SERVICE WITH A SMILE

Amy Tate

Being rudely waved over to a till that is not obviously free is not a good start to an interaction. Still speaking to the customer before me, the cashier nonchalantly grabs the secateurs I’m buying, completely unaware that I’m irritated enough to stab him with them.
            ‘See you, Frank,’ the cashier shouts after a balding, red-faced gentleman.
            Upon realising my purchase shouldn’t be sold to someone lucky enough to still look like a high schooler, he ums and ahs between several clueless head swivels from my face to the gardening tool.
            ‘Would you like some ID?’ I ask, impatience creeping through the most condescending customer-service voice I could muster whilst still being classed as polite.
            ‘Yeah, that’d be great.’
            It was hard to miss the one tooth he wasn’t missing – a yellowed remnant surrounded by blackened decay. It was probably white once.
            ‘Thanks.’
            He hands back my driver’s licence, muttering something about the impossibility of me being twenty-four, and I realise I’m talking to his singular tooth. I flick my gaze to his eyes, hidden beneath an unkempt monobrow, which seem to have found something interesting on my chest.
            ‘Can’t read without my glasses.’ He cuts me off before I can reprimand him for his misogynistic staring contest with my boobs.
            ‘Sorry?’ I say, completely confused as to the sudden requirement for literary prowess.
            ‘Tranmere?’
            ‘Huh? Oh … yeah.’ I look down at the football shirt I’d had to change into after an embarrassing moment with a coffee and a jam doughnut. ‘I know they’re not Premier League but got to support the local.’
            ‘Ah right, I thought you played for them.’ His disappointment that I wasn’t, in fact, a sporting prodigy was abundantly obvious.
            ‘I can’t kick a ball to save my life!’
            ‘Ha, okay, have a nice day.’
            Being rudely dismissed as another customer is waved over to the till is not a good end to an interaction.