Consumed

The supermarket security guard glares at me as I walk towards him, and I’m not sure how long I should hold his glance. What would be the correct length of time for an honest man to hold a glaring security guard’s glance? I remind myself that I must be innocent, having barely entered the store, and swing my empty re-usable bag easily as I walk. The guard turns his attention to an old lady pushing a shopping cart, and I wonder whether such a glaring hulk of a man wouldn’t be better off standing and glaring over by the exit. Behind him, a customer weighs a lime and puts the sticker onto a bag full of tomatoes, protected from view by a large rack of bananas. In ten minutes, it’ll be changeover time, and the day shift will be swiping barcodes more quickly than usual, as if doing something more quickly makes time pass more quickly. I suppose in some ways, doing something more quickly does make time pass more quickly. I imagine the store manager talking to her staff at a meeting, urging them to be vigilant of customers seeking to take advantage of the customer weighing system, and asking them to eliminate mistakes by visualising the end of their shift five minutes beyond the time they are scheduled to work.

I walk past the security guard as he looks at the old lady with professional suspicion, and as I skip round the satsumas, my mind races to recall the store lay-out. Tonight’s dinner. My housemates have gone away, and I decide to celebrate the reduced culinary responsibility by having beans on toast. The iconic light-blue tins are handily placed in the veg section which greets the entrance of this struggling supermarket, with its rampant scales fraud and pressured staff. But the supermarket knows that it’s not just bread and cheese that I’ll be leaving with. On cue, the abundance of food asks my mind to consider next day’s survival, and scanning my memory for recipes, I grab some spinach and add it noisily to my bag. Pasta and a tin of tomatoes will surely follow, by-products of destiny, and I feel momentarily pleased that the cheese I’ll be buying for tonight’s meal will have the versatility to lift what I eat the next day from the depths of lazy obscurity.

All that remains is to negotiate the travelator down to the basement and pick up some bread without getting distracted by the yoghurts. I can’t decide whether to walk or stand as the slow machine turns and takes me underground, but my mind is made up by a couple who stand in front of me, comfortably abreast, reminding each other about what they need from downstairs. Essentials: pasta, bread, shampoo and bleach. This gives me time to check my phone, and patting my pockets in panic, I remember I’ve left it at home. My keys rattle, and instead of feeling relaxed, I angrily ask myself what I’d have done had I forgotten my keys and my phone. As the couple in front expertly handle the end of the travelator and peal away towards the pasta, I berate myself again for what I know to be a growing phone dependence, marked by the instinct to leave it frequently out of reach.

I walk easily past the grains and pulses, hypnotised now. To my right, I am completely oblivious as a customer follows his pasta selection ritual. First, the cheap stuff; thin-looking spaghetti in a tight plastic film. Then a rush of pride, which has him eyeing up the Barilla, with its luxury deep blue cardboard and mystical numbers; then back to the cheap stuff — the supermarket home brand — before defiantly placing the Barilla into his basket and towards a future pan of salted boiling water. I know where the bread is, I no longer need to think. Tiles, fluorescent light, ambient music and exchanges of information all pass me by as I arrive at baked goods. Baguettes sit in great piles, and the salty smell moves the customers as they expertly hand-pick the warmest remaining loaves. I quickly rule out the baguettes and decide to walk a little further towards the sliced bread, selecting a rustic-looking bag, with crusts covered in flour and full of the promise of fresh toast.

Scanning the tills at street level, I select the shortest queue and start adding my goods to the conveyor belt. The store manager is doing the rounds, checking on her staff for scales fraud vigilance, and the checkout attendant takes exaggerated care with a bag of artichokes before slipping a ‘Next Customer’ sign between the two piles of shopping on the belt, and asking her colleague for a till roll. In the next lane, a customer grimaces as her friend shows her the crisps she has chosen for later, and she struggles to communicate what it is about that particular variety of reconstituted potato snack that she just doesn’t like. She adds a shrug to the grimace, and her companion lifts the packet up unsurely, imploring her to look a little closer before committing to outright rejection. The sheer confusion of the situation deepens, and the mood darkens. In a split second, the crisps are whisked away, giving the attendant time to pass the till roll to his colleague, hastening the end of her shift, and buying me seconds as I pay and head towards the automatic doors.