Recently I was at a supermarket.

I was purchasing, among other items, some sausages. Whilst checkout-ing, I was happily yak-yakking away with both the checkout operator gal and the attendant bag-packer dude. Fab chat, grand rapport, life was good.

Until they beheld my Sausages.

Oh dear.

My two chums visibly congealed. They drooped. Their mood crumbled from Affable Chirp to Just Stab Me Now.

The checkout operator gal asked me, in Gothic tones of existential dread and world-weariness, if I might like my Sausages wrapped in twelve extra bags.

Twelve? I inspected these Sausages in their sausagey sausage-trays.

The trays appeared 100% perfectly sealed. I said so.

“Yeah I know,” the bag-packer dude there replied. "But different Sausage brands use different techniques. Some are rock-solid. Others just swaddle the tray with cling film and leave it at that. Liquid galore. And some of the shoppers! We’d had customers just before you. THEIR Sausages were dripping meat juices everywhere. A grimy slippery trail leading back to Butchery. So we asked them, you want these wrapped? They didn’t give a shit! They said no! They smirked, they smarmed, they laughed, they departed, and they left a second trail of of meat juice drips outside! What dickheads! Awful!”

The checkout operator gal concurred vigorously. Both were gobsmacked, both were dismayed.

And fair enough! I said so, loudly. Then I applied a bit more thought.

“If I were in your position,” I said, “I'd be thirsting to enact some sweet sweet Dickhead Vengeance. I’d have been so incredibly tempted to first get my hands all nice and slimy from the Sausage Juices. Then beckon each Dickhead closer. And closer. Into face-caressing range. Then declare in a loud clear voice that because they're obviously so keen on radiating Sausagey benevolence supermarketwide, they therefore couldn't possibly object to generous counterbenevolence. Then lunge at these bastards’ faces and smear their own products’ gunk across them. And screech into their eyes like you’re a barn owl or a howler monkey or a Chrysler.”

They laughed. “I realise they'd throw a massive tantrum and you’d get fired,” I added, “but it’s a nice thought.”

Further thoughts Thoughted.

“Wait,” I said. “What if I pretended to be that horrible Dickhead Customer? Or organise a huge mob of them? We could proceed with the meat-smearing, so far so good … but just as your manager storms over here to fire you, my Dickhead mates and I could all break out into aggrieved and screechy wails. We'd prostrate ourselves before your manager and you two. We'd literally kowtow with tremendous vehemence. We'd screech, we'd wail, we'd admit we were totally in the wrong, to let our goddamn Sausages drip and soil every goddamn surface. We'd holler that you two were quite spectacularly justified in then smearing our Sausage-gunk across our smarmy mugs. We'd declare that your supermarket should immediately decree a policy of spanking future meat-dripping Dickhead customers until their bottoms go purple. The customer is always right! Make it happen!”

My two newest mates decided this was an idea of unsurpassed magnificence and excellence, and I should enact it instantly. I just need another 37 mob members. Volunteers, anyone?