Time doesn’t function like it’s supposed to when you work retail. Seconds feel like minutes and minutes feel like hours. Scientist’s have it wrong. It doesn’t work, it stands still sometimes. Stephen Hawking never worked in a shoe shop. With every vapid ramble of a crazed woman in desperate pursuit of a miraculous fitting shoe that at once fits like a slipper, looks like a stiletto and is cheap as a flip flop, time just elongates. Point is, I get a lot of time to think and to watch the paint dry while at work. I hadn’t been at the gig for long, but I had already become disillusioned with the trajectory of mankind. It’ll do that to you, retail.
I remember the day when I first noticed it. It was a regular Tuesday. A toddler had pulled a pile of boxes down from a shelf and a small crowd of middle-aged women had strolled in with a list of demands longer than War and Peace. In the centre of the store there was a sea of discarded socks and abandoned shoes, with their boxes and tissue paper splayed out like the innards of some soldier in The Hurt Locker.
“No, no, not that one dear, oh god no, I want something trendy!” Old Agnes said to me as I held up a rather hopeful slip-on with a zip fastening in an elusive wide-fit. She was a regular customer with bizarrely oversized feet. I briefly pondered what an eighty-year old considered trendy in a shoe, deciding that it was probably the precise opposite of what I viewed as fashionable. She shook her hand at me dismissively. “Oh you’re not getting it, no, I want something that’s comfy, but also something I can wear to a wedding all day. I want ah - oh that’ll do! Can you get me that size eight and a half? Oh that’ll be just perfect with my fuchsia two-piece.”
She picked up a ghastly platform wedge in vomit green. I smiled at her patronisingly. “I’ve told you already, we don’t do half-sizes.” I said to her in my best customer service voice.
“Well that’s just not good enough.” Agnes began. I can’t tell you what the contents of her ramble contained in it’s entirety, for I zoned out just after “manager” and “writing a letter”.
I had given my attention to something else. I had noticed it.
If you’ve ever been in a store you’ll be familiar with ambient music. Some of the trendy stores, in the words of Agnes, will play music from the charts. You know the stuff; perfectly listenable pop-music that everyone can at least tolerate for the duration of a shopping trip. Other stores will opt for cheaper stock music that’s designed solely to be used in commercial settings. My store was the latter.
I’d never paid it much mind before. I sort of let it drift into the background. It was always there; a dull and slightly off-putting beat that was constantly overshadowed by the sound of screeching children or shuffling feet. As Agnes rambled on and on about “unacceptable variety” and “size discrimination” I decided to give it a little listen in the hopes that it might completely drown her out.
It’s cold outside,
I’d rather be inside
My fingers feel no more
Baby, I’m frozen to my core
Please let me in.
The high-pitched voice of a woman trilled her odd lyrics in an off-puttingly jovial beat. Agnes was now red in the face and was wagging her purple-tipped finger at me.
I’m close to the edge,
Please pull me off the ledge,
My blood has turned to ice,
Baby, how it must be nice,
To live your life inside
I felt my brows knit together and I pondered the meaning of the lyrics and the twisted mind that had concocted them. So deep in thought I was, that I hadn’t noticed that Agnes had stopped speaking.
“So? You ignoramus, what do you say? Do you have these in a size nine or not? I’ll need them in mustard or it just won’t do at all.” Agnes snipped at me.
“We don’t have any size nines in store Agnes, as I reminded you last week when you asked.” I said. Sensing her next request I cut her off with a calming hand. “How about I get you my manager. If you’d please just wait a minute.”
My legs are black,
It’s heat I lack,
I have half a mind,
To stop being kind.
“Agnes is back, she’s causing a bit of a fuss.” I said to my manager. He shuffled his feet and with a great heave and groan pulled himself off his seat. He was a fat little man with a moustache and a beer-belly and a rather unpleasant demeanour. He was work-shy and preferred his phone to productivity. “By the way, before you go, you ever listened to the store’s ambient music? Some of the lyrics are… fucked man.”
“Can’t say I’ve paid it much mind before.” He said to me, shrugging his shoulders. I asked my colleagues if they’d noticed before, but none of them had either. It didn’t seem like anyone cared, and why would they? it was crap licence free music designed with the sole intent of making the place seem more lively than it was.
But I couldn’t unhear it.
Put it in my heart,
That big glass shard,
Then bake me into a tart,
Use my fat as lard,
Render it down,
I promise I won’t frown
It was unhinged; every song was more infuriatingly grim than the last. Who had written these songs? How had they wound up being played in a sad little shoe shop on the wrong side of Edinburgh? The questions haunted me.
It was always women singing. Sometimes there would be a few women singing together, but there were never more than two at a time. Every song would be about dying in some horrendous way. My favourite was a little country-style track that always seemed to kick in just before closing.
Bury me in peat and lyme,
It really ain’t no big crime,
I’ll stink and rot, oh the grime!
I do think it will take some time
It’s just as well I’m passed my prime!
“Just listen to it, it’s disturbed.” I said to Vanessa, the assistant manager. She was quite young for a management role, but was terribly kind and generous. She did most of the legwork in the store. “It’s awful. I think we should write to the big boss, you know above Johnathan, this isn’t acceptable.”
It’s water that I want,
I’m starting to look gaunt,
My mouth is bone dry,
And when I try to cry,
There’s burning in my eye
“It is a bit bizarre, but I wouldn’t think too much of it, it’s probably just some pretentious crazies who got turned down by one too many record labels.” Nessa muttered. She cast her blonde hair behind her ear and, perhaps sensing my dissatisfaction with her response, let out a small sigh and continued. “But I’ll send an email over to merchandising, I’ll admit to being a little bit curious myself.”
Vanessa sent an email but did not immediately receive a response. In the meanwhile I was forced to listen to the crap over and over. I tried to put it in the background of my thoughts. I welcomed screaming infants and whinging pensioners but found that even the screechiest child and the most inpatient concession could not cover the lyrics of hell that my store played host to everyday. I couldn’t turn it off anymore. It was part of me. Even at home, it haunted me.
I have not slept for a week
I cannot shut my eyes
Pulling them out was wise,
When I drift away,
A pain comes that I cannot convey
When Vanessa finally recieved a reply to her email, the pair of us huddled around her computer feeling oddly excited. In the end it was a bit of a let-down:
^(Dear Vanessa,)
^(As per you’re request I have inquired as to the origins of the stock music we have provided for in-store use. The music was purchased on a disc over a decade ago by our now retired merchandising director. It’s copyright holder is listed as Chràdh Productions. The disc was then copied and spread amongst our stores for future use. Where he purchased this disc is unknown. Multiple stores have advised the music as being unpleasant, we are in the process of sourcing alternatives. For now you are required to continue playing the music as per our retail agreement with the shopping centre,)
^(Many thanks)
^(Jackie Greenway, Merchandiser.)
“Cheapskates, the lot of them. Can’t afford halfway decent music so we’re stuck listening to the soundtrack of hell.” I grunted. Vanessa set to work googling the company name Chràdh Productions. She didn’t find much at all, only that a little shed in the Glencoe mountains had been listed as their headquarters and that Chràdh was Gaelic for torture, which was certainly in-keeping with the content of the music
Eventually our company did replace the music. As it turns out there were a few more people like me who had paid attention to the lyrics and they had been complaining for over a decade. Upper management finally buckled and gave us classical music instead. Mozart and Beethoven were a distinct improvement over the torture porn. With poorly contained glee, Vanessa slipped the old disc into a shadowy drawer in the stockroom. I thought that would be it, and it was, until yesterday.
Two detectives came in yesterday.
They were wearing suits and said they were from Scotland Yard.
They wanted the disc.
They slipped it into a little evidence bag and ignored the mess of our store. Jonathan seemed ambivalent, Vanessa was bemused. My colleagues didn’t understand the magnitude of the moment. But I did, I knew. You see, I think a part of me always knew. There had always been something haunting about those songs. The voices would crack and break, as if frightened or restraining tears.
“It happened to them didn’t it? He made them sing about what he did before he did it. The songs - they’re - they happened right?” I grabbed the detective’s arm before he left. He twisted around to look at me, both angry and perturbed. “Please tell me, I’ve been listening to these women everyday for a year.”
“It happened, at least we think.” The detective said, guiltily.
“Do you have him… the producer?” I asked shakily.
Sometimes you don’t need words to answer a question. The detective simply turned around and walked off. He vanished into the crowds of the shopping centre and I felt an awful sinking feeling tug at my centre. It happened. The pyres, the tarts and the snow that was so bitingly cold. They were real, they lived and suffered and died, and I listened, a spectator to their agony. I felt dirty, I was a participant, whether I wanted to be or not. Maybe that’s why he sold the CD’s. To make us all a little part of his sick fantasy.
Next time you’re in a store, be careful not to listen to the music, you may not like what you hear.