Mort the Shit Manager: Tripe & Gizzard Flavour
Source: Image by @katharsisdrill
Mort, the Shit Manager is a spin-off fictional series of short stories based loosely on the thoughts of David Mortenson, the tyrannical Kwiksave store manager who features in my auto-biographical series 'The Horrors of Kwiksave'.
Mort the Shit Manager Complete Chronology
- Mort as a Stock Lad -
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Flat Arse' - (March 1974)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Mort's Interview' - (March 1974)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Armchair Club' - (May 1974)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Fresh Cream' - (November 1978)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Demise of Reginald Bulge' - (January 1979)
- Mort as a Manager -
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Oxidation' - (July 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Fart Councilling' - (July 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Mandy's Interview' - (October 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Mandy's Curves' - (November 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Bribe' - (November 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Agnus' - (December 1979)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Agnus' Surprise Visit' - (March 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Bloody Nose' - (July 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Brent's 'Druff' - (September 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Sacking of Brent' - (September 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: Edith's Offerings - (October 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: Hector's Deal: Part One - (October 1980)
- Mort as a Manager with @slobberchops -
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Oppression Supreme' - (December 1980)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'Tripe & Gizzard Flavour' - (February 1981)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Heat Machine' - (March 1981)
Mort the Shit Manager: 'The Day Off' - (April 1981)
"Late again?" scowled Mort as I wrenched open the double doors of the Rawtenstall Kwiksave branch in a semi-frenzy.
I was soaked, freezing and not in any mood for derogatory, untrue comments from my cunt of a boss; outside, the rain pelted down in a savage fury.
Ignoring the customary curt remark, I checked my watch. 9.01 am, and despite running through the decrepit town centre shopping area, avoiding the many food bags of refuse crawling with rats, I had almost made it, and what did that fucker mean... 'again'?
...'don't get it into you head that a typical Kwiksave looked like this. Most were rejected buildings on the verge of collapse, and rented on the cheap'... - Source
I could not ever remember a time before this festering day that I had been late. Most days, I had to huddle under the rudimentary cover of the battered old ex-cinema building that Kwiksave had rented and used to sell their cheap boxed food, waiting for my sneering boss to arrive.
"Coffee now boy, and don't make it too strong like you nearly always do. Then... and only then you can clock in".
Mort slammed the office door, and apart from a few dithering old ladies pottering through the front door for the early morning shopping ritual, I was alone.
"One minute late and he wants his fucking coffee without paying me", I bemoaned inwardly.
...'in 1981, dog food flavours were a little outlandish compared to today's boring stale flavours. I don't know about Tripe & Gizzard though, my memory could be a tad off'... - Source
"Excuse me, love, where's the dog food, my Rover only likes the Heart with Jelly flavour., he's ever so fussy…"
My legs moved like lightning up the stairs. This was not happening, and I would not be subject to the whims and demands of an 85-year-old geriatric without pay, and that was as well as being a free coffee maker.
...'for fucks sake, could this day get any worse?'...
Mort was on to me, I knew. My sustained attempt at caffeine poisoning over time was not working, and witnessing the frequent spitting and cursing from inside the one-way glass-encrusted office after delivering the 'goods', that strategy would need to be modified.
Descending from the Kwiksave derelict canteen, I miserably made my way to the office only to see Mort struggling with a 24-pack of Pedigree Chum dog food while visibly arguing with a customer.
The same old dear must have rapped on the office door and forced Mort to do some work. I tried to suppress a grin and hoped the old, withering dear might suffer from amnesia.
Moments later, a sweating, clearly unhappy Mort swept past me, pulled the coffee out of my hand with unnecessary force, which spilt, resulting in a large brown stain on his bright red manager's uniform.
Source
"YOU FUCKING CUNT…." Mort's scream trailed off which was abruptly replaced with a nauseating smile that could curdle the freshest of cream.
- SourceI looked around, surprised to see Elton Welsby, the combustible Area Manager, walking through the front door of the store wearing a shocked-looking expression.
"He's a nasty man, that one. Told me to piss off and make do with the Tripe and Gizzard flavoured dog food just because he's too bloody lazy to get what my Rover likes best…", an agitated familiar voice croaked to my left.
The aged, wizened old lady looked up at me, squinting....
"Do I know you, son?" she said in a rasping croaky voice.
...'the vast majority of Kwiksave customers were old ladies with an average age of 82 years old and they all smoked.'... - Source
"Er.. no, you are probably mistaking me for him", I retorted, which gained me a searing scowl from Mort, who, in turn, remembered at the last moment that Elton was watching the whole scene unfold and switched his cursing visage hastily.
"In the office, Mr Mortenson, I do believe we have some important things to discuss", said Elton in his matter-of-fact manner. I knew better, and that an eruption was bubbling.
I moved away, glad to be out of danger from both Mort and Elton.
Neither could ever be drinking pals, and the back shop was in sight, a most welcome sanctuary.
The office door slammed once again, Mort giving me a glare that could freeze my bones.
"PISSING OFF OUR CUSTOMERS... WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU..…"
I closed the backshop door with a sliding thud, and Elton's screaming subsided and then was muted.
Mort would be back as soon as the Area Manager left, and I would be subject to his undeserved wrath once again.
Mort, the Shit Manager is a Serial Shitposting Fiction Story inspired by Torundel the Shitposter by @katharsisdrill, Ren du Lot, the Shit Lawyer by @vcelier and Nordlute, the Shit Sysadmin by @steevc.
My Urban Exploration Tales can be found directly on the internet via my Website 'Tales of the Urban Explorer'.
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, rehive, engage me or all of these things.
very good post i am very interested in reading the stories you share, thank you for sharing this story my friend.
Yes, I am sure you are.
Lol, when I worked in the car parks I used to do the same with my old boss's coffee. I swear it was like treacle at times. Strong treacle!
One of the few perks of the job was free Coffee and Tea Bags. You needed to boil the water in the Victorian tea urn, and milk was also provided. The Coffee was that Nescafe shit in the brown jar, that's still doing the rounds today.
No more than one cup a day, and only after Mort got his. We had to wait until the 15 minute break (a clocking in and out affair) to get ours, around 10.30am.
Yeah, that Nescafé nonsense was horrible! We had the same but we had more breaks and more coffees. I am amazed I still like coffee after all that
Coffee has come on a lot, and beer too. The slop I used to drink..., Harp, Kestrel, Skol, Carling, Fosters... it was all fucking terrible.. all of it!. Now we have Beer-Man and Costa...,lets hail to a decent drink!
I used to love Carling!!
I had done recently and I was like what the fuck is this swill?!
Hehe, I went to the beer man during the week. His old shop and everything. It was like COVID was just a bad dream
Does that mean his shop.. and more importantly.. him.. are still there? An impartial beer review coming?
There might be! I have a backlog of stories to put up but my lack of photo editor on my phone is pissing me right off. Fucking android shagged me up the arse with my new phone, grr
"I used to love Carling!!"
Not a big beer fan then :D
Haha, paradoxically I am but back in my youth I drank any old shit thinking it was good!
Not as good as they used to be. I think I may be short on ideas.
I'm so glad I never worked in retail. Can't be dealing with the public or scumbags like that.
From what @bingbabe tells me (Tales of Tesco), little has changed. Her boss started working there in the 80's at the age of 16 and now is an underboss with enough power to piss her off regularly.
Having already been through Morri-bobs (an even worse experience) than Tesco, there's only a handful of major ones to work at now.
I only wish I could get her out and in an office environment like us, where we can work without fear.
You have an incredible sense of humor, I don't know what you do for a living but you shoudld be writing jokes for comedians or something. Just reading your title and I'm already laughing before opening your post. 😂
Well thanks. These take some imagination and I do suspect some of my narrative could be repeating a little. It's tough to think of new ideas, and some of this is based off the truth.
I did try and poison Mort with strong Coffee .. 😀..
Wonderful ! Reminds me of my first job, also 1980's retail. WHS - officially W.H. Smiths, but we referred to it as the Wandering Hand Society. Perhaps I'll post a couple of tales from it sometime, although I don't think they'd be as dramatic as yours 😁
WH Smug and Sons. I got caught shoplifting there once when I was young and misguided. It was a Pritz stuck, essentially glue. For that I was hauled off to the police cells, left for 2 hours alone at the age of 12, before they let me go with a 'warning'. The store detectives in there were keen.
You got off lightly, lol. The Halfords next door to us got fed up with the police letting shoplifters off. They'd tell them they were being taken up to the manager's office to wait for the police, then put them in the service lift and say they'd meet them at the top. Then halfway up turn off the power and lights and leave them alone in the lift in the dark stuck between floors for the rest of the day. If anyone asked, they'd say it was a technical problem and an engineer was on the way. 😉
LOL, in todays world.. it would be lawsuits!
It was definitely a more common-sense time back then !
This will make you laugh. My sister used to be one of the wine buyers at Kwiksave. Kwiksave and wine can you imagine what that would have been like? Probably great for dunking engine parts in buckets full of the stuff to clean the corrosion off.
Do you mean Liquersave? It was essential a Kwiksave spin-off, the employees were all middle aged women and full of themselves. None of them said a word to me in over 4 years..., tarts!
As far as I know it was Kwiksave. She was about 22 at the time. She was in the head office which was somewhere in North Wales from what I remember as she used to complain about the drive.
Your story is really interesting, I'm looking forward to your new stories.
When my husband was in high school he took a job in a supermarket: Standing at the door and making sure no one took the carts out of the store. This was a looong time ago (1962,'63?), when everything was manual. It was winter. Pay was $1.15 and hour. He lasted two days :))
Nice story.🤭