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A little anecdote I just remembered.

Six years ago, I worked at Woolworths. I was only there for three months and hated it.

There was one guy who generally worked similar shifts to me, but on a different till. His name was Ignacio, but everybody called him Nacho. He was Spanish, and I still can’t work out if this nickname was racially insensitive. He was a big guy, with a constant dopey look on his face and a limited grasp on English.

I only worked one shift with him, upstairs on the toy counter. Shortly after the shift started, I noticed huge, deep, raw looking cuts all up one of his forearms. They looked really painful. I pointed to them and asked if he was ok.

‘Yes,’ he told me. ‘I own piranhas.’

Shiiiiit, I thought. Nacho got half eaten by piranhas?? I didn’t bring it up again for a few hours. I bumped into a few other coworkers around the shop and mentioned that Nacho had lots of piranha bites all up his arm. They were all as shocked as me.

Back on the till with Nacho, I was so curious and wanted to chat about the piranha bites, but thought it might be a sore subject. As we started to close up the store, one of our workmates asked for me.

‘Nacho, is it true that those cuts are piranha bites?’

‘No,’ Nacho said, ‘I was cleaning their tank and accidentally smashed it.’

Ohhh. That makes more sense, I thought. I was very disappointed though.