Come see us again!”, I’m handing Elle her groceries. Stars and swirls buzz off my hand as hers gently brushes it, getting a grip on the bag, and she’s off towards the automatic doors.
Darcy waggles their eyebrows at me. “You’d make a cute little pair.”
Maybe, just this once, I have to admit they’re right.