The Checkout Girl

by Tazeen Ahmad

  Later I help a young mum pack. She seems to have decided to clothe her entire family in the TU range. Struggling to find the right amount of money, she takes one T-shirt off the bill. Seconds after she’s said goodbye to me, I spot her at customer service returning the lot.

  Rebecca repeats at least half a dozen times today, ‘I’ve got to get a job at Waitrose.’ But how will it be better? I find myself wondering.

  Monday, 10 November 2008

  I put my uniform on for the first time. I haven’t worn polyester since the eighties so it takes some adjusting to. When I look at myself in the mirror, I want to ask where the pasta sauce is. Unsurprisingly, Husband falls about in hysterics. Once he has composed himself he tries to take a picture. He’s laughing so hard the picture is blurred.

  Today is till training. A solemn-faced, gum-chewing supervisor trains a few of us including Rebecca and Adil, from the general merchandise department, who has spent months avoiding his turn on the tills. During those six hours we learn about the slide, scan and pass technique that we’re told Sainsbury’s has developed to avoid staff getting back pain and attempting to sue the supermarket. We have to aim for seventeen items per minute (IPM); ‘If you don’t maintain it, we’ll find out,’ says our plain-speaking till trainer. All our actions are accountable; CCTV, electronic monitoring, assessments, secret observation, clocking in and out, customer and colleague feedback. With cameras in every nook and cranny there is no escape. ‘In places you least expect them,’ the trainer tells us ominously. Let that be a warning to us all. If they are doing their job, by now they must have caught me putting things back on the wrong shelves, sneaking off to the loos to send text messages, secretly sampling food and gossiping with Rebecca in quiet corners. In the bathroom there’s a sticker on the door with the contact details for a whistle-blowing helpline: If you see something wrong then say something right. One number. One website. Riskavert.co.uk/rightline. When she leaves us for a minute, Rebecca and I start singing Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’. Yet, despite the ethos and attire, this isn’t the eighties and the message is clear: no one gets away with dragging their feet.

  Our trainer talks coupons, reduced-price items, fruit-and-veg prices, cards, sub-totals, split payments, cash payments, fraud, removing security tags, till maintenance, voids, mistakes, price checks—by the end of it my brain sizzles from information overload. When it comes to Nectar cards, customers get two points for every £1 spent. After you’ve got 500 points, you get £2.50 off. By this calculation you have to spend £250 before you get a couple of pounds off. When I look at my own receipts I still can’t make head or tail of it.

  At Boots you get four points for every pound spent and each point is worth one pence. Isn’t that a better rewards scheme than Nectar?

  Adil is a super-bright young politics student who works here part-time. He gives me the lowdown after three years in the job: ‘This Sainsbury’s branch never used to take induction quite so seriously but things changed after the store failed a number of times on customer service. Sainsbury’s know they can’t compete with Tesco on value so they’re trying to compete on customer service.’

  From an employee point of view, though, everyone I’ve talked to so far speaks highly about working here. ‘If you’re nice to everyone, everyone is nice to you,’ I hear, over and over again. I also overhear one young staffer tell another how intimidating they find their manager. All the managers are pretty intimidating; they charge down corridors, sour-faced and with little time for pleasantries. My direct manager, Richard, is the exception.

  I’m to go back on Sunday for Day Two of my induction. Already I feel like I’m working here full-time.

  Thursday, 13 November 2008

  I am yet to have my ‘Think 21’ training—selling alcohol, fireworks and other age-restricted goods—so until then it’s the shop floor for what I now call ‘reverse shopping’. Sainsbury’s staff call it ‘shopping’—picking up the goods dumped by customers at the tills. Never again will I have a last-minute change of heart leaving a poor Cog to put the unwanted product back. The one three-quarters-full trolley I have takes me two whole hours. After staring aimlessly upwards in a vain attempt to find an aisle that looks like it might be home to the items in my trolley, I find myself going distinctly doolally. I spend more minutes than is healthy carrying cans of Air Wick air freshener, Fairy Liquid bottles, baked bean cans, 3-for-£15 DVDs, a size-16 leopard-print blouse, an over-priced cuddly reindeer and 2-for-1 cookie selection boxes. Despite asking for guidance, no shelf can be found for the truly homeless—the Peppa Pig umbrella, a bag of mixed nuts and raisins, the rogue Christmas light and Pantene shampoo for thick and glossy hair. They go back to the trolley by the supervisors post and next time I look they’ve vanished.

  Adil gives me a heads-up on the mystery shopper.

  ‘They will always ask for something at the other end of the shop to see if you will just point them in the right direction or actually take them there—which is obviously what you need to do. That’s inside information—use it well.’

  I get my chance today. A smartly dressed, well-spoken lady in her sixties approaches me while I’m loitering in the household cleaners’ aisle and asks me if we have any Christmas biscuits other than the ones in the aisle across from us.

  ‘Yes we do, at the other end of the sto—’ A moment’s hesitation and I know what’s expected of me. ‘I’ll take you.’

  I’m not a hundred per cent sure I’m taking her to the right spot, but if I look confident enough I may just pull it off. As we walk from one end of the store to the other, I do the maths. She is definitely retired, which makes her a prime candidate for mystery shopping. I’d better do some talking.

  ‘Are you doing your Christmas shopping?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I wish I had the foresight to do mine so far in advance.’

  ‘Oh, you’re probably too busy working. I know what it’s like. Before I retired’—BINGO!—‘I used to work for Sainsbury’s…in IT as a project manager.’ DOUBLE BINGO!

  She tells me she was there for ten years. I take her to the aisle, show her the biscuits, ask her if she needs anything else and leave her to it.

  Back to the trolley and more reverse shopping. A middleaged man asks if I can help him find a particular brand of toilet roll. I show him and ask if there’s anything else he wants. He grunts what may or may not have been a no. Even my toes curl when I cringe.

  If I’m trying too hard, one of my fellow newbies isn’t trying at all. Young, dark-haired and plump, she sidles up to me with a customer close behind her.

  ‘I’ve only been here two weeks and this chap is asking if we have any walnut whips. Do we?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve only been here a week—I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with him. Should I tell him to go to another shop?’

  ‘Maybe take him to customer service or a till captain?’ I suggest.

  She wanders towards him and fobs him off.

  Meanwhile, as I’m trying to locate the rightful home of Garnier hair conditioner, a Korean family stop me. It’s Dad, Mum and their teenage daughter.

  ‘We need something for her hair,’ says Dad. ‘What you recommend?’

  ‘Oh boy, I’m no expert but I’ll try.’

  ‘You know more than me, I’m sure,’ grins Dad.

  ‘What are you after—shampoo? Conditioner?’

  ‘Make her hair straight. It’s wavy.’

  ‘You want serum for her hair?’

  ‘No sticky, for straight.’

  ‘Oh, so you want sticky stuff to make it straight.’

  ‘No for straight, like this.’ He indicates using his hands that he wants her hair straight. And his English seems to have got progressively worse.

  ‘OK, so you want to make her hair straight, right?’

  Dad looks at me with exasperation. ‘No.’

  I look at her hair and it’s wavy and kind of frizzy. Why am I talking to her
dad? This must be mortifying for her. I look her straight in the eyes.

  ‘You have wavy hair and it’s sort of flyaway, so do you want something for frizzy hair?’

  Dad jumps in, ‘No, for the straight, to make it.’

  I ask her again: ‘What are YOU after?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispers.

  ‘Do you want shampoo…conditioner…mousse?’ Come on, girl, give me something. Anything.

  She says nothing. They get fed up with me and send me on my way.

  Before my shift started I did some grocery shopping. I picked up a packet of Country Life spreadable only to see a sign when I clocked in stating that it was being pulled off the shelves and we weren’t to let any customers buy it. I point this out to another Cog and she tells me to let customer services know. At the end of my shift when I take my butter back, they simply say it would not be scanable if it was withdrawn. They give me a refund and return to their conversation.

  I catch my reflection pushing a trolley today and, for a second, think it’s someone else.

  Friday, 14 November 2008

  An item I pick up frequently at the tills is washed and ready-to-eat baby leaf spinach; another is ready-made steak pie. Both items are a reminder that the cook in the kitchen ought to try cooking. Customers are also putting in an impressive performance of pretending to purchase foods they have just sampled for free: they put it in their trolley at the samplers table and, once at the checkout, it gets swiftly dumped.

  By the end of today’s shift I’ve broken every new rule I’ve been taught. I start putting things back in the wrong place, stop to peruse newspapers, sneak off to the loo to make a phone call. It feels good. And then I count down the hours in slots of ten minutes. That doesn’t feel so good. Fortunately, I manage to conjure up a new plot to get off the shop floor; I ask to shadow a checkout assistant. And that’s how I end up chatting to two checkout girls who speculate that I must be around nineteen. When I tell them how much older I am, they’re gobsmacked.

  The older of the two Cogs, who is closer to my age, is alarmed that I’ve had my kids later in life. She had hers twenty years ago. Like all the other Cogs here, she is truly charming. I’m discovering a strong sense of camaraderie. People generally look out for each other here. It’s really quite startling. In this line of work, people are actually NICE.

  Today, as on my previous few shifts, I witness staff doing their personal shopping just before they leave the store to go home. And now I know why. It’s the ultimate test of self-resolve to spend so many hours around food, clothes, toys, DVDs, gadgets, computer games—all the trappings of modern commercial life, and all placed to maximise their appeal. Not being allowed to touch, taste or sample any of it, makes me long for them even more. I find myself stroking clothes, squeezing fruit, inhaling deeply at the bakery—and then lingering longingly in the confectionery aisle while chocolate samples are being handed out to customers. Doing your shop at the end of a shift is the equivalent of finally gorging on a giant cream cake after being forced to stare at it on an empty belly for hours. Oh, it feels glorious.

  Saturday, 15 November 2008

  The first thing that happens on my shift blows apart my theory about customer service being wasted on the Brits. I help a woman to the car with her two trolleys’ worth of shopping and as we walk she tells me that she had stopped shopping at Sainsbury’s because it had become so expensive. But after one shopping trip to Morrisons, she promptly returned. ‘I don’t know what they do to you guys here, but everyone is so helpful and nice that I would never go anywhere else again.’ She admitted it was still pricier, but she was prepared to dig deeper so people were nice to her.

  I spend about three hours doing reverse shopping, picking up hangers and security tags. When I’m ready to weep with boredom, I blag my way on to shadowing on checkouts again. This time with the lovely Maya. She’s been in the job for eleven years and says she took it as a temporary escape from the drudgery of her housewife life. She hasn’t looked back because it’s the one job she can just leave at the door. She says that the place has changed tremendously during her time, particularly on the checkouts.

  ‘We used to have packers, and someone doing all the running around, and there was none of the customer interaction—that’s all down to us now.’

  Maya tells me the busiest days are when offers are on and at the weekends—although Dial-a-Ride (old people on a minibus) Tuesdays are also very busy. She points out that on those days it’s very slow in terms of IPM on which we all get scored. She is, however, fantastic at charming the most uptight of customers, and they cave in quickly.

  At the end of the shift there is an impromptu security search—involving the lifting of collars, checking under badges and the removal of socks and shoes. As I empty my pockets, my notes and pen emerge and my heart skips a beat. I’m terrified they’ll ask to look at my notes, but they don’t.

  Sunday, 16 November 2008

  So far no references have been taken up—and I’ve been at the store for about a week. What’s become clear to me in that time is that here ‘colleagues’ (as everyone calls each other) are not only loyal to one another but incredibly loyal to the store too, even though they work their fingers to the bone. I’ve identified two groups of colleagues. The students, age range 16-23, work hard, earning money to get themselves through college; they mingle with the other students and shrug almost everything off with one-, sometimes two-syllable words. The other group is made up of older women in the 30-50 age group; they’ve had their babies, are done with housewifery, and want an easy job that gives them a bit of spare cash. They want to make some friends and work but are qualified to do little else. However there is also a third group emerging—a crop of credit-crunched professionals supplementing their incomes after suffering a pay cut or redundancy. Educated, articulate and with few other options, they find it humiliating and belittling and do it for no other reason than the cash. Despite being qualified and experienced, the recession has hung them out to dry.

  We all congregate for delayed Day Two of our induction—and some of the others look brow-beaten. I think they’ve had a tough week. We’re told about ‘the rumble’. Every day from 11.30-12.30 and 15.30-16.30 ‘everyone, and that means everyone’ goes to one department and helps them get their goods on to the floor. I want to ask who is left on checkouts, security and customer service, but don’t dare.

  Again it is drummed into us that customer service is our TOP priority. Our main aim, we’re told repeatedly, is to be as helpful as possible—and to always offer an alternative so that customers don’t leave empty-handed. I keep schtum about the elderly gentleman who came in hunting for maternity pads for the daughter who had just given birth. I sent him off to Mothercare. We’re also told to imprint the acronym ‘REACT’ in our minds every single time we deal with a customer—Receive the message, Empathise, Ask questions, Consider options and Tell them the result. We’re reminded that it’s paramount that we keep ourselves looking clean, tidy, have our hair tied back and frequently wash our hands. There are unkind giggles when they talk about someone with a bad BO problem.

  Today I also found out that the Mystery Customer Measure makes up only a small amount of the bonus and is based on the availability of produce, and the amount of wastage. The less we waste, the higher our score.

  I also discover other trade secrets, the kind that some customers have become aware of—food rotation (longest life at the back) and price reductions just before the end of the day (which explains why so many customers pile in during the evening).

  According to the trainer, our uniform is changing. At the moment it’s blue and orange, but from April next year it will come into line with the rest of Sainsbury’s and we’ll be wearing purple and orange. I’m assuming though there’ll be no escape from the polyester.

  The most important part of today is our ‘Think 21’ training. We have to ask ourselves if anyone buying age-restricted goods looks under twenty-one. If in doubt, ask for
ID. I never carry any age-specific ID and wonder how many people do. The trainer tells us people will try to persuade and cajole, get angry and joke their way into making us sell restricted products to them. But the consequences are no laughing matter: prosecution, a criminal record, a fine and disciplinary action. During the course of the training, I decide to adopt two rules of thumb: if they look like they could work in the store under the student category—ask for ID. And if they have wrinkles, they are probably old enough.

  And if we’re not frightened enough by the consequences, we’re told about ‘Jake Edwards’ who sold alcohol to an underage customer. Unfortunately for him, trading standards were testing the store. He faced a criminal charge, had to go to court, lost his job and, worst of all for him, was unable to travel to New York with his girlfriend on holiday. There are gasps all round.

  Next on the training agenda is shoplifting. Another acronym—SCONE—explains the tactic used by shoplifters. They Select, Conceal, Observe, No payment, Exit. No one else points this out, but it’s obvious to me that shoplifters are taking advantage of Sainsbury’s desperate attempts to please its customers by working in twos. While one distracts the shop assistant with questions, the other Selects and Conceals.

  And on the list of most desired items by shoplifters are the usual suspects—alcohol, CDs, beauty products and…meat. At certain times of year, lamb is apparently so expensive, a shoplifter will sneak it under their jumper with a view to selling it on later. I ask repeatedly how and where this black market in lamb operates. There is no response.

  Then there is the ‘red route’ which we are all expected to walk during our shifts—via electronics, DVDs and CDs and past the beers, wines and spirits before heading up to the canteen for break-times. ‘Keep your eyes open and look out for shoplifters.’