Andy Richardson column: My market gaff just takes the bacon

Short-term memory shot to bits by a combination of too much work (I’m not complaining) and too little sleep. I have one job to do. Just one. Bring home the bacon. That’s it.

She will be happy. I will be Jack The Biscuit. The weekend will go swimmingly. There’s just one job.

So I walk to the market. And I’m the cleverest man in Shropshire because I not only head to the market to buy the home-cured, oak-smoked streaky bacon – I also pop to the baker’s to buy a loaf. Bacon and fresh bread is the food of kings. Winning At Life.

The bread is procured and safely stowed in a bag. Then I walk to the market. I’m stand at the counter of the deli and point to the streaky. The guy behind the counter reaches forward.

“How much do you want?”

“500 kilograms.”

He looks at me as though I’m an idiot.

I realise I’ve forgotten to say ‘Please’.

“Sorry. 500 kilograms, please.”

I realise it’s rude to point, so add: “The home-cured, oak-smoked streaky, please.”

I have one job to do. Just One Job.

And rather than order enough bacon to feed two people for the weekend, I’ve just ordered the equivalent weight of six Daniel Craigs, or seven-and-a-half Beyoncés. Five hundred God damn kilogrammes of bacon. And I’m still too tired and too stupid to realise my mistake.

The server looks at me: “Five hundred kilos?”

“Yes, 500 kilos, please.”

An expression of pity forms as he realises I don’t even knowthat I shouldn’t have inserted the word ‘kilo’.

“That’s fine,” he says. “I’ll just go and get the forklift. And if you’d like to bring your arctic lorry to the back door, we’ll load it there.”

And then he skewers me with brilliant, pithily contemptuous sarcasm: “Feeling a bit hungry, are you?”

I had one job. One job. And I tried buying enough bacon to last 6,666 days. Damn. I tried buying so much meat that my credit card would have had to stump up £5,500. And the man had to stifle a laugh when I walked out of the shop with 145g of bacon – which was all he had left – leaving me 499.855kg short of my request.

I am not, however, the only man incapable of doing Just One Job.

The inability of men, women and children to do Just One Job is lauded on websites, Twitter accounts and Lord knows where else.

YouHadOneJob.Org, for instance has a picture of a kids’ counting book with the number five and a picture of six bananas. There is a display of zesty oranges with a sign advertising ‘Organic Florida Avocado’ at £2.99 each. Ha. That’s as stupid as a guy walking into a market and asking for 500kg of bacon.

There’s a really-expensive Adidas advert promoting the home jersey for the Colombian national football team – where an Adidas sign-writer spelled the South African nation Columbia, which, as I seem to recall, is the name of a record label featuring Adele, Boy Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel.

And then there’s the awkwardly-placed advert at a home furnishings store. Under the brand name ‘Cousins’, it shows a picture of a man kissing a woman dressed in a wedding gown. I think there are laws against that sort of stuff.

There are more. There’s a super massive billboard advertisement at the side of a road urging people to buy something nice. And it’s been plastered on by the billboard guy upside down.

Then there’s the supermarket advert that proudly proclaims a Rollback price reduction, from £428 to £848, which, by my reckoning, is a helluva lot more.

You can’t go wrong with an advert at a charity store for ‘Missalanis’ clothing or installing a new drain that is slightly higher than the rest of the street. Doh.

Twitter offers various accounts featuring the YouHadOneJob theme, mostly illustrating buffoonery and ineptitude. There’s nothing good about printing thousands of copies of a book called Kids Are Weird and then putting the author’s name, Brown, in front of that text. It kinda sends all the wrong messages and is just a teensy weensy bit inappropriate. Sending a birthday card that reads: ‘Woo-Ho’ sounds as if it’s being sent to a prostitute, rather than your favourite nephew or niece. And where do you start when you’re in the kitchen equipment shop and you see a sign for a stainless steel product that describes itself as a ‘strawberry huller and chicken flicker’. If anyone can work out what the product is supposed to do to chicken, send your suggestions to the usual address.

Swindon road workers drew a ‘Look Left’ sign on the pavement, with an arrow to the right; a crazy graphic artist created a newspaper feature on ladies’ swimsuits with the headline Suit Yourself. He placed the headline over water, so that the words reflected. And that meant the ‘u’ in suit became an ‘h’ and made a suggestion that no one could ever wish for.

Truth be told, when observing the idiocy of others, I don’t feel so bad about ordering 18 years worth of bacon from the market.