Open Writing

During my time in the supermarket there is a highlight that is worth recounting.

The frozen meat was displayed in two large bin freezers, each about fifteen feet in length. A fuse had blown, cutting off the freezer's power at the start of a weekend. The security men had failed to notice this.

When I arrived on Monday morning I saw that the contents had completely thawed out. Legs of beef, pork and lamb, frozen chickens, turkeys plus every other sort of packaged meat were still perfectly edible, but the meat could not be refrozen. I went to see my boss with the suggestion that the stock should be marked down 50% and that I would put in an insurance claim to cover the loss. He didn't agree with me and told me instead to reduce the stock by only 10%.

I duly went down and told my assistant Mrs. Scott what he had said and went on into my office to work on the claim. I hadn't been doing this long when I became aware of a buzzing sound in the supermarket and when I looked out of the doorway of my office door I saw the supermarket packed with native people going through the checkouts loaded up with items from the freezers. I went to see what was going on. To my horror, everything was going or I should say had gone out at 10%. Legs of pork were going out for a dollar instead of ten dollars, and so on.

I stopped the sales temporarily but was forced to let the last few remaining people through as it was now far too late and both freezers were quite empty. Mrs. Scott, being partly deaf, had apparently misunderstood my instructions. Fortunately the management saw the funny side, and nothing more was said about it, to me anyway.

I had another problem to cope with, as the previous supermarket manager had given the whole of the kitchenware section to Ipi, a Papuan from Hanuabada village on the outskirts of Moresby, to run. His duties included stock ordering and control. The fixtures he controlled ran the full width of the shop. Half the merchandise contained rusted pots and pans, dried up plastic ware and other long outdated merchandise. All I could see was a couple of hundred feet of shelving that was not earning money. Other items with a much larger turnover were far too cramped.

Much to his chagrin, I took Ipi off his job and put him to work in the country orders section. When I condensed the department and wrote off a large percentage of the stock I came across a couple of items that defied description. As a joke, I put a sample of one of them on the top of a cash register with a notice saying, "If you can tell me what this is you may have it". One American lady came up to me with the item and said "This is used for making Angel Food cake on a Primus stove, but I don't want it, thank you."

When I first worked in the store, the whole of Moresby would close down for two hours for lunch. My friend and assistant John Lynch and I often took our home-made sandwiches with us as we wandered down to the wharf to watch the local men fishing for small Garfish. One afternoon a school of tuna swam behind the wharf. A couple of fishing canoes quickly rowed across the open area and the fishermen in them began calling out and slapping the surface of the water with their paddles. The fish now seemingly trapped raced around and around the confined area in panic at an incredible speed. The fishermen brandishing pronged spears in couple of other canoes made their way past the ones making the noise. Again and again they threw their weapons just missing their speedy targets. It was almost like watching a gladiator sport with all of us on the jetty cheering on the hunters. Finally a couple were successfully speared before the tuna finally found the exit and the show was over.

© Clement 2006