EVERYTHING YOU EXPECT FROM A STORE, AND A LITTLE BIT MORE

When I was about seventeen I worked in a supermarket. I hated it, but I needed the money [still do].

There was a small incident one day that shows you the mentality of some of these large organisations.

In these supermarkets there is usually a machine called a ‘baler’ into which you throw the empty boxes and it compacts them into a bale so they can be tied up and taken away.

At seventeen I was not legally allowed to operate the machine but it was made clear to me that it was expected that we do it if we wanted to keep our jobs because otherwise it would slow down the workforce if they had to wait for an over-eighteen to do it – and it wasn’t exactly difficult.

Except that the machine was broken. The mechanism that was supposed to eject the completed bale onto a palette didn’t work. We had a rather uncomplicated method for getting the bale out of the machine which was to ram two large metal poles between the back of the machine and the bale and wedge it out.

One time we were doing this it came loose very quickly, the result being that one of the poles flew up and hit me on the head. I didn’t really feel much but a few people were looking a bit unsettled and then I realized that I was bleeding.

Someone ran away to get a supervisor and someone went to get me some of that blue roll tissue that they have in these places so I sat down. It was not a wide cut but deep and one person said you could see my skull.

So the assistant manager came along and gave me a form to sign. She told me it was an ‘Accident at work’ form. Being only young and a little bit dazed I didn’t think anything of it and signed it.

Then I was led out through the supermarket holding a little bit of tissue with blood coming down my forehead and onto my shirt. The funny part about this was that although I felt good enough, as I was walking out I went past my friend who was just arriving for his shift and I will always remember the shocked and puzzled look on his face.

After this I was deposited at the front door and told a taxi was coming to take me to the accident and emergency department in the local hospital to get stitches to close the cut.

So I waited, and waited, and waited.

Nothing came.

Bloodied and confused I wandered back into the shop to find one of the managers to see where my taxi was and was informed that no one had rang one for me.

B*st@rds.

So eventually in a rage I wandered out onto the main road to get myself a taxi. The first one refused to take me because he didn’t want blood on the seats and the second grumbled about it but eventually took me.

My anger subsided in the hospital when I was led past a man having stitches on his everything because he had just come off a motorbike badly. I got my stitches and went home.

Two days later I was back in work and was telling someone about it and they told me I was an idiot because by signing the ‘accident at work’ form I had given up my right to sue them.

So, when they see an employee covered in blood thanks to their policies, the first thing they want to do is make him sign away his rights.

I am certainly not the litigious type and would not have wanted to sue anyway but the least you would expect them to do is get you a taxi. But as a matter of fact, I did want to sue them after the final insult.

The final insult was that I kept the receipt for the taxi and they argued with me for a full 25 minutes saying there was nothing in my contract for such a circumstance before giving me the £3.50 taxi fare for the hospital… and I had to threaten to quit to get it.

I haven’t forgotten the lesson I learned about all this but nowadays if anyone asks me how I got my little scar I just tell them that I hit myself on the head with an iron bar.