The Checkout Girl

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For the New Year penny-pinchers, paying in cash is truly the only way to control spending. Studies have long shown that it’s much more painful than swiping a card, and stimulates a region in the brain linked with discomfort which is anaesthetised by credit cards. And that’s exactly what one customer is thinking. She plonks her shopping on my belt and announces, ‘No more than £21.’ When it gets to £20.33, she ruthlessly takes something off the belt and pays in cash, and I crown her queen of thrift.

One man shopping with his six-year-old twins has crackers, a chicken roast, root vegetables, wrapping paper and bottles of wine in his shop.

‘Are you celebrating Christmas late?’ I blurt out before I can stop myself.

‘Tomorrow—seems a good way to save money.’ The crackers are the Different by Design range and absolutely stunning—he’s picked them up for a bargain £6.

I hear one of my first bona fide redundancy stories today. A customer tells me her daughter was made redundant two months ago and now can’t find a job.

‘She used to be a secretary at a big estate agent’s in town and she’s been hunting high and low but there is just no work to be found. She’s started looking in retail now and, fingers crossed, she’s in the running for a secretarial job at Tesco.’

At last I’m someone’s favourite checkout girl. A lively, colourful family I’ve served a few times have started to seek me out. I see them standing by the checkouts scanning the tills—and when I wave at them, they hurry over with big smiles. I’ve finally made it.

‘I was looking for you,’ says Mum. ‘I was terrified you’d been sacked after we were chatting to you, and the man behind us was so angry.’

‘He was fine, don’t worry. We certainly don’t get into trouble for talking to customers here.’

Her thirty-something son joins them with some extra groceries in his arms. We hold our usual spelling bee competition and he teases me for misspelling a word a few weeks ago. I love this family. There are two generations of them shopping together and Dad, the patriarch, always pays, although not before grunting loudly about the price of food shopping.

There is a big fracas at the front of the store and it transpires that the lottery machine has crashed. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of angry customers complaining about it around the store. I find myself apologising on behalf of Sainsbury’s and feeling like a moron when I’m told, ‘Well, it’s not YOUR fault, is it?’

Before I leave to go home I pick up my discounted kettle and go to Rebecca’s till. She tells me that the person sacked for dipping into the tills is Bill, the young man I heard bragging about his collection of shining stars a few weeks ago. It’s raised the level of suspicion amongst management, she says. During a meeting with Richard she witnessed one of the other managers showing Richard a receipt where the checkout girl had reduced something from £25 to 25p and said he suspected ‘she’s up to something’. ‘I get the feeling that the eye of suspicion here is really strong and we all come under detailed surveillance.’

On my way out I hear one of the Cogs talking about her shifts in the last two or three days before Christmas. ‘There were queues all the way down the aisles, every single checkout was heaving. Unbelievable…If I hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have believed it.’

The radio goes on as I drive home and the lottery crash is making the news. It wasn’t just a local event; computer terminals crashed in shops around the country leaving thousands unable to buy tickets. It’s been reported like a national disaster. The only other news is the sales frenzy; half-price cuts, 75 per cent and even an unprecedented 90 per cent off sales. It’s an insane scramble to beat the credit crunch. People have been queuing since dawn to get into some shops and there have been fights breaking out over handbags. After the news I listen to a programme about how to save money on food shopping during the recession by cooking more, making a shopping list and paying in cash.

Saturday, 3 January 2009 (#ulink_6142ab9c-8d6d-5566-b620-5935b51d1272)

The New Year starts with grim news for the retail world—shop closures. There are more Woolies shutting up shop and now it’s Adams kids wear. I think the winners in all of this will be the supermarkets—they already provide the Woolies style bric-a-brac and low-cost children’s clothes. Rumours are circulating that Sainsbury’s may buy the Adams brand. One insolvency specialist has predicted the collapse of between 10 and 15 national retail chains by mid-January. Others are saying that at least 15-20 retailers are extremely weak financially and that one shop in ten will close in the coming months.

I’m in the locker room, squeezing my over-sized bag into my tiny locker when Michelle walks in. She’s a bit cool and barely says hello before heading down for her shift. I’m puzzled—I hope everything’s OK with her girls. Before I get on to my till I have a quick chat with a twenty-year-old student called Nick. I overheard him being reprimanded by a till captain a few weeks ago about a break issue. He tells me he’s been here a year—and he isn’t happy. He needs time off around his exams and this is proving difficult because he needs a job to get him through college. ‘If I don’t have a job after I finish college this place will be to blame.’

I talk to a man in his fifties who works as an eye consultant at a hospital. He tells me that jobs are being cut in the NHS and he shrugs his shoulders wearily, telling me he’s not sure that even his own job is safe. A checkout girl from M&S comes to my till telling me she never shops at M&S because it’s too expensive. She hasn’t noticed it getting quieter, although she’s well aware that the store isn’t doing too well. She has her bags for re-use with her, saying it’s a habit she’s had to learn after watching customers reluctantly cough up for bags. I’m turning into a bag obsessive myself. The supermarket insists we ask customers at the start of their shop if they are re-using their bags—the red prompt on my screen pops up before every transaction. And that’s where it starts to go wrong.

‘Do you have your own bags or do you need ours?’ I always ask, leaning down below the till in preparation to tear off some.

‘I’ve got my own, thanks.’ And then about a dozen or so emerge. For every bag a customer brings back they get a Nectar point. This is the main motivation for most customers.

‘How many do you have there?’

‘I don’t know how many I’m going to use yet, do I?’ comes the gruff reply.

So I ask them to tell me at the end. And then they (and I) usually forget. One customer this happens with asks me after I hand over her receipt whether I put her bag points on. She is hopping mad that I haven’t. I apologise but I had asked her to tell me how many she used. She looks at my name badge and storms off.

Right behind her are three generations of women from one family. This is something I see a lot, and today I comment on how sweet it is to witness. We laugh about how a simple supermarket shop can push mother-daughter friction to boiling point.

While many are up for a quick chuckle at the checkout, others use me like a drop-in therapy service. A pretty thirty-something blonde tells me the story of her life-long struggle to control her diabetes. It transpires that her sweet tooth gets in the way. I ogle the cakes, chocolate bars and bags of sweets she’s purchasing.

‘I comfort-eat because things at home haven’t always been great, you know?’ she says with a sad smile. ‘So every time I felt down or tired or stressed I’d just have a piece of cake and I’d feel better. Before I knew it, I went from being quite slim, to quite fat.’

‘You’re not fat,’ I say quickly.

‘You’re sweet, but I am.’

I’m desperate to take the goodies off the belt, but I’m neither her doctor nor her friend, so I wish her ‘Happy New Year’ and watch forlornly as she walks away.

One man in his late twenties is getting the weekly shop while his wife is at home tending to his three-year-old, two-year-old and one-year-old. I’m in awe. He tells me with three under-fours the couple no longer have any time for each other and it’s affecting their marriage.

‘It’s all our own fault, because we weren’t careful enough. She has these really heavy periods and so she has to take these injections to control her menstrual cycle because she bleeds too much…’

OK, that is far too much information.

‘And what happened was that she was on the pill but I reckon that either the injections were cancelling out the pill or she just forgot to take it and then when we fancied a bit of the ol’ Posh ’n’ Becks, that was it—wham bam…’

By now I’m far exceeding my items per minute.

‘The thing is that the doctor told us that, with every kid you have, you get more fertile, so the riskiest time to do it is straight after you have your last one. I mean, obviously all that breast-feeding stuff gets in the way, but I’m a man, aren’t I. I got my needs.’

He grins and I feel quite queasy. I’m no prude but there is a time and place.

After my shift I see Michelle three times: once at the checkouts, then in the locker room, and then when we do our usual end-of-shift shop—each time she gives me the cold shoulder. On the final occasion I grin and wink at her as we walk past each other, shopping baskets in tow. She barely makes any eye contact and grunts, ‘I can’t wait to get out of here.’

I head with my basket to Rebecca’s till for her take.

‘Do you think it’s me?’

‘Don’t be silly, why would it be you?’

‘I don’t know, she’s usually really friendly.’

‘Maybe she’s having a bad day.’

‘Or maybe she’s found out I’m the person who has bumped her request for a shift change?’

‘But it hasn’t been offered, has it?’

‘No, but so what?’

‘Well, she’d be silly to be annoyed already—he’s only considering it. You’re being paranoid.’

And with that she changes the subject.

‘Look I’ve got my own problems. I haven’t been assessed yet. Do you think it’s because they already know I’m rubbish?’

‘Well, that’s pretty obvious,’ I tease her. ‘It could be all that not-looking-at-the-customer stuff you do. It kinda gives the game away. Is your screen tuned into satellite TV or something, because every time I walk past you’re just staring at it?’

She chuckles. ‘No, I’m just staring at the time. It’s called clock-watching.’

Hooking up with Rebecca before I leave is the highlight of both our shifts. She’s anxious I’m going to leave if I don’t get my shift-change request approved. She’s right, I may have to.

When I get home I read a newspaper article about a forty-year-old woman who was asked for ID when buying alcohol in Tesco. She berates both the checkout girl and Tesco’s alcohol sales policy. The article is one-sided and I’m incensed. I’m desperate to write in and report the insidious way in which customers handle any request for ID. She may have been forty but judging by her photo (which I stare at for a while) yes, I may well have asked her for ID too.

Sunday, 4 January 2009 (#ulink_1ffde3d6-5fb1-581c-bff7-f627cbce728f)

There’s a picture in the paper of Gordon Brown’s online shopping arriving in the very plastic bags he has pledged to scrap. He wants to wipe out the ten billion plastic bags given out each year and has ordered supermarkets to cut the number they give out by 50 per cent by this May. I think that’s an over-ambitious target. An overwhelming majority of people are still coming to the tills asking for bags even though we keep them out of sight. Some ask for them as if they have no idea that landfills are full of an endless number of non-biodegradable bags. Others, usually the elderly, bring their ones back without fail. But most people seem to leave them in the car.

Thursday, 8 January 2009 (#ulink_64ff2fa3-b83d-5164-8762-81ca3241a828)

As news of Next’s and Debenhams’ drop in sales hit the headlines, the Boxing Day sales flurry is fast becoming a fading memory. But it’s not all doom and gloom; John Lewis has bucked the credit crunch curse and New Look has had a pretty robust performance over the festive period. My shift begins with news of Sainsbury’s Christmas sales making the headlines. The shop has beaten the national trend of retail gloom and enjoyed its ‘best ever Christmas performance’. Richard’s updated newsletter reports that ‘sales have shot through the roof’ over Christmas and that we all ‘provided excellent service at the checkouts, especially those who got into the Christmas spirit’.

It’s the astute Basics range that may pull the supersonic supermarket through this recession. Basics has seen a sales rise from 40 per cent a year ago. I’m certainly seeing it at the till as customers come to me, their trolleys laden with an entire shop from this range. An analyst quoted in the news says, ‘Sainsbury’s appears to be gauging the mood of UK consumers extremely well…It’s capitalising on its perceived offering of quality products, combining aggressive pricing promotions in the hope of capturing consumers’ desires to “feel good” in the face of an economic downturn while reducing expenditure.’ But he had a bleak warning too; with a vulnerable UK economy, the store was left more exposed than Tesco, which has an international portfolio.