Checkout Queue Bouncers

A great deal of frustration can be engendered by being stuck in a checkout queue behind a customer who, having had their goods bagged and placed in their trolley, suddenly realises they are going to have to pay for their purchases and start to search franticlly for their wallet, purse or other storage device.

But now, something can be done. In the next queue, ther is no such problem, for the Checkout Bouncers have done their work well. Even now, the two huge men, their hands replete with tattoos and large gold rings, their muscular bodies clad in natty black dinner suits with clip-on bow ties, their radio earpieces in place, are glowering through their wrap-round black sunglasses at a frail, elderly gentleman, demanding to know how he intends to pay, and does he have exact change ready ?

These heroes of the supermarket gaze impassively on those who join the queue with their credit card gripped in their teeth, or a wad of notes already to hand; but woe betide the harrased mother who carries her credt card "somewhere" at the bottom of her cluttered handbag, or the gormless youth who has to scrabble through the pockets of his coat and tracksuit trousers to gather enough pennies to pay for his can of Red Bull. The inept, the slow, the confused, the incompetent, the merely inattentive; all are fair game to the bouncers, who, if they are not satisfied with the whimperings of their terrified victim, waste no time in frogmarching them off to the special "In this queue you can wait forever" checkout at the far end of the store.

Thus are the wheels of commerce lubricated.