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| stupid evil pear... I'll know your code someday and then YOU WILL BE SORRY |
I know lots of things. I know how many times Roger Federer has won the French Open (once). I know what a mohair jumper looks like. I know how to cook a killer carbonara and I know how to order five slices of ham from a deli in German. I know what to do with a long division sum (barely), I know a Robert Frost poem off by heart, and I know what happened in the 2006 World Cup final.
What I don't know, however, is anything about vegetables. Or fruit. Or herbs, for that matter.
And why am I telling you this? Why am I admitting my deep, dark secret? Because it has been cruelly exposed in my current job as a supermarket cashier. Little old ladies with huge bags of some unidentified leafy thing smile at me and ask me how I am. I smile back and say EH, WHAT IS THIS? Their faces fall. What am I, a cave-dweller? A philistine? Or - worse - an American? No, I'm just someone who doesn't know the difference between a head of cabbage and a head of lettuce. Or between a turnip and a swede (that's a hard one, but there's no excuse for mixing up cabbages and lettuces, no excuse AT ALL).
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| this is more like my kind of checkout |
What all these people don't want to realise/don't actually realise is that they have help when they buy their vegetables. They have little digital signs that say Psst! Pink Ladies!, and I'm A Broccolini, and No, Not Over There, I'm The Fennel Root You Want, and even I'm A Sweetcorn Even Though I Look Like A Leek.
I don't get help like that. When it comes to veggies, I'm all alone.
The other day I had a particularly vile experience. Two girls came to pay for their basket of Sweets and Other Crap 14-Year-Olds Buy When They're Left In The House For The Weekend. No problem. 14-year-olds aren't going to be buying herbs are they? Or difficult-looking asparagus/bean shoot cross-breeds? Not a bit of it. 14-year-olds like twizzlers (whatever they are), sugar, gum, and coke.
Safe in this knowledge, I was happily scanning through boiled sweets and rubbery dolphins and sugared fish and ready-made pizzas when I saw the unthinkable. I saw the UFOS.
Safe in this knowledge, I was happily scanning through boiled sweets and rubbery dolphins and sugared fish and ready-made pizzas when I saw the unthinkable. I saw the UFOS.
Unidentifiable Fruity Objects.
WHAT'S THIS? I ask, about a squashed, dry purple thing.
The girls looked at one another before one said, in a, may I say, utterly disparaging tone, A PASSIONFRUIT?, barely hastening to add YOU IDIOT after it.
Then there were the weird-shaped lemons.
WHAT ARE THESE? I asked again, hoping for a somewhat warmer response.
Are you serious? IT'S A YELLOW SQUASH. Pan-faces. Expressionless, like little middle-school judges. For the record, I have NO IDEA what they were planning on doing to that 'yellow squash' (probably just some made-up Australian thing), but I fear for the poor thing.
By the time they left, with their incorrectly scanned watermelon (stupid thing comes under WATERMELON and not, as I previously believed, MELON, WATER), the only thing going through their heads was, undoubtably, Who is this kid?
Then there were the weird-shaped lemons.
WHAT ARE THESE? I asked again, hoping for a somewhat warmer response.
Are you serious? IT'S A YELLOW SQUASH. Pan-faces. Expressionless, like little middle-school judges. For the record, I have NO IDEA what they were planning on doing to that 'yellow squash' (probably just some made-up Australian thing), but I fear for the poor thing.
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| is this the lettuce? |
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| .... or is this? Not so easy now, eh? |
I was wondering the same thing. Who is this kid? Who am I? Well, before today, I was someone who thought they knew their parsnips from their peppers, their passionfruits from their beetroot (look the same! No kidding!), their star fruits from their yellow squashes.
Not anymore. Now I was just some rookie checkout girl. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good at all.
As if not recognising fruit and veg and herbs wasn't bad enough (smelling a bag to check that it really was basil raised more than a few eyebrows), I also don't know the codes. You know, the ones the suave checkout chick types in with her perfectly manicured finger when you plonk down a load of carrots (carrots: 24), bananas (17), or pears (66 or loads of other unknown numbers. I thought there was only one kind of pear. Wrong again, Shona). Endless sets of 57, 103 (broccoli? God I'm getting good!), 60, 218... (No! Broccoli 107! God DAMN IT! What's 103 then? Leeks?)
I think I should get back to enjoying my time off, to be honest. Next week I'll be back on till, failing to recognise coriander, mixing up ironbarks and butternuts, desperately looking for MELON, WATER, and charging someone $12 for two carrots just out of spite.
I have power too, you know.
OTHER MADE-UP NAMES FOR FRUIT-RELATED ITEMS
zucchini - what the hell happened to a good old courgette?
eggplant - this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with eggs, or indeed plants. At least aubergine is a colour
capsicum - ? pepper not good enough for you?
rock melon - why does a regular melon deserve a stupid name? Because it looks like a rock? Not buying it, Australia, not buying it
lebanese cucumber - otherwise known as a smallish cucumber
50 types of apple - can't they just all be the same price? No? Unfair world
Bon Blog! (non appetite!)
Not anymore. Now I was just some rookie checkout girl. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good at all.
As if not recognising fruit and veg and herbs wasn't bad enough (smelling a bag to check that it really was basil raised more than a few eyebrows), I also don't know the codes. You know, the ones the suave checkout chick types in with her perfectly manicured finger when you plonk down a load of carrots (carrots: 24), bananas (17), or pears (66 or loads of other unknown numbers. I thought there was only one kind of pear. Wrong again, Shona). Endless sets of 57, 103 (broccoli? God I'm getting good!), 60, 218... (No! Broccoli 107! God DAMN IT! What's 103 then? Leeks?)
I think I should get back to enjoying my time off, to be honest. Next week I'll be back on till, failing to recognise coriander, mixing up ironbarks and butternuts, desperately looking for MELON, WATER, and charging someone $12 for two carrots just out of spite.
I have power too, you know.
OTHER MADE-UP NAMES FOR FRUIT-RELATED ITEMS
zucchini - what the hell happened to a good old courgette?
eggplant - this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with eggs, or indeed plants. At least aubergine is a colour
capsicum - ? pepper not good enough for you?
rock melon - why does a regular melon deserve a stupid name? Because it looks like a rock? Not buying it, Australia, not buying it
lebanese cucumber - otherwise known as a smallish cucumber
50 types of apple - can't they just all be the same price? No? Unfair world
Bon Blog! (non appetite!)
