Chapter 5 Supermarket 2 Taking the Initiative
Since everyone has to follow the rules, you won't relinquish the initiative anymore.
Witnessing the miserable state of two "kindred spirits" in just over ten minutes ignites a certain tenacity within you, especially since you're not one to passively endure things.
How can you make the rules work for you?
You stand to the side, watching the supermarket employees carry away the sauerkraut jars, and a few people tidy up the potatoes that the curly-haired girl found. You try hard to figure out what's going on here.
Suddenly, you take out your phone, type what you want to say into the translator, practice it a few times, then calm down, walk up to the person, and try to find an employee who looks relatively friendly.
“Wo Isttoilette?” you say it slowly.
The employee looked a little confused and muttered something. Seeing that you didn't understand but were obedient, he had no choice but to gesture to lead you to a roller shutter door. Press a button on the side, and the roller shutter door will rise. You can see several supermarket employees walking around inside.
This is the supermarket's warehouse area. As you navigate among various large boxes, this employee will guide you to your destination.
Employee restroom.
These independent supermarkets have very simple zoning. The shopping area is one large section, and the warehouse area is also a complete area. If you ask an employee "Where is the restroom?", you're basically gambling that she might take you to the warehouse area.
You wait in the bathroom until the footsteps of the person outside leave, then breathe a sigh of relief.
There are even more surprising discoveries here.
This is a family-style bathroom with a large space, including a shower room and several storage cabinets, while several sets of somewhat dirty employee uniforms are hanging on one side.
The uniform reeked of the stench of ten freshly slaughtered sheep; you pinched your nose and finally forced yourself to put it on.
Your original plan was just to come here and see if you could find any potato stock. You even came up with an excuse to pretend you were lost, learned the phrases, and made all the necessary mental preparations—since you can only take it from the area where the goods are supposed to be, then the warehouse should be where it should be, right?
You admit that there's an element of gambling involved, and once you win, you gain more insights into how to interpret the rules.
If you lose, you have one more chance.
Now, with employee uniforms, your actions are more aboveboard.
You swagger around like a newly hired student worker, casually greeting every employee who casts a questioning glance your way. Oh, right, you control your pronunciation; it's not the English "hey lo," but the Japanese "ha lo."
You don't need to expend any more effort; you don't even know the terrain here, so all your clumsiness seems perfectly reasonable and compliant.
What's funny is that the goods in the storage area are arranged much more neatly and orderly than those in the shopping area, and you quickly find the fresh vegetables in stock.
The potatoes were piled up in boxes in the corner.
You secretly observed the employees who were preparing stock for Monday's new product launches because they had taken Sunday off. You boldly stepped forward, picked up a few bags of potatoes, and did the same. Everyone was busy; they barely glanced at you, and no one paid any attention to you.
And these things are very simple; just put a price tag on them.
Then, you pretend to put the potatoes into a basket, then in a flash, you stuff a bunch of potatoes into your clothes and jog out of the storage area.
Just in case, you only picked the potatoes whose prices hadn't changed, and now, looking around to make sure no one was watching, you put the bag of potatoes into the shopping area's shelf.
You took off your employee uniform, covered in sweat, but you calmly put the potatoes back into your shopping bag.
You waited there for a few minutes, and no one came to bother you.
You made the right bet!
You were just thinking that if employees want extra potatoes but can only compete with customers by hiding them, it means they can't shop during work hours, so they have to hide the potatoes and do it after get off work.
Regardless, these facts demonstrate that the roles of employees and customers are not mutually exclusive; everyone is a follower of the rules. However, employees simply have more authority over the disposal of goods and the right to punish customers.
As long as you can find a loophole, you can use the rules to safely get what you want.
Of course, the idea of using the bathroom as a solution is also thanks to the many odd and ends of life hacks provided in those posts on Little Green Book, which may have been projections of the real world.
As you're staring at your cloth bag and grinning foolishly, you catch a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of your eye.
You suddenly looked up and took two steps to get a better look.
It's that curly-haired girl.
The number above her head had become 2, and she looked extremely haggard and dazed, but thank goodness she was still alive.
Just as you were about to tell her what to do, the girl saw you and ran away as if on cue.
You can understand the girl's state of mind when she awkwardly lowers her raised hand; you might also want to avoid people if you were in her shoes.
Focus on yourself first.
The potatoes are in hand; now all that's left on your shopping list is drinking water.
The beverage section is easy to find; its shelves are different from ordinary shelves. But when you get there, you'll be dumbfounded.
The four rows of beverage shelves were filled with nothing but sugar-free cola, except for beer.
It's not that you can't drink cola, but you can't drink it like water either.
Just as you're thinking of simply making do, you realize something's wrong.
A large supermarket that doesn't even have drinking water would be abnormal in any situation, right?
As if in response to your thoughts, a strange buzzing sound suddenly rang out.
You turn around and are horrified to see the Coke bottles on the shelf begin to shake violently, their caps popping off one after another. Black liquid gushes out like a living thing, twisting and turning in the air into all sorts of shapes that defy the laws of physics.
Your heart suddenly races, and your blood seems to freeze. You want to turn and run, but as the wave of cola hits you, the air is filled with choking carbon dioxide, and you can't even open your eyes! You haven't gone far before you trip and fall to the ground.
The black liquid rushes towards you like the red rum in the movie The Shining; you can feel its chill, and the bouncing droplets spray onto your body.
The first wave of liquid touches your ankles, icy cold.
You gritted your teeth, determined not to utter a single word unconsciously. You simply squinted and ran in the opposite direction, using both hands and feet, but the black tide followed closely behind, chasing you as if it were consciously aware of its surroundings.
The goods on the shelves collapsed around you, but you couldn't care less.
The water level of the cola kept rising, soon reaching above your knees, and then your waist.
The resistance was too great, and you couldn't maintain your balance. You stumbled and fell into the cola. The foamy liquid immediately enveloped your entire body, and you struggled desperately, trying to float to the surface.
Haha, at least what I swallowed was a sweet drink.
You actually have time to think about these things.
Then you suddenly realize that you don't seem to be suffocating.
You try opening your mouth to speak, and it actually works.
Although it's unclear why this scenario was triggered, since it provided such a vulnerability, there must be a way to escape it.
You intended to resolve the issue gradually, but you discovered that although you felt no pain, your skin had already begun to dissolve.
!
How could carbonic acid have such an effect?
A strange thought suddenly flashes through your mind.
Don't those health and wellness marketing accounts portray cola and other carbonated drinks as monstrous threats? This scenario seems to be related to some media propaganda.
Media, media…
You continue to let your thoughts wander, recalling a story you once read about the history of Coca-Cola and the local German company Fanta: Fanta was originally created during World War II as an alternative to Coca-Cola when it was unable to obtain raw materials in Germany due to the embargo.
This idea is like a bolt of lightning, instantly illuminating your chaotic mind.
Who knows?
You take a deep breath—actually, you take a sip of cola—and shout with all your might, "Easily Vifenta!"
You are incredibly grateful to your parents for giving you a brilliant mind. You have a strong learning ability and a great memory. You memorized the structures of all simple sentences, which enabled you to directly create sentences like "I want Fanta".
The words had barely left his lips when an eerie silence fell over the entire supermarket. The pool of cola that had formed suddenly stopped churning, as if time had frozen. You waited for a miracle to happen.
In the blink of an eye, even the last drop of liquid disappeared, and you found yourself just standing there in a daze for a moment, while the supermarket remained unchanged.
On the shelves, Coca-Cola Zero is gone, replaced by various beverages, including water and Fanta. And somehow, you find yourself holding an opened can of beer, perhaps even half-empty.
Oh no!
You don't know when you fell for this scam, but you haven't paid yet! Won't you be punished?
If we didn't fail because of defying the rules, are we going to get our shoes wet here?
You start to panic. Just then, an employee walks towards you. Knowing that running away is useless, you simply close your eyes, hoping that everything will be resolved soon.
One second, two seconds.
Nobody's paying attention to you.
The employee was just passing by and tidying up the drinks. The only thing he did for you was look at you, then at the drink in your hand, and say something disdainfully like "Ugh, ugh," before leaving.
You were stunned.
How come this wasn't a foul?
Picking up your phone, you frantically search on Little Green Book, finding both complaints and experience sharing. It turns out that in Chinese supermarkets, many people open bottles and drink beverages directly, which is of course legal and compliant, due to reasons such as the existence of a presumptive purchase relationship.
That makes sense.
It's really strange that you're still scared about the fact that you unconsciously picked up a beer and drank it without even remembering it.
What if it's something different next time?
With that in mind, you stand further away from the shelves, only approaching them when you need to get something.
"Hurry up and buy some water and leave," you thought.
You randomly pull out four buckets of water to drink for now, but you are surprised to find that the price of a single bucket is much higher than buying it by the carton.
You subconsciously compared prices for a while, unaware that a pair of eyes were staring at you through the stacked beer crates.
A note from the author:
----------------------
Big Tiger's German Class Begins: Asozial - The Second-Rate Kid
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
