Fluorescent lights blared overhead, and radio top forty dazzled Kathleen’s ears. Her legs ached; why was there never a chair behind the counter? Granted, she’d worked in worse places than Tesco Pharmacy Burton-upon-Trent, yet there was something cruel about the world in that despite everything that had gone wrong in the past three months, she still had to come here and stand for eight hours per day, five days a week, sometimes from 6 AM, sometimes at the weekend if she was on one of the bad shifts.
Working in pharmacy, there were many moments like this one, where there were no customers so she could do nothing but stare out across the overly bright Tesco isles and feel nothing, yearning for a snse of anything. Then the customers would all come at once, a flood of parents and elderly, and she’d hand them their medicine, and they’d just keep coming, and soon she’d be wishing for another moment like this one, empty.
Those were the only people who ever came here: parents and elderly. The straight line of life. Be born, get educated, get married, start a family, get old, die. Her straight line. The line Cameron had broken when he had so selfishly decided to abandon all they had worked for together. Fucking Cameron. Fucking life ruining asshole.
Had she really gone to university just to spend all day staring at the Tesco condom isle? Where was the fulfilment they’d promised her?
“You’ve been staring at those condoms a while” Yasmin said. She was one of the dispensers in the pharmacy. She was leaning with her back to the counter, facing Kathleen. She wore make-up, a form of self-expression to make up for keeping her hair covered in the dark blue Official Tesco Uniform Optional Hijab “I take it your date didn’t go well?”
Kathleen sighed again and turned to look at Yasmin instead of the moderately too sexual condom advertising. “I really thought from his profile we would be a match”
“Oh, I have been there, sister. It’s really hard to get an idea of a guy from the profile. This one date I had once, the guy started talking about great replacement theory and I was like ‘hello, I’m sitting in front of you literally wearing a hijab, why did you think I’d agree with you on this?’”
Kathleen didn’t know what great replacement theory was, but she could get it from the context. “No, no he wasn’t racist or anything. He was nice. It’s just, we didn’t have anything in common. He was a nerd, I’m more mainstream.”
Yasmin was scrolling through Instagram on her phone as she spoke. “Right right. Maybe you just need to find someone the old-fashioned way. Like, at a social group or at a hobby or something. Do you do anything for fun?” There were a few teenagers clustering around the condoms display now, pointing and laughing at something Kathleen couldn’t see from this distance. One of them put a small bottle of lube in a backpack, but Kathleen didn’t process that this was probably a theft until her drive home.
“You know, I’m the same as everyone. I watch TV, I use Instagram, I see the odd film. I read, which is better than most” The teenagers wandered off, depriving Kathleen of her small aspect of entertainment.
Yasmin smiled towards her Instagram feed; she didn’t realise it was AI, “Nah, girl, those are barely hobbies. You need to get out more, I can tell.”
Kathleen frowned, “I’m older than you. You don’t call me girl.” An old lady walked past, wearing too much cheap Tesco perfume. Kathleen gagged a little.
“My point still stands. If you get out and do some hobbies, I’m sure you’ll find someone worthy of a fuck, or at least you’ll kill some time while you’re single”
Some guy approached the counter, looked nervous, and turned away, disappearing back to the vegetable isle from whence he came. “Hey, don’t be crude. I’m trying to find a life partner, not casual sex, or whatever you kids are up to instead of having sex. VR roleplay? Egg punk?”
“Sure, sure. Go back to staring at those condoms then.” Yasmin put her phone away, gave Kathleen a small pat on the head that she did not appreciate and walked away to actually do her job.
The pharmacy was a smaller Tesco within the Tesco. Isles of prescription drugs stretched back into the depths of the pharmacy. There were also a few rows of shelves at the front for over-the-counter stuff. All the shelving was a blinding, pristine white, and so was the floor. Little broke the monotony, other than the green accent colours, and the brown paper bags of prescriptions not yet collected.
The Tesco seemed empty of any signs of life, so Kathleen ducked into the depths of the pharmacy, if only to go somewhere that the sound of Ed Sheeran and Sabrina Carpenter, artists she had once liked and respected before being subjected to for most of the worst parts of her day, would be at least somewhat muffled. She grabbed the only chair in the place and sat looking out into nothing as one of her other colleagues, Farhan, stocked shelves of prescriptions.
She checked her phone. Another two hours of this fucking shift. She sighed internally, as she always did, and supressed some tears that wanted so badly to leak out. She scrolled through the Guardian website, stopping to read an opinion on trans people, stopping reading as it was making her think about Cameron.
She had gotten so used to life with Cameron that she’d neglected all other aspects of her life for years. They’d been so perfect for each other that she’d never wanted to go out hiking, or meet with a book club or anything, because the time would be better spent with Cameron. His little smile when she said something funny without realising. Those cheek dimples that only came out when he was laughing. How effortless it had all been, the two of them existing together. They’d been happy together; why did it have to end?
Or maybe it had been Covid that killed her hobbies? Covid had struck early in their relationship, so they got used to not going out much together. Her hobbies, her outside time and meet-ups, it had all never really recovered. Maybe Yasmin was onto something, and all she needed was to start meeting up with other humans after the years spent inside.
Farhan looked over at her. “Y’alright?” he said, walking to Kathleen.
“I’m fine”
“Then get off your arse and deal with the queue forming at the front desk” he said, “I’m choosing to take my break.”
Kathleen signed internally. These sighs were getting too frequent. She decided to start looking for hobbies or social groups or something, as soon as she got free from under the thumb of the great evil Father Tesco, and his cruel managers.
