The Checkout Girl

One person with no concern for price hikes is a well-maintained woman in her forties. Her two shopping trolleys carry what she tells me is her fortnightly shop. It takes forty-five minutes to put it through and costs just under £600. When I give her the grand total she doesn’t flinch and hands over her credit card with a voucher for 75p off her fabric conditioner. I ask if she has a big family but she says there are only four of them. Other colleagues around me are staring at her food going along the conveyor with wide-eyed awe. Standing right behind her, and in my line of sight, is a colleague with arched eyebrows mouthing incredulous expletives.

Friday, 28 November 2008 (#ulink_4886ac08-3b84-5bfe-bc0e-4df1ed205e9a)

I’m on a basket checkout today and mince pies, Christmas decorations, gifts for loved ones are all starting to pass across my till now. There’s not so much time for chat—due to the huffing and puffing of impatient customers congregating in the queue here because they want to get out as quickly as possible. I know they don’t want to make small talk, but there is a supervisor hanging around nearby and I wonder if she is assessing me. And so I talk.

As during my previous shifts, I find myself chatting to customers about the price of things and affordability. At least a couple of times a shift, this line of chat is followed by hushed, embarrassed queries about vacancies at the store. Today a woman in her fifties asks straight after telling me how expensive she is starting to find grocery shopping. An hour or two later, another shopper about to start training as a police officer asks me about Christmas vacancies. I’m convinced that £6.30 an hour won’t go very far for the likes of them, but I’ve got to be wrong.

Despite the number of people complaining about the price of things, almost eight out of ten customers, with a big basket or trolley full of shopping, tell me they had just popped in for one thing. One guy tells me he’s a sucker for the subliminal marketing and product placement. Almost every customer comes to my till laden with reduced bakery items, cut-price clothes and cheap booze. And then gasps at the total.

One customer tells me today that the Morrisons in town is heaving because of the discounted whisky. ‘It’s much cheaper than yours—and it was much busier in there.’ He’s got a point. For a store that claims not to be bitten by the credit crunch, it doesn’t feel all that busy. There are definitely busy times, but usually there tend to be no more than three to four customers waiting on basket tills and one or two on the trolley tills. And when it’s quiet, it can be very quiet.

There is a fundamental difference between the customers coming to basket tills compared to the trolley ones. Baskets seem to attract men in the 30-50 age group who offer grunts rather than actual words in reply to my (usually futile) attempts to chat. They only ever purchase a couple of items, one of which is, invariably, Lynx deodorant.

Truth be known, I’m scared witless of this type of customer and usually give up at the first hurdle. But today, when a grumpy thirty-something comes my way, I decide I won’t let him go without a fight. He cracks and before I know it he’s telling me that he has no plans for the weekends in the lead-up to Christmas, otherwise he won’t be able to afford festivities this year. Somehow, though, he’s convinced it’s going to be his cheapest Christmas yet. ‘There are going to be price-cuts galore over the next few weeks. PC World, Curry’s, M&S, John Lewis—they’re all either in trouble or having big sales early, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a win-win situation.’

Although he turns out to be very pleasant, if I am too slow for the blokes in this age group they bellow like animals preparing for battle. When I need help from a till captain, one charmer shouts from the back of the queue, ‘I only got in this queue because I thought it’d be quicker.’ This is met with a rumble of approval from the other men waiting in line. One man throws his basket down and storms off.

And then a young Asian guy wearing a shirt that is so tight the button sitting at mid-chest level looks like it may pop and fly straight into my eye puts two bottles of Bacardi down on my till. I look at him, take a deep breath and ask for some ID.

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘I’m sorry, you look so young.’

‘I don’t carry ID,’ he says, turning himself away from me defensively and rolling his eyes.

‘OK, let me just get a supervisor.’

There are loud groans from the queue. The man behind him barks: ‘Just serve him—he looks over twenty-one.’

Two women join in the blood sport taking shape before them. ‘I’d sell it to him, he looks much older than twenty-one.’

Bolstered by the support of fellow customers, he turns himself back to me and snaps, ‘What’s the matter with you? I’m old enough.’ His frown is now menacing.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper pathetically. ‘Take it as a compliment.’

‘Look,’ he says, pulling up his shirt. ‘I’ve got tattoos.’

I stare at his chest and a large, dark blue scythe stares back at me. And still there is no till captain.

‘Just sell it to him.’

‘Job’s worth.’

‘I got two kids. I’m married. I got me own business.’

I repeatedly push the supervisor button and get up on my feet to see if I can get ANYONE’s attention.

Eventually the supervisor arrives.

‘It’s fine.’

He then turns to the customer and in an act of bloke-to-bloke camaraderie says, ‘It’s all right, I’m from around here.’ They both laugh and the supervisor leaves.

As for the now riled-up customer, it’s far from over. After paying, I notice he hasn’t packed his bottles. I ask if he wants a bag.

‘What do you think?’ he growls sarcastically. ‘It won’t be a very good idea for me to go back into work with those, would it?’ He aims this not at me but his supportive audience behind.

I bite my lip until I can almost taste blood. I try to explain the scale of the consequences for me but no one is listening.

The only thing that stops the shift from being a total disaster is meeting the trolley boy with an awesome ability to recall any random fact. When I say any—I mean ANY.

Saturday, 29 November 2008 (#ulink_65cb016c-7395-5db2-a5ca-9a0fab4228c4)

My till-side view of every customer’s shopping is a privileged intrusion and lends itself to the worst kind of cod psychology. Take the single woman in her thirties buying the one carrot, a single onion, minced beef, a giant bar of Dairy Milk and a glossy magazine. I can already see her night in with dinner-for-one followed by chocolate and HELLO! for dessert. The man with the heavy bags under his eyes quietly purchasing breast pads, sanitary towels and painkillers for the new mum at home is totally knackered. The lonely middle-aged man with a penchant for red wine, who gets through a bottle a night (I know this because he’s back every couple of days for more). The pensioner with the sweet tooth, too proud to ask for help with packing her shopping, who will struggle to unpack when she gets home. By the time they get through my till, these shoppers have unintentionally shared some of the most personal moments of their life with me. In many ways I know them better than they know themselves. Sometimes it’s fitting to talk, other times I can tell this is their five minutes of peace. Either way, watching their shopping come through my till is invasive enough.

Despite the numerous reports on ready meals and the health implications, I’m still alarmed at the number of people who rely on this as their main meal for the evening. Indian meals are the most popular. I want to blurt out my recipe for a curry that’s quick, easy to make, delicious and nutritious. If it weren’t for the risk of getting sacked, I’d be distributing it surreptitiously to every customer on laminated cards.

Today my till is empty for a few moments, and I watch a man in his fifties approach a checkout adjacent to mine that is still serving someone with a huge amount of shopping. I indicate that I am free—and he shakes his head. ‘I’m all right here, love.’

He has to wait a full five minutes before he gets served and I soon know why. The Cog at the next till is his favourite checkout girl. He can’t wait to talk to her and is positively bouncing on his heels by the time she picks up the belt divider and scans his first item.

He may be too distracted by her blonde hair, big smile and undivided attention to worry about money matters, but others are not so easily fooled. They see the cost of their weekly shop pop up on the little screen right in their eye-line and it’s no exaggeration to say that they are but two shopping extravaganzas short of a cardiac arrest. Three customers coming through my till in just the one hour stop dead in their tracks when I announce their bills of £104, £85 and £60.

‘In the past my weekly shop would cost £100, now it’s much closer to £140. And that doesn’t include my daily trips to Tesco, where I’ll easily spend an average of £10-15,’ says one, sighing as she searches for her credit card.

Another gasps, ‘Oh my goodness, I only came in for some potatoes.’

‘Why didn’t you stop there?’ Aside from Sainsbury’s marketing working its magic on her, I’d really like to know what possessed her.

‘Well, If you’ve got to have it, you’ve got to have it,’ comes the reply.

The words of one of the other newbies ring loud in my ears. ‘Recession or no recession, people do have to eat.’

My personal distraction today is a problem with childcare. I need to ask for a change in shift pattern. I have my four-week assessment next week and I’m keen to see if Sainsbury’s is likely to accommodate my circumstances and if it really is the family-friendly employer it claims to be. My boss has thus far been nothing but charming, courteous and accommodating. The other checkout girls are devoted to him, so let’s see how he handles my request. It’s a make-or-break situation for me, so fingers crossed.

Spending the entire day at the till watching food, clothes and other goods go through is a bit like watching one long Sainsbury’s advert. I’ve started greedily making mental lists of all the things I MUST get before I go home. So today at the end of my shift I find myself shopping AGAIN. It’s the fourth time I’m doing it. I bump into another checkout girl, Michelle, doing exactly the same.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she says. ‘It’s the end of our shift and we’re both still here and SHOPPING.’

‘I’m doing it after every shift! I don’t get it.’

‘Me too, and how easy is it to spend the money we’ve just earned in just one shop.’

As I make my way to the checkouts, an annoyingly sprightly twenty-year-old, Louisa, who started around the same time as me, is bragging about her first shining star. Bill, the checkout boy next to her, tells her he gets one on every shift.

As I walk away from the brag-fest, I wonder why I haven’t got one yet. I’m doing OK, aren’t I? Should I up my game?

I go home with an aching upper body. I’m developing checkout arms. All the sliding, scanning and passing is giving me bulging biceps. Madonna, eat your heart out.