Thought I'd drop this in here from The Anfield Wrap website.
SERVING SUAREZ, BAD-MOUTHING BRAD AND ENRIQUE ON HEAT â TALES OF A LIVERPOOL SHOP ASSISTANT
BY DANIEL AUSTIN
WORKING part-time in retail is, without doubt, one of the most insipid ways to make a living in modern Britain, writes Dan Austin.
Your days are repetitive, youâre not engaged. You flog cheap tat to hard-working people, while the conglomerate in control reaps the profits and pays you a pittance in return. You repeat 128 times a day some variation of, âNo sorry love, we havenât got them in a five.â You start at 6am on Boxing Day.
Its saving graces are few and far between, and consist of simple matters â like gossiping in the staffroom about whoâs shagging who, hiding in the toilet for an hour as an extra little break, and spotting somebody vaguely well-known shopping in your store.
And when you work in a department store in Speke, as I did for a few years, the latter is a semi-regular occurrence, whether it be some girl who played a smackhead in three episodes of Hollyoaks, a lad who appeared on an ITV2 holiday programme and got an STD, or a Premier League footballer. Itâs kind of like Alma de Cuba on a weekend but with less burlesque dancers and more mannequins with missing limbs.
The first player I came across in the store was instantly recognisable above the screaming children and weary staff, thanks to his giant frame and Lego man haircut â big Brad Jones.
As he approached the counter to pay, I realised I didnât really know how to act.
The last time I had actually met a Liverpool player was just prior to the FA Cup winnersâ parade in 2006, when me and a few cousins blagged our way into the Paddock area beforehand. I got a pat on the back from Rafa BenĂtez, the excitement requiring me to have a good sit down and huff on an inhaler so I did not pass out, while my cousin refused to wash for a week after shaking Robbie Fowlerâs hand.
I recognised that as an 18 year-old talking to a fella that hardly ever got a game for Liverpool, a similar reaction may be slightly over the top, but I still didnât want to just blank him. So, I thanked him for playing in the derby at Wembley and said that the celebration for Andy Carrollâs winner was something I would never forget. He replied that he enjoyed it too and then I started bagging his stuff.
At this point a colleague came over and pushed a piece of scrap paper in front of him to sign for her son, at which point things began to go badly wrong. She picked up her spade and began digging our hole, âYeah, to be honest, I wouldnât have recognised you if Dan hadnât. I donât know anything about football. Iâd recognise you if you were off Corrie or EastEnders, or one of the big footballers like Gerrard or SuĂĄrez.â
Jones developed a grimace as he scrawled his name down while being told he wasnât successful enough a footballer to be recognisable. What had begun as a pleasant chit-chat was fast developing into a combined effort to inadvertently humiliate the man.
I passed him his receipt and he grabbed his bags and moved along, while I turned around to put away the hangers. As I did my colleague grabbed my arm and asked me, âWhat was his name again? Iâll have to remember when I get home with this.â I responded, âBrad Jones. You wonât know him, like. Heâs the backup keeper for Liverpool. He never plays or anything. Heâs F***ing sh*te.â
Except big Brad Jones hadnât moved alongâŠ
As I turned back around he was still stood about two yards behind me as his wife rummaged around in her handbag. His glare was fixed on the counter and did not shift as he waited patiently for her to move. There was a period of five to 10 seconds, which felt like an eternity in purgatory, where we both stewed in the knowledge that he had overheard me declaring he was âF***ing sh*teâ.
Brad Jones didnât need this. Brad Jones came out on a lazy Wednesday afternoon for a bit of peace. Brad Jones only wanted to pick up a few bits for summer â nothing special: swim shorts, t-shirts and the like. Brad Jones didnât need to have his lifeâs work slandered by some tit behind a till wearing a name badge and brown brogues that he could only afford because of his staff discount. I genuinely pitied him.
Then I remembered how much he was being paid to sit on his arse on the bench and didnât really care any longer.
I served him once more, just after he left Liverpool, and asked if heâd found a new club yet. âNo,â came the deadpan response. He glared down from his extra half a foot at me â the little divvy who had called him âsh*teâ not so long ago and now had the (accidental) temerity to rub his unemployment in his face, too. Then the till broke and I had to get a manager.
After him there was JosĂ© Enrique, who took an extended break from his Mario Kart Wii tournaments and visits to Knowsleyâs meerkat population to stand on the shopfloor one dismally dull December evening perusing the Christmas trees with his girlfriend.
So, sheâs asking me the basics, about sizing and material and what have you. âWell, itâs about 1.75m and then youâve got to add the stand on,â Iâm saying, and then I spot something quite unnerving. Enrique starts getting really handsy. As weâre having a humdrum gab about real vs plastic trees heâs started to grope her a little â nuzzling her neck, stroking her stomach, fondling her thighs, to a soundtrack of Santa Claus Is Cominâ To Town on the storeâs speakers.
I try to get things back on track by grabbing a display model, but he starts really getting into it now, his arms coming up from round her back like Mr bloody Tickle; enveloping her, caressing her in ways that belong on Sky Channels in the 900s, not a family-friendly shop floor.
I donât know what to do. Do I look away or keep describing the specifications of this tree, watching on as this fella I spent the weekend screaming at for not stopping crosses gradually becomes more and more aroused?
Thankfully Iâm saved from the worldâs most awkward softcore porn by the scalliest of Speke-heads, who emerges from the other side of the display trees and bellows, âDo you two wanna gerra f***inâ room? Thereâs kids in âere anâ thatâs discustinâ!â
They immediately stopped and left without the tree.
His ping-pong partner, Suso, was in a few months afterwards. After being taken aback by how staggeringly handsome he was (Seriously though. Christ. I know everyone went on about it all the bloody time, but I think my jaw actually dropped) me and a colleague spent the best part of 15 minutes trying to explain to him the difference between a regular-fitted sheet and a valance. To no avail.
âWell, you see, this one goes under the mattress to cover the bottoâŠâ And as he looked at me with those big, brown, deep Hispanic eyes, struggling to understand my accent, utterly perplexed at multiple kinds of sheet existing, I felt that me and Suso were one and the same â two husks of young men completely incapable of taking care of themselves in the big wide grown-up world.
I wondered whether Suso had ever made a bed before. I thought about whether Susoâs mum also still did his washing for him. I imagined Suso struggling to cook himself anything beyond a frozen pizza. We were no longer multi-millionaire footballer and shop assistant â no longer superior and inferior, just two lads staring through each other, absolutely baffled by the world around us.
As he paid for both types of sheet, just to be on the safe side, I told him I thought he was a good player and asked if he would be getting much game time in the future. âHopefully, mate. Hopefully,â he replied. I got home that night and read heâd been given to Milan for free.
Following my fleeting encounters with three of Liverpoolâs finest squad players, I realised that as Iâd grown up, I lost any unerring admiration I had for them and felt mainly a combination of apathy and disinterest upon bumping into them.
I saw them now as regular human beings instead of superheroes. Genuine people with feelings that can be hurt, sex drives that cannot be satiated, and beds that are left unmade. I felt disappointed, as though Iâd kind of grown out of my wide-eyed enthusiasm for it all.
But then I remembered the night Luis SuĂĄrez came in.
Just to set the scene here â this was peak SuĂĄrez. This was 2014, a week or so before the Selhurst Park Incident (Iâm sorry for bringing it back up. Please go to your happy places). This was the SuĂĄrez who did whatever he liked and nobody could do anything about i t. The SuĂĄrez who scored every five minutes. The SuĂĄrez who every single one of us loved like a brother.
He approached the counter with his family. And I froze. Froze like a five-year old would have. As his wife flung about ÂŁ200 worth of little girlâs headbands and plastic jewellery on the counter I was shaking pressing the till buttons. He had hold of his little boy behind the desk and I tried desperately to think of something to say but I couldnât, my mind wouldnât work.
The best I could probably have managed was, âAy LuĂs⊠Youâre dead good at footie arenât yer?,â so instead I gave his wife her bags and him a nod as walked past me, which he reciprocated. A nod that was my melted brainâs way of saying âMate, youâve given me some of the best times of my life, now please win that bloody league.â Maybe if Iâd actually said it he wouldnât have ended up crying on the pitch a week later.
I hadnât even spoken to him and I was rendered completely infantile â I felt the same giddy jubilation that I had when BenĂtez gave me a moment of his time all those years before.
I learnt few things from my time in retail, except that bargain hunters will literally push each other over to nab sweat-shop sewn knitwear if itâs going for half price. I hate waking up early on weekends, and ÂŁ6.47 an hour is really not enough to live on.
But that sense of juvenile joy I felt after being in LuĂs SuĂĄrezâs presence made me realise that I remain a great big Liverpool mad man-child, and Iâm okay with that.
â Daniel Austin is a writer from Liverpool who has contributed articles about football and politics to The Anfield Wrap, MUNDIAL Magazine, Radio City and The Mancunion. Follow him on Twitter @Danny_Austin14http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2016/07/liverpool-what-working-in-retail-taught-me-about-meeting-footballers/