If you’ve not seen Squid Game, it’s currently streaming on Netflix. As good as it is, it’s not necessarily for the faint-hearted. But if gratuitous violence isn’t your thing, don’t worry, because you can play your own version, at the shops.
The other day, one of my children asked whether or not I’d watched Squid Game. I hadn’t, but decided to give it a whirl on the Telly thing, in the corner. Anyway, I got quite enthralled by it which is unusual, since many programmes that have multiple episodes and series (not seasons1), tend to have something of a ‘slow-burn’ element to them, where it takes three to four episodes for the story to get started. This was much quicker though.
Bingeworthy
So, I started bingeing Squid Game, like you do, and recognised some parallels with the UK shopping experience. If you’re not familiar with it, the essence of it is a whole load of deadbeats and down-and-outs are forced to play games for the entertainment of the super-rich. But that’s just Home Bargains.2 Squid Game is even worse, if you can imagine that.
If you haven’t seen Squid Game, you can watch it here (with a Netflix account) Squid Game | Netflix Official Site
Squid Game is a fictional Korean story where adults play the games they played as children, for vast quantities of cash. Except there’s a twist. Of course there is. The rules of British Bulldog, It, He, Murder in the Dark, Runouts etc. state ‘if you are caught, you are out until the next round.’ In Squid Game the players who are ‘out’ get ‘eliminated’ from any further competition. In this game it’s a bit more of a literal ‘elimination’ though. And usually there’s a rifle involved.
Shylock
So, those playing Squid Game are all in debt up to their eyeballs (which tells a different story regarding South Korea and its ‘progressive’ capitalist, westernised culture), and the players have little choice other than to play, since back in the real world the loan sharks are circling, waiting to ‘send the boys round’ to collect their ‘pound of flesh’.3
One of the myriad reasons visiting Home Bargains is like playing Squid Game is because everyone is a washed has-been, teetering on the rim of the abyss, desperately looking to claw back some money, just to make their existence slightly more palatable. And, I include myself in this category. Primarily because I have a mortgage I’ll still be paying when I’m a 117, which I still owe a few quid on.
Shark
And the loan sharks are still circling, waiting to send the boys round, except in this instance, the loan sharks aren’t illegal backstreet moneylenders. No, these ones operate right on the high street, in broad daylight. But they don’t refer to themselves as “unauthorised” moneylenders. No, they call themselves a ‘bank’. But it’s much the same thing. And the ‘boys’ they send round aren’t Albanian drug traffickers. They’re called ‘bailiffs’ but they do much the same job. It’s called money with menaces, or intimidation if it’s classed as illegal, but they’re given legal powers to intimidate. So they do.
Anyway, at the weekend Vikki and I had some shopping to do. Usually we go to Tesco’s or Lidl, because they’re the easiest to park near to. But ever since the ‘Fuel Crisis that never was’ occurred, it’s been difficult and sometimes impossible to get anywhere near Tesco, as the queues have been down the street, gridlocking the roundabout in the process. So, for a change we went to Home Bargains and Aldi. They avoid the roundabout but have useless parking facilities.
Red Light, Green Light
Before you enter Home Bargains you have to be drugged, or you just wouldn’t go in, obviously. Then one of the guards sorry, shop assistants, checks you’re wearing the appropriate Sports Direct tracksuit apparel. Once the check is complete, you are able to play a game called Red Light, Green Light. This is where you can only enter the shop when the green light is on and you have to stand still outside if the red light shows. The lights were originally installed to improve the Covid related shopping experience, not to play Squid Game but they work just as well for either.
Trolley Dash
Once you’re in though, you get to play a game called ‘Wildfire Trolley Dash’. This is where you pick up as many useless items as you possibly can. However, you have to select the ones that are half the price of Tesco’s. These are considered ‘a bargain’ which, naturally cannot be ignored.
The staff, who wander about in scary uniforms, control this aspect of the game. Staff are forbidden to talk to each other, or customers.
And you never see the Store Manager, aka The Front Man. He just hides in a back room watching everything unfold on CCTV.
An extra game, called “Sweetie Scream” is only available to those accompanied by young children. This is where you have to escort your 3 year-old’s past the confectionary and toy section of the store. This generally covers about a quarter of its total footprint. If the child screams “I want Feeties!!!” the parents have to either scream a negative response back at the child, buy them something, or remove them from the shop and therefore the game. It’s everyone else’s job to gawp and murmur something about “over-aggressive parenting” but nobody must intervene.
Gladiatorial
Failing to complete a game in Squid Game means elimination for the contestant. Eventually, this culminates in the successful contestants playing the Squid Game, where two players face off, like modern day gladiators. Squid Game is like a combination of Hopscotch and Sumo Wrestling. One player attempts to move to certain sections of the Squid but must not step outside the boundary of it. The other tries to prevent it.
Checkout
“Checkout Line” is the Home Bargains version of Squid Game This is where you have to queue up with your purchases and choose the checkout line which is going to empty the quickest. If you choose poorly, you then have to enter an opposing line without anyone noticing. You’ll note, if a pensioner is at the front of a queue, nobody must queue behind them, even if the other queues have 6 or 7 customers already waiting. The reason for this is simple.
The pensioner will still be there an hour later complaining that the coupons he/she cut out of TV Quick this week are valid even though they haven’t bought any items which correspond to them. At this point, the checkout assistant has to call “The Front Man” to come and “eliminate” the pensioner. All this takes time and in Squid Game, time can literally be the difference between life and death..
Run Down
At the end, if you can get out of the shop with your wits still intact, your shopping still in hand and you can make it to your car without being run down by a coupon wielding pensioner on a motability scooter, then you win the game and get to repeat it all next week. Unless the “Fuel Crisis That Never Was” ends and you are able to return to the comparative, quiescent, gentile solitude of the self-checkout at Lidl. And the chances of that happening? Well, you’ve got a better chance of winning Squid Game and those odds are fairly low.
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- This is an American term and it is not necessary to use it in the UK since we already have our own word for it
- Disclaimer – I actually like Home Bargains. I don’t however, consider Tesco to be a ‘positive’ shopping experience. But then, what is? I went to Fortnum & Mason once (it was Christmas though). And, if you’ve not experienced being in the middle of a Ruck and Maul at Twickenham, go to the confectionery section of F&M just before Christmas, sing “Swing low, sweet choc-o-late” at full volume and wait to be floored by a Loosehead Prop. It’s marvellous.
- Welcome to platitude heaven