This evening I was at a supermarket. I was purchasing, among other items, sausages. Both the checkout operator gal and the attendant bag-packer dude present asked me, with tones of world-weariness, if I might like them wrapped in extra bags.

I inspected these sausages in their sausagey sausage-trays. They seemed 100% perfectly sealed, and I said so. “Yeah I know,” the bag-packer dude there replied, “but different sausage brands use different techniques. Some just wrap cling film around the tray and call it a day. And some of the shoppers! Man. We’d had customers just before you, with sausages dripping meat-juices everywhere. We asked them, want these wrapped? They didn’t care at all, they said no. We got meat juices everywhere! Awful.”

The checkout operator gal concurred vigorously. Both were gobsmacked. Fair enough! I said so, then gave this a bit more thought. “If I were in your position,” I said, “I’d have been so tempted to get my hands all nice and slimy from the meat juices, then cradle these bastards’ faces and smear their own products’ gunk across them. Then screech in their faces like you’re a barn owl or a howler monkey or a Chrysler.” They laughed. “I realise the customer would throw a massive tantrum and you’d get fired,” I added, “but it’s a nice thought.”

More thoughts. “Wait,” I said. “What if I pretended to be that horrible customer? Or a huge mob of us? We could proceed with the meat-smearing, so far so good … then just as your manager storms over here to fire you, my mates and I could all break out into aggrieved wails, extremely loudly, and prostrate ourselves before them and you, and admit we were totally in the wrong to let our goddamn sausages drip and soil every goddamn surface, and that you two were totally in the right to then smear our meat-gunk across our own faces, and that your supermarket should instantly decree a policy of spanking future meat-dripping customers until their bottoms go purple. The customer is always right! Make it happen!”

My two new mates decided this was an excellent idea and I should attempt this immediately. I just need another 37 mob members. Volunteers, anyone?