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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.
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.
