Sweet Guru

I’ve been working at the sweet shop a while now and it seems that customers have favourite questions to ask and I get asked the same thing what feels like a zillion times a day.

Firstly, we have giant gobstoppers. They are huge and frankly make me feel a bit sick. They are as large as a cricket ball and there is no possible way that any human could fit it into their mouth. I am sure that this is obvious from looking at it but without fail – a zillion times a day someone will marvel “well, how are you supposed to fit that in your mouth”. It’s as if they expect me to have an answer and come out with something like “well, funny you should ask – all giant gobstoppers come with a key which means that you can unlock your jaw and fit the whole gobstopper in!” There is no physical way that anyone will fit it in their mouth – surely any sane person can see that! But no, every day the same. Sigh.

These same gobstoppers apparently last 3 months which quite frankly makes me feel a bit ill. Who wants to eat something that has been moist for 3 months. Now, as amusement I tell people that they last 5 months, 8 months, years! People believe me. It’s awesome. I am the sweet guru and therefore know all there is to know about sweets.

The sweet shop I work in only stocks British sweets and this leads me to the other question that I am asked repeatedly. “Are you actually British?”. Now, I am from West Sussex, I speak the Queen’s English and I like to throw in words such as ‘splendid’ and ‘marvellous’ into every day speech so I think that I am very obviously British. At first I just smiled and said “yes of course” but then in a moment of boredom I decided to see how far I could take this ‘sweet guru’ thing. Would the customers believe anything that I said?

I started off pretty tame and I would laugh that I am in fact an actress practising my British accent and then I progressed to telling them that I was a spy for the big bosses and that I had been put in as a mole to uncover sweet conspiracies. The customers didn’t bat an eyelid. When I was next asked the same question I told the middle aged lady that I was going into witness protection and I need to brush up on my English accent to make it believeable. She just looked concerned and wished me luck and walked away. I felt bad. Honestly though, I said it in a jesty way with a smile on my face but she absolutely did not pick up on it in any way. Amazing.

The way I see it, the possibilities are endless – I can make up more and more elaborate lies and people will always believe me as they are under my sweet guru spell. Certainly makes work a bit more interesting.