The Visitor

Minding my own business and rooting about looking for eggs, I was confronted mid-aisle by a monster alien robot from Planet Zog. It stopped and stared at me – and hummed threateningly. I froze. I nearly dropped the eggs but instead of making instant floor omelette, I skedaddled.

I may have exaggerated the origin of the machine. Once in the safety of the frozen fish section, where I was able to chill out a little, I thought about it further and suspected the fiendish contraption had probably come from that mysterious room where the supermarket staff emerge from and disappear into – you know, the one in the corner near the granulated sugar. Come to think of it, that seems an even stranger place than Planet Zog. Nevertheless, I decided that it was most definitely an alien creature and needed to be treated with great caution. I went back to observe from a distance, hopefully unnoticed, concealed behind a special offer display of Douro reds.

It was humming its way past the cheese counter. The staff member stacking up the Queijo das Ilhas was taking no notice at all. That might be a good sign, I thought, as serving cheese demands a certain alertness to danger and an abundance of caution, especially around those foreign blue ones. There were few customers around. Indeed, I was the only one in that section. That’s how it is if you, like me, insist on doing your weekly shop as soon as the doors open in the morning. There may not have been many customers about, but there were a lot of staff - stacking shelves, doing inventories and carrying out other mysterious rituals known only to those in the trade. There it was, this alien robot, sniffing about the aisles and nudging its way around the staff, who seemed unbothered by its attempts at domination. I relaxed. If they were okay with it, then so should I. I mean, working for minimum wage is bad enough without there being a risk to life or limb and clearly they felt safe, or as safe as you can feel in a place where the general public are involved. I decided to continue being cautious, mind. Cunning things, these robots.

I observed. It didn’t seem as aggressive as I had first thought. In fact, faced with any obstacle, it hesitated, whirred, buzzed. It seemed to get confused quite easily and was oh-so-very cautious about trying to sneak through gaps between the shelves and the provisions carts being used by the shelf stackers. In fact, the more I watched, the more it became clear that the creature wasn’t at all sure of itself. I started to relax. It wasn’t aggressive, I thought. It was confused. I sauntered over to the pasta section, relaxing a little more with each step.

Then I froze again. Where was the cleaner? You know, the woman who was always clattering up and down the aisles with her broom and mop, the one who was both cheery and gruff at the same time. Salt of the earth, she is. Or was. What had the infernal machine done with her? I clutched at the macaroni in fear.

Listen. Is that the sound of the robot coming this way? I thought it was still over by the jams. Has it somehow read my mind about the cleaner? Has it come to mop up any loose ends?

I dash to the checkout. Forget the yoghurt. Let me get out of here.