The Idler

Little Shop of Horrors

After graduating from a prestigious London design college and realising that I wasn’t going to get a job, I found work at a small shop in the more salubrious end of Soho selling overpriced designer gee-gaws to media types. The job had
it’s perks, I’ve sold cheap tat at high prices to people from the A, B, and Z list. However, my boss had some dodgy personal and financial habits (not to mention the fact that his best friend, a trolly-dolly for the world’s favorite airline, was a nonce who got on the Far East flights so he could screw underage boys during stopovers). He lived in the shop as a way of avoiding living costs and supplimenting his expensive living habits, not above the shop, but actually on the sales
floor, and though there was a toilet out the back, it was not only broken but used as a place to stuff cash, large bundles of which I had to carry across central London on a regular basis to iffy contacts. Due to my boss’s sleeping habits, and liking for drink, it meant that in the mornings, vases had to be handled with care. Yes, he would piss in them during the night. My morning routine involved kicking him awake,
emptying piss-filled vases, trying to eradicate the smell of said piss from the shop, then keeping an upmarket pretence for 8 hours while the sickly stench of odour-neutraliser gave me a headache. Last I heard he’s legged it abroad as he was wanted for fraud.
Anon