"—no, the fourth one, not the second, the second one's fine, it's the fourth one that does it."
Danny doesn't look up from his phone when he says it. I have to ask him twice which register he means before he points, and by then I've already clocked which one, because it's the only self-checkout with the little laminated OUT OF ORDER sign folded into a tent, and nobody's bothered to remove it in three weeks. Or two weeks. Something like that.
"It's not out of order," I say.
"It's not, no," he says, and goes back to his phone.
It's ten past eleven. The Tesco Express on Bellhouse Road smells like the bakery trays being scraped clean, and I've got six hours left of the shift and a trolley of returns to sort. I don't have the energy for Danny's thing tonight, whatever it is. He's been on nights longer than me, eighteen months, maybe two years, and he's the kind of quiet that makes you fill the silence yourself. His girlfriend used to come in at closing and wait by the fag kiosk, arms crossed, never said a word to any of us. Haven't seen her in a while. I don't ask.
At half eleven I go to close register four for the night. Punch in the code. The screen's still lit, mid-transaction, one item listed. Kellogg's Corn Flakes, 500g, £2.55. Nobody's bagging area has anything in it. The little display where it shows a graphic of the item, a cereal box turning slightly on its axis, sits there next to a running total of £2.55, and the machine says, in that flat customer-service voice,
"Philadelphia Neighborhood Convenience Store" by the bridge is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.