//------------------------------//
// Part 1: The Store – VI 
// Story: Trolley Pushers 
// by Acologic 
//------------------------------//

‘Are you not supposed to come in during staff hour?’ Ale asked Ant, draped in his high-vis as though he never stopped working, which in a certain sense was absolutely true. Ale couldn’t understand how Ant wasn’t fed up with trolleys. Yet he couldn’t imagine the shopper park without him. Ant was a strange case. He was surprisingly likeable despite being generally considered obnoxious by shoppers and store staff alike, and even though Ale didn’t truly like him, he sometimes found himself reevaluating. There was just something endearing about the pony, from his stupid, lanky mane to his odd, stooped gait. Despite his mood, he found he was happy to strike up a conversation for once. He almost regretted it quickly the moment Ant stopped and gestured for them to walk towards the back of the trolley hut, where Elm had been crying two hours before. But Ant, it seemed, wasn’t nearly as talkative today as he normally was. And that made speaking to him more enjoyable than Ale could have hoped.

‘I don’t really want to come in on the last day of my holiday,’ said Ant solemnly. ‘But I’ve got nothing in the fridge and I thought it would be nice to get something different from the store for dinner.’

‘Something different? What, like a curry or something?’

‘Oh, no, no, no.’

‘What? You don’t like curry?’

Ant shook his head vigorously. ‘God, no.’

‘So what do you think you’ll get?’

‘Probably something that’s reduced and easy to prepare,’ said Ant. ‘Preferably something I can heat up on the hob or in the oven.’

‘A pizza?’

‘If I don’t see anything else, then yes, although I’m pretty sure they have reduced pasta meals in the fridges at the top of the store.’

‘Ah. Nice. Nice.’ Ale nodded. ‘You sure they’ll let you check out before staff hour?’

‘I’ll use self service.’

‘Self-service staff won’t be happy.’

‘Well, I don’t really care,’ said Ant, shrugging with his hooves. ‘If they get mad at me, they can take it to their manager.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a stupid, stupid rule, and do you know what really annoys me no end?’ Ant said with his customary intensity. 

‘What?’ said Ale, hitching a look of concern onto his face.

‘The fucking checkout and self-service staff are happy to forget the rules when it’s their turn to do their shopping,’ he said furiously.

‘Well, yeah, but I suppose it’s kind of the benefit of working in there.’ 

Ant sighed deeply. ‘Yes, but you don’t have to be such a hypocrite about it.’

‘Have you ever wanted to work checkouts?’ asked Ale, curious. He found it hard to imagine Ant in any other department.

‘Not once. I had to do it during my induction when I first started. Look. I know myself,’ he said, ‘and I know that I can’t trust myself not to say something to a shopper that would really get me in trouble.’ 

‘Yeah,’ said Ale, nodding back. ‘Well, that makes sense, I suppose.’ He gave a silly chuckle. ‘I mean, I don’t mind it myself sometimes –’

Ant had interrupted him, and Ale fell quiet out of habit. ‘It’s not even that,’ said Ant. ‘I just couldn’t sit still for that long, especially if it’s late at night and I’m expected to sit and wait for shoppers. I think I’d just doze off. It’s happened to me when I’ve done training.’

‘What, you’ve just dozed off?’

‘And passed at the same time, I’ll have you know! I did legal training, and you know how it’s the only training course with a limited number of tries. I was falling asleep and pressed a lot of answers completely at random, and I still passed.’

‘Really? Nice! And that’s one you need one-hundred percent on!’

‘I know, and I still managed to get everything right, and I was like this –’ He mimicked falling asleep. ‘For most of it.’

Ale nodded and said, ‘Quite an achievement.’ Ant had already moved on.

‘I could tell it was you who was on,’ he said. ‘I saw the main bay and saw the trolleys were touching the yellow line.’

Ale laughed. ‘Yeah, I always fill it to capacity.’

‘That’s your way,’ said Ant, ‘which is fine and all, but I think it looks neater if you fill it to the line of the railing instead.’

‘There’s a railing?’

‘Well, it isn’t really a railing, but I can’t think of another word for it.’

‘Fair enough either way, I guess.’ Ale chuckled again. He had no idea what Ant was talking about, which was perhaps the most typical thing in their conversation thus far. Ant frequently brought up things no one had ever heard of and talked about them at length, as though Ale, or whoever else was lucky enough, knew all about them. On the rare occasion that Ale was forced to admit he didn’t know anything about the matter at hand, Ant didn’t react at all and went on as though he hadn’t spoken. He really was a strange case. It takes all sorts, Ale found himself thinking. This time, though, Ant seemed to have had his fill of chatter. He sighed much like Ale did these days, the sigh of a tired, fed-up worker tolerating his dead-dull job. For Ant it was surely much, much worse. Dead dull it might have been for Ale, but at least it wasn’t dead-end. So far as Ant was concerned, it really probably was. 

‘Anyway,’ said the latter after another sigh. ‘I’m going. Catch you later.’ 

He walked off towards the store, leaving Ale with mixed feelings of pity and gratefulness that both helped and upset him.