Tongues in Waiting (or, my boss looks like Gonzo)
Shane O'Reilly's DVD Store Diaries could make a grown goth cry! I hope
by Shane O'Reilly, Editor, Dublin
first published: November, 2006
first published: November, 2006
I have always been quite forthwith and frank in my hatred of Goths, especially this type - the proud, blue-haired, I'm in my thirties type
You have all had one - the shitty boss. From a long stint in a video shop, I acquired my very own pet revulsion. Let's call him Rupert. He is still presently my boss you see. His, mine, our situation arose in a typically not-so-spectacular manner - my old boss left, a really nice woman, and a replacement slinked into the shop, standing on two leather-clad legs (like twigs in cellophane). I have always been quite forthwith and frank in my hatred of Goths, especially this type - the proud, blue-haired, I'm in my thirties type - similar to something one could conjure up for a Little Britain or Mitchell/Webb skit. At this stage, I'd been in the shop some three months. He bawled in, boasting he could drink us all under the table, claiming he knew everything about films, leaving Barry Norman books around to PROVE it, and so forth. Like a huge barrel of toxic-waste come to totally flatten an already strained ecosystem, there he was this person worthy of comic book opprobrium and all round unabridged public slander. He rode on a bicycle and smelt of goat's cheese and onions. Awful man. Anyways, so he makes nice with me, David and the other staff member at the time, a good female friend of mine. Once he established himself, he quickly laid down the law. And the order. HIS law and HIS order. Shifts, once so set in stone, change, whoever he prefers that day gets the Friday night off etc, and rules change, uniforms come in, dumb sheets and notes are found pinned to everything on opening the store - complaints, problems, blah blah blah. Before you know it, we've formed a hate mob and ended up working sad Saturday nights confirming our unadulterated hatred on paper...Ķ.. like this. Expect now it is Monday.
So, one staff member, a reasonably new guy and one badly trained by dear Rupert I might add, took all these annoying habits and all this bullshit attitude of our bank manager type boss to heart and quit. But not before deriding Rupert with every concoction of verbal filth he could throw. Excellent stuff but, after speaking up for us, the scapegoat was gone. The tension broke a little and I just decided to shut my mouth and try to keep my job. To be fair, I argued with Rupert unceremoniously for his first two months residency and it just got nowhere. He sulked and wrote a few emails to HQ, etc. A proper asshole; old and polished at thirty-eight with a deadened sense of proportion - his head, his balls, all over-sized and under-used. A fledgling Goth fabliaux ready for a social roasting.
So I transferred his slanderous whining emails to disc, informed another manager of Rupert's overall strange and rather stringent behaviour and kept low (keep in mind, we need this job as poor part-time students, this man treats his role as that of DVd-dictator). Waiting. Just waiting, for something, anything. A rather large slip-up would do. (I noticed the stock being tampered with, items disappearing and reappearing at quite a regular rate. This is not your typical Sam Spade sleuthing as he may have seen it; it was simply to test me on the accuracy of my stock counts which was both unnecessary and irritating).
I could always get another job but that is just not going to happen. He will leave before me. I'm lazy as hell and in the midst of my finals, it is the perfect job. I could pick a fight with him and claim self-defence, use the customers as creditable witnesses, they hate him. Then put his head through a computer screen and horse whip him with DVD cases while he eats my last six pay slips.
A new staff member is arriving this week.
Waiting. Just waiting.
$- money
I have always been quite forthwith and frank in my hatred of Goths, especially this type - the proud, blue-haired, I'm in my thirties type
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