The first thing I heard was what I thought was the pallet lift, that low mechanical groan it does when the hydraulics are cold. Took me a second to place it wrong, because the lift was still switched off at the wall, red tag and everything, and the sound was coming from further back than the loading bay anyway. It was the shutter over aisle nine. Just settling, probably. Buildings do that at 2am, everyone tells you that.
I did stock counts three nights a week at a homeware place off the Cambuslang road, the kind that sells everything from bath mats to garden strimmers and smells permanently of new carpet. My supervisor, Alan, gave me a laminated card my first shift. Said it wasn't official, just stuff the last three stocktakers had agreed on between them. I've still got it somewhere, in the drawer with the expired parking permits and a spare key to a flat I don't live in anymore. It went something like this.
Count the aisles before you start, not after. There are fourteen. Write the number down on the sheet even though you already know it, because you'll want to check later and you won't trust your memory.
If you get to fourteen and there's a fifteenth, stop where you are and go and stand by the tills until your break's officially started, even if it's not been an hour yet.
Don't go down the fifteenth to see what's stocked there. It won't be empty. That's not the problem with it.
If a voice comes over the tannoy asking for a manager to aisle fifteen, there is no manager on site after 11pm. Alan does the walkaround at half ten and goes home. Don't answer it and don't go looking for whoever's paging.
The stock sheet only has fourteen rows. If you find yourself writing a fifteenth row in, just carrying on like it's normal, put the pen down and finish the shift with a different pen tomorrow.
It gets your name right. I don't know how. Alan wouldn't say more about that one and I stopped asking after the second time.
Don't count twice in one night. If the number's still fourteen the second time, that's fine. If it isn't, you already know what to do. Just do it. Don't stand there working out why.
I want to say I followed all of them for the eight months I worked there. That's not quite true. There was a night in March — I miscounted on purpose, told myself I'd lost track somewhere around aisle eleven, where they keep the picture frames, which don't sell, nobody buys picture frames at a homeware superstore off the Cambuslang road, I don't know why they keep restocking them, maybe head office just sends a set number of pallets regardless. Anyway. I went back and counted again. Got to fourteen. Kept walking.
The aisle was stocked with bath mats. Same brand as the real aisle nine, same blue packaging, same barcode sticker peeling at the same corner. My name was already written on the shelf-edge label, in the little slot where they usually put the price, in my own handwriting, the way I do my sevens with the line through them. I only started doing that after a teacher told me to in primary school and never stopped, even though nobody ever told me why she wanted it that way.
I clocked out at half four that morning same as always. Didn't tell Alan. Didn't need the job that badly, and didn't need it that little either, if you follow me, so I stayed another four months.
Last week I found the stock sheet from that shift, folded into a book I hadn't opened since. Fourteen rows, same as ever.
Row nine has bath mats counted twice. Once in blue ink. Once in a pen I don't remember using, in handwriting that isn't mine but does the sevens the same way.