Closing Shift

You see a lot of strange people when you work retail or food services.

(Originally posted under the Odd Folks and Strange Someones discussion topic on the PenumbraParanormal.com forum by user [REDACTED], 09/06/2006 05:33:51 UTC)

You see a lot of strange people when you work retail or food services. It’s just part of the job. I learned that after a few years working at a Tesco supermarket. Even though the town I lived in wasn’t all that big, it was close enough to Bristol that we got our fair share of weirdos come through, and, even if we had been further out, anyone who’s ever been in a small English town knows that you don’t need to be in a big city to see very, very strange people. After you’re at it for long enough, you begin to develop a sense of identifying the different stripes of different you see. For example, it doesn’t take long to begin recognizing someone with a medical condition from someone who’s strung out on drugs or someone who’s just a legitimate nutter. Most of them aren’t worrisome or concerning in any meaningful way, but rather just a bit odd in the way that you’re fairly certain they aren’t actually a threat… but you still wouldn’t want to be alone with a lot of them for any extended amount of time.

Every now and again, though, you definitely see someone who gets your hackles up. I worked at this Tesco for almost three years and some change, which… wow. Hard to believe, but, anyways, in all that time, I only ever saw two people who made me feel uncomfortable in the worst way. I’d encountered some folks who gave me bad vibes or just came off as creepy before, but these two were the only ones that made me feel as if I was in serious trouble when I saw them. One was a person who was clearly messed up on some kind of drugs and doing a very poor job at acting as if they weren’t, all while trying to steal a load of cheese, for reasons that escape me. I spoke to them, more to let them know that we were watching them than anything else, and was careful to keep my distance when I did. After it became clear they were under the influence of something, I let the store security officer know, and they took care of the rest. The second one, though… that was different.

By the time this happened, I was already at the end of my tenure at Tesco and preparing to move on to bigger, better things working at a posh hotel in the Cotswolds, which happened to be impeccable timing since, if I hadn’t already been planning to leave, I would have started looking for new opportunities the minute I got back to my flat that night. It was near closing time for the store and what few of my coworkers were still on the clock had already started to go about their end-of-day responsibilities. It was my job to tidy up the shelves with all the home goods, so that’s where I was, and since I and everyone else still working were eager to be done for the day, I was wholly focused on setting everything straight and plugging up holes in the inventory. Not a one of us wanted to stay a second longer than we absolutely had to. I’d been so invested in my task that I didn’t even notice the person in question walk down the aisle, or that they were standing close enough that they could have reached out and put their arm around my shoulder.

It wasn’t uncommon to get last-minute customers trickling in during the last minutes of operation, or even have folks stroll in right after ten, when the doors were supposed to shut for the night. Usually, though, they were just as eager to be gone as we were to leave, and did their shopping quickly. It wasn’t very often you saw someone leisurely perusing the goods right before closing like this woman was. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry, and didn’t seem particularly bothered that the announcement asking all customers to make their final purchases had just been made over the public announcement services. This isn’t to say that she was the only person I’d ever seen who acted like they owned the place and took their sweet time to wrap up their shopping, because she wasn’t, but it just wasn’t something I saw very often, and it definitely wasn’t something I liked to see. 

It was pretty obvious looking at her that she was an odd one. She was wearing this long, trailing black coat made from leather that bore the tell-tale creases and fading that suggested she’d gotten it from someone else who’d worn it for a long, long time. I’d go so far as to say it looked older than she did. On top of that, she was wearing a pair of long gloves made from black-and-white striped fabric that had the fingers cut off with what looked like primary school scissors, I presume so she could show off that she’d let her nails grow out absurdly long and the nice paint job she’d given them. I remember thinking that the matte black lacquer on them was a very bold and unconventional choice, as was the gray color of her hair, which I figured had to be dyed that color since I could see her natural black color bleeding up from the roots. She had it long and straight with bangs so low that they almost covered her eyes. Her complexion was unnaturally pale and looked unpleasant, waxy, almost sickly pale under the ugly fluorescent lights of the store, which made the generous eye-liner and black lipstick she was wearing stand out all the more.

Since this was back when American emo bands were all the rage and teenagers were experimenting with reviving goth fashion, I just assumed that she was a young adult that was cribbing the look to fit in with what was popular with the kids to not feel old, or something like that. I was never what you’d call a cool kid, so none of it made any sense to me.

I also remember thinking it was awful strange that she was looking at the home improvement goods, and intently, at that. She had her arms folded over her chest and her black lips were puckered in a disappointed pout, like she wasn’t seeing what she wanted to see. Why she was looking at tools and gardening supplies, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really care either. The only thing I did care about was closing up and getting home, where I had half a leftover doner kebab and pilaf waiting for me.

So, hoping I could get her out of the store I could leave, too, I gave her the usual can I help you find anything bit. I expected her to say no, since that’s what most people said, but instead she turned to me and asked if we had any hammers. I could see then that she was wearing this grotty skirt and blazer combo underneath her coat. It was all black except the shirt, which I guessed had been white as some point before it’d been used to soak up water out of a gutter, since that’s what it looked like it’d been used for. She had on these ripped black tights under the stockings and knee-high jackboots with soles so thick that she would have been shorter than me if she hadn’t been wearing them.

Weirdest of all, though, I noticed that her eyes were black. Not dark brown. I’ve got dark brown eyes and I’ve had people have said they look black under the right lighting, so I know exactly what those kind of eyes look like. This woman had black eyes. Like they were all whites and pupils. It took me off guard and startled me a bit. I must have stared a little too long, since she pulled a face that told me she didn’t like being gawked at. Even then, I had to wonder why she would go out of her way to present herself so unconventionally if she didn’t want people staring. Maybe she just wanted to scare old folks, for some reason. I assume that’s why those goth kids do what they do. You know. To piss off daddy, or something.

I told her that, no, we didn’t carry hammers, and if that was what she was looking for she’d be better off going to the local B&Q (a chain of home improvement stores in the UK, for you Americans), but I added that they would have already been closed by that time of night. That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear. She rolled her eyes and asked what kind of supermarket didn’t carry hammers, and I realized then that she didn’t have an English accent of any kind. I can’t say what kind of accent she had, but I thought it sounded American. Maybe Canadian. They’re a bit hard to tell apart. Again, I found myself wondering what an American (or Canadian) citizen would be doing in the small town I lived in, let alone looking for a hammer in a Tesco at damn near ten at night, but I quickly decided that it didn’t matter, and I didn’t care. It was getting late, I was tired, I was hungry - if you’ve ever worked retail, you know how easy it is to tell yourself, I’m not getting paid enough to care. So, I replied that I don’t think I’d ever seen a supermarket in Britain that had hammers for sale. Honestly, I’d never had need of a hammer before, so I’d never gone shopping for one and, even if I had, I probably would have gone to B&Q before I ever thought to look at a place like Tesco or Sainsbury’s.

She said something to the effect of, That’s stupid. I wasn’t going to argue. I just asked her if I could help her find anything else, to which she didn’t reply. She looked back at the rack, studied it for a second, and then took one of those little screwdriver kits that comes with all the bits and pieces. She turned it over in her hands for a minute before giving me a smile. Framed by her black lips, her teeth were remarkably white, but they were also crooked, uneven, and deeply chipped. Us Brits have a reputation abroad for having bad teeth. I’m not going to say that it’s totally untrue. I’ve seen some rather skew-whiff teeth and cocked-up mugs in my time, but I felt like this woman’s teeth weren’t naturally crooked or broken. I got the impression that she'd either been on a strict iron-rich diet of screws, nails, and broken glass, or been punched square in the mouth more times than anyone ever should. I noticed that her nose, too, was bent at a slight angle the way noses sometimes do when they’re broken and don’t heal quite right. There were little lines and divots all over her face. Small scars that become more bold and pronounced the more I looked at her, highlighted by the queen way the fluorescent light fell over her face, all poorly disguised by a thick layer of powder caked over skin. It kept her skin tone even and, at a distance, you'd never be able to tell. Up close, though, you couldn’t overlook it.

It all made me think that she’d have to have been in some sort of accident that had messed up her face something bad.

She told me the screwdriver would work well enough, but her words were lost on me. In that moment, as she spoke, I was overcome with the sensation that something about her was deeply and profoundly wrong. It was like a switch flipped. All of the sudden, I was overtaken by a certainty that I was speaking to a total psychopath. Someone who was very dangerous to share the same space with. I got the feeling that every one of those scars on her face and chips in her teeth and the bend her nose, none of them came from an accident. Each of them had a violent, lurid story behind them, and I was certain of it. I just knew that whatever reason she needed a hammer or a screwdriver, it wasn’t for the purpose of hanging up a painting or tightening a chair leg.

I could feel the malevolent intentions radiating from her. I felt it down to my core in this awful, churning sensation deep in my guts. It’s difficult to describe. Every time I’ve tried, I feel as if I come off sounding like a lunatic.

But it really can’t put it any better than I could just feel that she was up to no good. No - she wasn’t just up to no good, she was up to no good and then some. She had violence on her mind. I don’t know how, but I knew it.

I think she knew that I knew, too. She could see it on my face, and she smirked. Clearly, she was getting a sick, sadistic pleasure in watching that evil epiphany dawn on me. She was savoring it. My fear, my revulsion, the welling sense of danger overtaking me. I could practically feel her drinking it all in like a nice, cool sip of water on a hot day. 

Then, she nodded. She made some vague gesture with the screwdriver kit and flashed a cheeky grin as if to say, Yeah, you know what I’ll be doing with this. Cheers, mate. And then she turned away to walk towards the check-out.

I immediately left my station and went to find the manager on shift. I thought about telling them what about the woman for a moment, but, even in my frazzled state, I knew I’d just come off as a loon. I just asked if I could slip out for a quick smoke break. This was something I absolutely never did, so he let me go. I ended up just standing by the back door of the break room for a few minutes because I didn’t even want to go outside. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was afraid she’d be out there, waiting for me with screwdriver in hand and malicious intent on full display. I was so shook up that my manager asked if I was alright when they saw me again. I just lied and said that I had a migraine or something, so he let me off a little early. I felt like I had to get as far away from wherever that mad woman had been as fast as I could.

I thought about the encounter a lot over the next couple of days. When I was back at work, it was easy to distract myself with the menial labor required of the average Tesco wage slave, but every now and again, I’d think about that woman and find myself unable to focus on anything but the question of what the hell had happened when I met her. For a while, I felt uneasy even going back to my car when my shift ended. I had this feeling that she'd decide I was a loose end, or something, and she'd return to tie it up.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to think that she wasn’t human. I know that sounds insane, but I’ve never felt the way I did when I encountered her with anyone before or since, not before or since. It was such a deep and visceral sense of malice and wrongness that I just can’t help but think that there was something more to her than met the eye. I’m not a religious person. I never have been and meeting this woman didn’t change that. But every time I think about her I can’t help but begin to consider whether or not there is such a thing as demons, and if she wasn’t one. 

After a while, I just began to tell myself that the whole encounter was nothing out of the ordinary. What else could I do? I decided that she was just some eccentric American with unconventional taste in fashion that had caught me on a bad day when I was already hungry and tired and ready to go home. I’d still probably think that, too, if I hadn’t caught a news story a week or so later. I’d just gotten home from work and sat down to unwind with some television over some reheated take-away. The local news just happened to be on, covering a story about some boys in a nearby village that had turned up dead. They were troublemakers, apparently. I did some more research on the case after and found out that they weren’t just your run of the mill teenagers making mischief, either. Selling drugs. Serious theft. Extreme violence. That kind sort of thing. They went missing about a week before the story ran about their bodies being found in the woods. According to the police, all three of them had been brutalized. They’d gotten worked over with the full monty. Blunt force trauma. Slashes and cuts. Stab wounds. The scene was described as gruesome by the only cop that would talk about it to the press. This officer offered a curious detail about the case that caught my attention.

Can you guess what one of the bodies still had jammed in their eye-socket? 

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Personally, I quite liked Tesco when I was in England. The town I was staying in only had a Sainsbury’s, which was fine, but I felt a strange rush of euphoria when I was in a Tesco.

Outside of Bristol.