I was working in a store that was something of a mix between a department store and a supermarket. The reason I was there was strongly related to my having already worked in Woolworths; I think this was my return to work. After having done nothing there for five months; I was actually thinking yesterday that I need to call them up and officially quit. In this dream, though, while I was working on a very supermarket-like checkout and mainly putting through fresh produce, there were other things in the store that wouldn't normally be in a supermarket - an audio visual section at the back, for instance.
The fruit and vegetables section was to the right of the checkout I was standing behind, and the checkouts were staggered like the residential buildings I live in; the end of one overlaps the beginning of the next. I was fine with putting through people's fruit and veg - things that just need to be plopped on the scales while you type in a PLU code - but Michelle (the nazi who drove everyone batty at the store where I used to work) came through wanting to buy something else for lunch and I just couldn't do it. I was saved from her immediate wrath by her running away again to grab something else, leaving her stuff on the counter in front of me, but I knew I had to figure it out before she came back or she'd get shitty at me. The system had changed since I left, and I don't think there was a scanner any longer, but I was still expected to get these items into the system in some way or another. I couldn't work it out.
Michelle was buzzing around like an angry bee, grabbing things the way she always did before she went on her lunch breaks - a drink, a magazine, a this, a that - dumping each item on the counter before going to fetch the next. When she finally stood before me with everything she wanted to buy, and I still hadn't begun to put any of them through the system, she began getting narky. In the end I, resigned, pushed the keyboard towards her and gestured that she could do it herself, which she did in a "You're so stupid" fashion that I only felt worse about because of having worked there before - I should have known this stuff, right? She then showed me a piece of paper - the thin, yellow stuff that receipts tend to be written on - and tried to explain something to me, but I couldn't even figure out what was written on the paper, let alone how it had anything to do with scanning items.
Then I was in a different section, neatening up the shelves of a display area that could have been fruit and veg. Could have been anything, really. I kept wandering to the back of the store and seeing decorative bowls. I dusted off a large one and brought back with me, sure that I could incorporate it into the display and everything would look much nicer. Before turning the last corner into the aisle I was working in, though, I felt a flash of uncertainty, and wondered whether or not I'd get into trouble for snitching a bowl from another section without explicit directions to do so. So, turning around, I walked quickly to the back of the store, and returned the bowl. Near it was a smaller bowl - surely they wouldn't miss this one? I grabbed it and headed back to my aisle, but experienced the same misgivings when I got there. I went back and returned the bowl, same as before... and saw another one on the way back whose disappearance I was sure nobody would notice. This happened several times, until I was distracted by something else happening at the back of the store.
In the audio visual department were three guys - people who worked in the store, I think - watching a video. I could see them through the shelves behind which the couch was that they were sitting on. I'd heard folky music playing as I passed them, and went in to see what they were watching. I perched on the right side of the couch (it had no arms) and could tell somehow that the film was a documentary about the history of folk or country or some combination of music types. Then before me on the screen were the faces of Mum and Dad. Younger versions of them, I should say - the way they look in photos I've seen that were taken in the early seventies. They were sitting, leaning back on their hands, being interviewed, and as the camera drew back into a wide shot I realised they were sitting in front of our house - the house I grew up in.
That was the end of the documentary, but when the titles began appearing on screen, the images they were played over were of my brother and I at very young ages. This younger version of me was talking to the screen, being coy in a vox pop, but I was too surprised and too busy exclaiming about my pigtails to hear what she was saying. I asked one of the guys what the documentary was called, intending to go buy a copy for my mother, but I couldn't remember the title long enough to get to the video section to check if it was there.
