The global economic downturn is hitting all of us in one way or another; we may find ourselves performing something less than our dream occupation to pay the bills and make ends meet. Having recently been temporarily employed in a socially significant role as “Urban Logistics Technician” (i.e. I have had to find work in a supermarket) I have discovered a great many things that have hitherto been hidden from me.

I have discovered that there is only just so much ambient supermarket music one can listen to before a yawning abyss of jingle-and-middle-of-the-road-pop-hits induced psychosis opens underneath your feet. I have seen the true face of insanity and it comes labelled in a thousand different colours and with spotless teeth, clean sheets, tasty snacks, cleanly shaven and fresh-smelling faces (or armpits), fruit juices, confectionery and ornately decorated feminine hygiene product packaging. I have seen the original nature of commercial commodity culture and it comes in fourteen sizes with all natural environmentally safe packaging and optional flybuys and sugar-free, dandruff-free just-add-water-and-heat-in-microwave bliss.

I have also discovered (more soberly now) that working in a supermarket is not such a bad job after all. You get to help people find things, you get to joke around with staff members and you get to do some good, honest work - even if the pay is not quite what you would prefer to earn.

Before I had this job I never even really noticed all those people filling stock on shelves or doing all the other tasks around a supermarket. It’s just something that never really registered above an elementary liminal level in my mind.

This all reminds me of a friend of mine who used to ride, repair and generally love motorbikes before he became ill. He is very generous in giving way (in a way most uncommon to those in four-wheelers) to motorbike riders while he is driving his car. It seems that we may take for granted many of those things and people around us unless we have concretely engaged with them or their activity in some way.

I am flabbergasted by the range and variety of products on offer. You just don’t really see them all when you are shopping for a specific item. I have touched on this before but it seems yet again that we are witnessing the general inversion of the human being in concrete form. The supermarket is in a way a mirror to (a post-industrial, technologised, consumer) humanity by reflecting back everything about it’s needs and desires in their most basic form.

I now know that I will never look at a fully stocked shelf of commodity items in a supermarket quite the same way again. Someone works hard to place all those items we are all so lucky to be able to select from and purchase. Next time you are in a supermarket say hi to the people working there, they do appreciate it and you never know - one day it could be you working there.