Check your pockets right now- you're likely to find at least one.My desk is spattered with a handful; folded and frayed. A quick scan has me spotting six.
The murky depths of every set of pockets I command are clogged with their sediment; the mashed up paper hiding untold tales of our thrilling forgotten lives:
N/VALLEY OAT & HONEY, GO/AH R/BERRY BRK, PREPACKED BROCCOLI.
They've always gotten in the way - a fistful of coins squeezed and scrunched into a pocket - smoothness of motion hindered by their unwanted wrapping paper. Often difficult to distinguish from weathered five pound notes - leading to various unfortunate conclusions.
They're a nuisance.
Oh, and the fact that you're given them with fucking everything also ensures they've lost almost all significance, which tends to cause complications when expense claims get thrown into the mix.
Lately however, rather than being handed a bit of crumple with your cash, handy little machines dispense them so you can take them yourself. This would seem a brilliant idea - letting you take your receipt if you want to.
Of course whilst it's technically entirely your choice whether or not you take the receipt, it rarely feels that way. As you turn to leave, staff immediately point at the forgotten slip of paper peeking out of the machine whilst glaring at you with their sickeningly helpful, smiling eyes. Being a painfully polite soul myself, I'll turn back and awkwardly take it - with clear emphasis on awkward due to the fact that by this stage my hands are full of loose change, shopping bags, iphone, and wallet. I'm clearly at full capacity, and yet they insist on adding more.
If you've got your hands even vaguely full when offered a leaflet by someone in the street, it's a standard response to give that little 'no hands!' shrug before wandering off. And yet I'll happily go out of my way to ensure i'm able to take a small piece of paper informing me i've just bought a Mars bar, adding it to a ceaseless flow of utterly useless crumpled up bits of rubbish that i'll inexplicably keep for a couple of weeks at least.
No, I don't have a Clubcard.
Bus tickets in mine, causing me to think "where was I going on this date?" and then furiously checking my diary and phone calendar for clues. Turns out I was doing something remarkably mundane. Like going to work. Or leaving a shitty comment on a blog.
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