The dangers of smoking

Round after round after round pumped, like tiny bolts of lightening, into the jerking corpses till the chambers were clicking empty, and acrid clouds of smoke filled the food hall and his nostrils, and the sensation of smoldering machine gun metal finally registered on the calloused flesh of his trigger finger.

With his ears still ringing, Joe Kerr Jr. stepped over the piles of bodies towards the tobacco kiosk counter. The attendant stood shell-shocked. He clicked his fingers and the catatonic lady unfroze.

"I'd like a pack of ten lights."

"I'm sorry we're out of stock."

"This is the tobacco kiosk right?"

"Yep."

"So I've just expended a whole lot of expensive ammunition, removing from the queue, those time-wasters with over ten items or more in their baskets, blue-rinse lottery and scratch-card addicts, and those imbeciles who want their notes changed for coins to put in the trolleys. To the point: those that do not grasp the primary purpose of a tobacco kiosk - and here the clue is in the name - is to sell tobacco. For nothing."

"That's about the long and short of it."

"Can I speak to your supervisor?"

"I'm afraid they're on a customer service training course at the moment, but if you'd like, you can fill in one of our "customer satisfaction surveys" - "your views are important to us" - see: it says it right here above the multi-choice tick-boxes."

Joe Kerr Jr. recognised the form, it was one he had worked on as part of a commission granted to Unlikely Solutions Ltd on behalf of Supermarkets R Us.