I work in a shop in Islington. Hopefully I will get a new job soon.

This shop is just a shop... I won't get into what we sell, but we get mostly women who come in, and some men as well. After being out of the country for my own mysterious purposes, I came back on a shift and the whole place smelled of death. A mouse or a rat, or possibly two, had died somewhere in the shop, likely in the basement area, in the little room that one has to basically crouch down in to get items from. It was disgusting; from working with the Smell of Death, I had to leave the doors open for air just as we were starting to get our cold snap.

I got sick, needless to say.

So, that's pretty weird, but eventually, as nature conducts its decaying process, the Smell of Death grew fainter, until it wasn't as noticeable.

What was noticeable, though, were the flies. There were a couple of flies in the ground floor of the shop the last day I worked, zooming around stupidly to the annoyance of me and my fellow coworker. We would kill one, and celebrate our victory, but then another would show up, and another. We wondered where the flies were coming from.

Then, when my coworker went to go retrieve product for a customer in the little room, I heard her exclaim, "Oh, my god!" Upon seeing what was the matter, I looked and saw flies. Not one or ten, but a swarm. It's like the cartoon bees that went after Pooh, but these were filthy flies, congregating around the lingering memory of dead animal.

We were horrified, of course, and disgusted and indignant. My coworker called the office, and we got this lackadaisical, "Oh, yeah, well, nothing we can do about it. Just spray them." Jointly, we refused. I was ready to walk out, as minimum wage is not worth such indignity. Instead, the shop handyman came around with two cans of Raid and proceeded to descend into the depths of the little room, spraying the flies that had congregated. One fly even went down my shirt, which I needn't tell you how disgusting it was.

Due to the fumes in the little shop, my coworker and I stood outside, grumbling darkly. Flies on the shop floor were sprayed and left to die on the dirty carpet of the store. I thought of running away, but realised my stuff was in the store still, likely soaking in the effluvia of insecticide.

After a long while, we went back in, but then I left to go pick up printer ink and hand soap for the store with the petty cash from the till. As I was looking for the handsoap, my eyes fell upon the bottle of Febreeze air freshener. At £3.00, it would normally be a luxury item for the shop, but I plucked it from the shelves and added it to the purchase of the most expensive hand soap I could find at Sainsbury's. The petty cash as weapons of the weak, so to speak. I normally don't do this, but I have seriously never seen so many flies in my life, and I was born in the tropics. Had I had my camera on me, I would have taken a photo of the buzzing cloud of disease, but alas, I left it at home that day. A shame, as that would have been excellent information to have relayed to Environmental Health Services as to why the conditions at the job are unsanitary with dead animals and flies lingering around.

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Updated 17 June 2010

I've added a photo of one of the bastards, dead after a sound swatting. It's atop a pile of garbage.