The Checkout Girl

Thursday, 4 December 2008 (#ulink_98787e93-43ee-56b5-8af9-046378209efb)

People shout at me today. Actual shouting. One customer yelled at me within ten minutes of my sitting down at the till. Congregating are the usual grim-faced male clientele. They are angry and are sketching out evil plans while they wait. With this much tension in the air I struggle with split payments, mobile top-ups, vouchers and discount cards. It’s been five days since my last shift, and I can’t remember a thing.

Then my pin pad starts playing up so I can only take signed receipts. I take a couple and today’s till captain, Clare, tells me it’s OK to continue. I’ve learnt quickly that anything goes on Clare’s shift. I’ve never seen her rush for anything and she has just the one facial expression—a permanent just-awoken-from-deep-sleepy-slumber look. I like her laid-back approach, but I’m sure she’s often giving me the wrong instruction.

When my till crashes, it starts looking as though Sainsbury’s is going to be brought to its knees by my incompetence. I raise my head above the till to see if I can get the attention of a supervisor and there is no one in sight. Meanwhile there is unrest amongst the growing mob before me.

It makes perfect sense, of course: place the inexperienced, unconfident, rabbit-stuck-in-headlights Cog on the most complex and pressurised tills at the other end of the store and watch her die a slow and painful death. Well, if nothing else it’s good entertainment. I punch and thump my till aimlessly, offering drivelling apologies. And yet no one, least of all me, is going anywhere. Eventually I muster the courage to tell the growing queue that it will take a few minutes to sort the problem out and they should go to another till.

Everyone grumbles loudly and starts to move away. But one man seems to be turning into the Incredible Hulk. Steam emerges slowly from both nostrils and ears, and I’m quite sure he is turning green. Within moments he explodes and bellows: ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE—JUST SORT IT OUT. CALL THIS CUSTOMER SERVICE? WHY CAN’T YOU LOT JUST DO YOUR JOBS? YOU GET PAID ENOUGH, DON’T YOU?’ Everyone in the store has stopped in their tracks and I see a long line of checkout girls stretching their necks above their screens to get a better view.

I blush, stammer and punch my till for want of something…anything…to do. This is pure unadulterated humiliation and to survive it I force myself into an out-of-body experience. As I listen to the man rant, I watch from above and see the dud till with no supervisor bell attached and my panic-stricken arm pitifully waving in the air attempting to attract the non-existent attention of the non-existent till captains. I’ve been thrown to the wolves and they are making packet mince of me.

And then, just as I’m preparing to dig a hole in the concrete floor beneath my feet, Tracey, the saviour of countless Cogs before me, emerges like Aphrodite from the sea. Her sixteen years on checkouts has given her admirable patience and rhinothick skin. She pacifies the raging customer and ushers him towards another till, returning seconds later to fix me.

The till I’m moved to is also half-dead. I wonder momentarily if this is an initiation ceremony and that in some small room upstairs video footage is rolling in CCTV cameras, with managers huddled around it (along with the missing supervisors) all falling about laughing.

I continue to take signed receipts by the dozen until a supervisor shift change, when Samantha tells me I shouldn’t be taking these at all. It’s a no-brainer—most signatures on the cards have faded. I tell-tale on Clare immediately, knowing that even if it does get back to her she’ll be too out of it to care. Samantha barely acknowledges my blame-shifting. I recall Susie telling me last week not to take signed receipts but I’ve learnt if you don’t tailor your checkout etiquette for the till captain on duty you’re asking for a lifetime on the baskets.

My mood lifts a little when the trivia-obsessed Trolley Boy stops off to collect the empty baskets at my till. He immediately makes a beeline for a young male customer and asks him straight up who directed Scarface. The customer shifts uncomfortably and moves closer to the till. Trolley Boy is no quitter, so he questions him on a different film. This time the customer gives him a mumbled answer but makes no eye contact. This is straight out of Little Britain. I suppress a giggle as the young man, still seriously uncomfortable, and still without any eye contact, unexpectedly asks Trolley Boy to name Tarantino’s last three films. Trolley Boy replies without hesitation, takes the baskets and leaves.

The new VAT reduction means colleagues have been working flat-out to change prices on shelf labels. I’m not sure how many they’ve achieved, however customers are pleasantly surprised when I announce their total bill. Even a tiny 2.5 per cent can make all the difference—it’s true, every penny does count.

Price comparison website MySupermarket.co.uk has been suggesting that this year people ought to shop around to keep their Christmas costs down. Everyone I suggest this to says that they are not going to run around a number of stores just to save a couple of pounds, particularly as their transport costs will mean it ends up costing the same.

Michelle is in today—shopping again. It’s her day off but she says she ‘needed some bits and pieces’. She comes to my till and tells me how difficult she’s finding being away from her twin three-year-old daughters and wishes she had only agreed to do two days. Her childcare arrangements aren’t working out; she has a childminder she’s not keen on. I suggest she talks to management, but she seems uncertain, makes noises about the probationary period we are on and the risk of losing our jobs. It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.

I keep serving beyond the end of my shift. Noting that there are no supervisors coming to close my till, eventually I turn to the growing crowd and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m closing after this customer, can you go around to the other till?’ indicating the adjacent basket till.

‘NO!’ yells a chic, cropped-hair-do fifty-something. ‘You are NOT going to do that. I don’t care if you are closing or going home, you WILL serve me.’ The others in the queue stare blankly to see what I’ll do. Before I get a chance to stammer a reply, the man in front of her starts to shoot orders at me. I die a slow death as he first orders me to help the old man in front of me open a bag. He then tuts loudly at my having the audacity to close my till when there are people to serve. He grabs his change from my hand and charges off like I have some unspeakable disease. I want to tell them that, while I am a mere Cog, I also have a life, home and kids to get back to. But in the manner to which I have very quickly adjusted, I say nothing. In the supermarket world, the customer is king. And so, with my head down, I serve all ten while listening to them debate my temerity as if I was no longer in the vicinity. The humiliation is complete. Eventually my cranky captain, Betty, comes over to tell me she will send relief and tells me I should have closed my till as soon as my hours were up.

I feel punched in the guts tonight. I’ve learnt the true nature of the British shopper: they know that kicking up a fuss loudly and aggressively will get results. And having an audience helps, because mobs rule. I stare longingly at the beers, wines and spirits section as I walk back through the shop.

I leave a message for Richard again, saying I need to speak to him. Betty says (unconvincingly) that she will pass it on.

Friday, 5 December 2008 (#ulink_0d975728-ae9f-5c47-99d4-a7f4f6758662)

As I drive in, I listen to a radio phone-in about the collapse of Woolies after ninety-nine illustrious years. Callers talk nostalgically about the bric-a-brac, mix-and-match cups and saucers, giant chocolate Dairy Milk bars and pick and mix. Why will they miss this stuff? I ask myself. It’s all available in supermarkets, anyway. Maybe that’s why Woolies collapsed—the supermarkets can now easily offer everything that made Woolworths unique.

As I walk to the supervisors’ post, I say fifteen Hail Marys, two Quranic passages and the Buddhist mantra I picked up in RE in the hope that some god, any god, may be listening. Let me not be on the basket tills, please.

The first thing that happens is Betty confronts me aggressively.

‘Did you take the till key home with you last night?’

‘No…I gave it to the guy who replaced me.’

‘Well, it’s gone missing, and you had it last.’

I say nothing, wondering where this is going.

Another till captain approaches and Betty asks her if she knows where the key is.

‘It’s hanging in the cupboard.’

Betty says nothing and looks away.

They allocate me my trolley till and, as I walk towards it, Betty tells me there’s no chair at my till. I take that to mean that I’m expected to stand for four hours, which is against health-and-safety rules on checkouts. I manage to locate a chair myself and am soon good to go. Just as I sit myself down, in front of a long line of customers, I fall ungraciously to the floor. After the last couple of days, I know that if I don’t laugh I will cry—and so I laugh hard.

I’m starting to get some regulars now. There’s a really scruffy-looking guy who comes in wearing threadbare clothes. He’s a man of few words but has said enough for me to know he has a gruff voice and a gruff attitude. But he intrigues me with his regular purchase of the New Scientist magazine. I bite the bullet and ask him if he’s a scientist. He laughs and says, ‘Do I look like a scientist?’

‘Scientists come in all shapes and sizes.’

‘I just like to keep my brain active—that’s why I read it. My work is boring manual labour.’

I chat again with the young mum who only moved here from Poland five years ago with no English. She has the strongest Cockney accent I’ve ever heard from someone who didn’t grow up in London.

Human behaviour in the supermarket demonstrates that even the friendliest customer is never really your ally and they can turn on you in a heartbeat. An amiable, elegant and chatty older woman with a deceptively uncanny resemblance to Denise Richardson, the Agony Aunt on This Morning, has a complete change of personality when she asks me about discount petrol vouchers. I indicate that I’m not sure if we are giving them out. She asks me tersely, ‘Well, do you know or don’t you?’

I have my four-week assessment today. Susie brings over the paperwork and starts to give me feedback.

‘You’re doing really well, really engaging with customers, but I’ve noticed you lack confidence.’

‘Oh really?’ I don’t like the sound of this. ‘How so?’

‘You just seem nervous, like you’re not confident with customers.’ I know she’s not aware of the recent incidents so she must mean my general interaction with them.

‘Really? I find talking to the customers a doddle. The only time you could call me nervous is over the technical things. But talking to customers, that’s the easiest part of the job.’

‘There’s just something in your manner.’

The assessment is good, though. I get a green, which means that the girl done good. Three reds and you’re in trouble, so for now, I’m safe. I add a toadying note on my assessment saying I will try to be more confident. Susie lets me skim-read the paperwork before asking me to sign it. She then fiddles around with it. It seems to me that we are often asked to sign things first with management adding their own notes afterwards.

Then, out of the blue, a supervisor shouts out that, thanks to Jenny we’ve just got a 100 per cent MCM. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but everyone gives a round of applause.

Michelle is prying again and enquires about my assessment; I play it down. She’s finding it hard to get uninterested customers to engage with her. I tell her the trick is to persevere. I know that she’s not the only one who finds it difficult; from my till I can often see other checkout girls just silently doing their job. Even Rebecca, who has such a natural magnetic charm, tells me she struggles.

I bump into Katherine at the end of my shift and she wants to talk about the difficult customers I encountered the day before. ‘They were so nasty, I felt for you. Some customers just think we are machines and have no life beyond this place.’

Clare, who is slumped in a chair in the corner of the locker room, lifts her head long enough to say sagely, ‘In through one ear, out the other.’

Saturday, 6 December 2008 (#ulink_f1a1ee76-d4ec-5e37-b313-1d665ee62104)

I read today that Tesco’s shoppers are dropping it for Morrisons and Asda. Tesco is still doing OK, but the question being asked now is—is the store losing momentum?

After the week I’ve had, I’ve lost all momentum. But I brave it and am, thankfully, rewarded with a trolley till. My first customer is an enormous woman with five obese kids and all she buys are five jumbo packets of crisps—that’s about a hundred packets of crisps in total. She yells at her kids and they yell at her. It’s a joy to behold.

In fairness, a simple shopping trip reduces the best of families to a dysfunctional version of their normal selves. I’m no longer embarrassed by the number of arguments I’ve witnessed between two unsuspecting adults unaware of the entertainment they’ve provided for the bored checkout girl before them. And the rows are always over small and ultimately insignificant things: plans for the evening, the choice of dinner for the night, Sunday lunch with the family, the cost of the shop they’ve just completed, the things they forgot to buy. I read a study that found that couples who shop together for more than seventy minutes will almost always start to row. Seventy-one-plus minutes in a supermarket and they’re ready to sign the divorce papers. And when my customers are not squabbling they’re just being odd. Some of them plan where they place their groceries on the conveyor belt with military precision, with the intention of ensuring it will be convenient to unpack when they get home. One man today asks me to wait while he spends ten minutes carefully unloading his shop on to the belt. He groups all like items together. As I ring through the items I can see the layout of his kitchen. First the larder with pasta, tinned tuna, baked beans, biscuits and pickles, then the fridge with cheeses, milk, meat and prepared salad. Next, the kitchen cupboard holding the bleach, washing-up liquid, scouring pads, washing powder, fabric conditioner and kitchen towels. It’s weirdly inspiring.