Making your own fun
One Christmas when I was a student, I worked in Woolworths on the High St. in the little town where I grew up

I'd been taken on to help with the 'Christmas Rush', which didn't especially seem to materialise. Plus the fact, my responsibility was clearly defined as being 'looking after the store-room'.

One or two deliveries arrived a day, and I rolled some cages off the lorry and put them away tidily. My only other responsibility was helping the people who worked on the shop floor find things when they came in. Since I was doing 8 hour shifts, this was not a lot to keep me occupied. I had to create my own fun.

- Creating a racetrack around the vast storeroom using boxes as the four corners or a square track, then racing around on a child's scooter and trying to improve my time daily
- Also attempting the above with a pallet-truck, resulting in the destruction of several boxes of Christmas Chocolate Selection packs due to an unfortunate cornering mishap in the chocolate section
- Having found a couple of old tents on a shelf at the back, creating a campsite tableaux peopled (if you can call it that) with cuddly toys
- Chalking some stumps on the wall and having a bit of cricket practice, with the 6'5 store manager using a 2' child's bat salvaged from a kit
- Breaking my own keepy-uppy record
- Reading a book in the toilet
- Taking up smoking. Just so I had an excuse to go and stand outside for five minutes

The genuine highlight of my day was if someone looked dodgy downstairs and I, being the only employee in my own clothes since I was the store-room monkey, was called down to play spies and trail some junkies around the toy dept.

Could have been boring, but years as a student had inured me to inaction. It was pure bliss... and I got paid.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 9 Sep 2010, 12:46, Reply)