Stackin' Shelves

Instructions Verb [Latin: ‘Stacking Crusta’]

Pretend that you’re a Supermarket Shelf-Stacker on a nightshift. Stand with an ample stance, parallel to an elevating series of fictitious Supermarket shelves. Then, starting fairly low, use both hands to stack invisible cans of preserved food (e.g. Baked Beans) onto the whimsical racking, in time to the beat. Work your way along each shelf, fancifully filling it with mysterious merchandise, then up to the next theoretical ledge.

Once you’ve filled the top shelf (at a stretch), turn around 90^o and repeat the productive process on a new empty shelving unit, quick-smart, forthwith, accordingly.

Origins

Back in 1982, Yuki Ikizumi knew how to throw a 忍者投げスター (Ninja Throwing Star). From an unripe early age, this Tokyo-based Japanese jouster had extraordinary wrist-flicking powers, which helped him dominate at youth martial arts tournaments, competing with foam Nunchakus, polystyrene Samurai swords and rubber throwing stars.  

Successive years, dedicated to honing these acrobatic sparring skills, put him in good stead for stacking preserved food products at his local ‘Big Ace Supermarket’ (ビッグエース). Now seventeen and skint, Yuki loved to show off his lightning-quick shelf-stacking abilities, during poorly-paid Saturday nightshifts, which became infamously known as the 'Tokyo Shift'.

During these epic supermarket stints, young guns challenged each other to overzealous shelf-stacking bouts, surrounded by jostling crowds of betting ‘Cool Kids’, for phenomenal cash winnings, tightly controlled by blinged-up Japanese gang clans.

Yuki would destroy his product-assorting competition, every time, anytime, and his notorious notoriety turned him into a local legend, due to his uncanny ability to repeatedly stack fifty cans of (sliced) Water Chestnuts in under ten seconds.

Stardom naturally followed Yuki, as well as adoring female fans, and marketing moguls, who desperately scrabbled over each other, to persuade Yuki to stack and endorse their Japanese household-named products. Yuki himself rapidly became a household name, covered in household-named merchandising adverts, from household-named Caps to household-named Shoes.

The pinnacle of fame occurred when Yuki appeared live on Japan's most popular TV show, 'Zip-Zap Ding-a-Ling' endurance gameshow, in which he continuously stacked cans of Baked Beans onto a conveyed shelf for over thirty-seven hours! Herculean effort!

No doubt, the Japanese nation had discovered a new star, with a new irritating 'Stack On, Stack Off!' catchphrase (newly forced by the marketing moguls), which spawned into a new irritating multimillion-pound merchandising empire.

Yuki now lives in relaxed and affluent retirement bliss, surrounded by an adoring family, and he still holds the official World Record for single-handedly stacking 100 packs of Wonton crispy noodles onto a 5ft high, 5ft wide pine shelf (official competition dimensions), in exact 147.38592 seconds.

よくやったよ (Well done Yuki!)