It was half term last week and work kindly scheduled me seven shifts in a row, most of them lasting 10 hours. As I crawled into work for midday on Saturday, having finished at midnight the previous night, I saw Big Boss waiting for me and realised I was a couple of minutes late. Again. Big Boss has an extremely thinly veiled contempt for me at the best of times and is a real stickler for rules. As far as he's concerned, two minutes late may as well be two hours. It's all a jolly good excuse for him to throw his (not inconsiderable) weight around.
"I'm sorry I'm late, I..." "Lizzie, I don't want to hear it. You're always late and you always have a story. I'm not saying I don't believe you but you must lead a very eventful life." This was said with the sort of half-smirk, half-sneer on his face that meant I couldn't answer back as he was being 'funny' rather than rude, 'joshing' rather than having a go, so I stood there trying to keep the sort of insolent look off my face that used to get me into trouble at school. Not only do I actually lead an eventful life, but I wasn't about to be offended by such an accusation from a man who appears to spend all his time when not in work making photo manipulations of himself in various famous films to put on his Facebook page. Hurray for having no need to recourse to photoshop to make myself seem intertesting. I'll take my eventful life over yours any day, you pathetic cunt! However, such smug internal crowings were to have proved foolish by the end of the day.
When it comes to my life, 'eventful' is one way of putting it. I often say that I 'just get myself' into situations. Situations like finding myself locked out of my college and having to ask my famous-academic-ex-director-of-studies to let me in whilst paralytic to the point of incoherence. Or like finding myself by some cruel trick of fate seeing two men at the same time who turn out to be housemates. The thing about these situations is there's usually no 'just get' about it, it's all entirely my fault. And I'm now starting to wonder if what happened on Saturday night might be exactly the same.
Saturday's shift contained the usual mixture of grinding menial tasks and abject stupidity, with added hysterical, idiotic women thronging in for Sex & The City. Come the end of my shift, I'd planned to go straight home and get some well-earned sleep however some how, as is the way of things with me, I ended up going for a 'quick pint' after work with colleagues that turned into me staggering out of WT's Snooker Club at 3.30 am, pretty fucking drunk. This, perhaps, was error number one.
Error number two occurred when I decided to go with a work friend to get some food from the kebab shop next door. On entering the shop I noticed two men sitting at a table in the corner. They were drunk and rowdy and as I was comitting the crimes of being female and fat, I was an ideal target for their drunken arseholishness. This isn't an unusual situation for me. If I had a penny for every time some man decided to inform me that I was fat I could buy another packet of biscuits. Usually I ignore it but drink had been taken and I was generally at the end of my tether due to work. So I gave the guy who insulted me (Skinny Rat Face) a mouthful in return. Words were exchanged and I could tell that Skinny Rat Face was a bit taken aback that I was standing up for myself. He got up from the table and squared up to me against the counter, "You're a gobby bitch. You wanna shut up, you fat cow. You wanna be careful, I've got people waiting outside." I informed him that if he was threatening me I would call the police. I might have given him a few choice words as to what I thought of men that threatened women, too.
Skinny Rat Face sat back down at this point but continued to shout abuse. Enter Stocky Skin 'Ed, drawn to the aggro like a really thick, football-shirt-wearing moth to a flame. Stocky Skin 'Ed assessed the situation, realised it was only a girl that his mate was engaged with and decided to attempt to change the subject by opining to Skinny Rat Face, and the kebab shop at large, that he was going to "Stab those fucking pakis" whilst motioning next door to WT's. Here comes error number three. Riled up from the previous confrontation I asked Stocky Skin 'Ed not to use racist language and threats. He didn't exactly see my point of view and yelled at me before going back to threatening to "stab up the pakis". At this point I phoned the police to report racist and threatening behaviour.
The owner of the shop got the men out but they stood outside shouting yet more extremely original and funny abuse about my weight into the shop and threatening to 'have us' (me and my colleague) when we left. Eventually my work friend snapped ad shouted something back at them in my defence. This caused four of them (Skinny Rat Face and his Lackeys) to pile back into the shop, corner him, hit him in the face and hold him by the neck up against the wall. I called the police again, causing Stocky Skin 'Ed, who must have been at least 45, to come in and attempt to intimidate me, a young girl, by squaring up to me and shouting in my face that I was a stupid gobby bitch and calling the police wasn't going to do anything as he'd dealt with them before and could wrap them around his little finger. I'm afraid I let him know what sort of person I thought he was with his racist threats and picking on girls. I don't think this helped calm down the situation.
Eventually the police turned up and arrested the men, not before I heard Stocky Skin 'Ed say to the shop owner that he was going to "burn his fucking shop down". What a charmer. I made sure I told the police immediately. The shop owner thanked me for calling the police. He said the men had been causing trouble all night and had been racially abusing some asian gentlemen earlier and being generally intimidating. I went to the station to give a statement and the men were kept in over night. Hopefully this will count against them next time they choose to spend their Saturday night being racist oiks. But I can't quite shake the feeling that I bring drama like this upon myself.
It was when I was leaving the police station at 7am with work mere hours away that I realised that perhaps 'eventful' wasn't always the best way of life. WHilst trudging home through the grey dawn, carrying my now stone cold chips I decided that for the next couple of weeks I'd try for positively boring. I might even attempt to 'keep my fucking fat gob shut'. Except when it comes to challenging racist threats and giving good excuses as to why I'm late for work. I have principles after all.
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