The Checkout Girl

by Tazeen Ahmad

  ‘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

  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

  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

  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.

  I accidentally scan something twice and the customer I’m serving points this out. He treats me like a moron, smiles at me condescendingly and won’t allow me to explain why this happens. The man behind him decides that attack is the best form of defence and says, ‘I’m going to watch everything you put through very carefully.’ I explain to him that some scanners are very sensitive so things can sometimes accidentally get scanned twice.

  ‘It’s fixable and we always look out for it,’ I say.

  ‘It’s atrocious that Sainsbury’s are using such terrible software. You need to get that sorted.’

  Katherine is also on the basket tills, so we have a little chinwag. She has received yet another fan mail from one of her customers which she shows me. They love her—she is engaging, down-to-earth and has the sweetest manner. She’s only been here six months and does it to get herself out of the house and for the useful extra cash. Her daughter tipped her off about the job. There is a marked supermarket trend for attracting mum-daughter dynasties.

  Many customers today ask me for the ‘Feed your family for a fiver’ recipe cards. For the first time I can see that the recession is starting to take hold, and people are really keeping a close eye on their shopping habits. My shift ends with news of interest rates falling to their lowest level ever. They are now standing at a historic 1.5 per cent, with talk of them dropping even further. No more than eighteen months ago people were anxious they might rise to 15 per cent; in this climate anything is possible.

  Friday, 9 January 2009

  My shift starts with a pat-on-the-back newsletter from ‘Justin’. Sainsbury’s may be feeling very pleased with itself, but there’s no good cheer amongst the customers I serve today. One man and I talk interest rates and he says he can’t believe he has lived to see this day. ‘My mortgage in the 1980s shot up to £1,500 a month and I was almost broke from trying to meet the payments. But now I don’t have a mortgage so I don’t care what interest rates do.’ I take that to mean he’s not got too many savings either.

  Today everyone wants to talk about their redundancies. One chap tells me there are looming job cuts at the kitchen distribution company he works for. They sell and distribute kitchens worth £20,000-plus but ‘when all the rich people run out, where’s the money going to come from?’ With redundancies being announced next week he has put his plan B into action. He’s getting his Class 2 licence so that he can ‘drive the really big lorries’. He reckons the company, running for almost twenty years, will virtually close down and, even if it doesn’t, most people are going to be made redundant. I help him calculate his pay-off.

  A sales assistant from Halfords comes in during his lunch break and tells me that they are cutting one of the six full-timers in the next month because ‘business is eerily quiet’, and a girl who works at Gala Bingo says it’s really quiet for this time of year, although she can’t tell if it’s the cold or the recession. A father-and-son shopping team are up for a chat and tell me the son is in his final year of his law degree. He graduates this year and is worried about finding work. We talk about the Association of Graduate Recruiters warning that students should prepare to stack shelves. I see fear in his eyes and tell him that he wouldn’t be alone; there are so many students in this Sainsbury’s that they could set up their own college.

  A woman I serve in the mid-afternoon is in a fractious mood.

  I say, ‘That’s 19.84 please, like the book.’ She looks at me blankly and so I say it again and quickly follow it with mutterings about how low-level number-crunching can make you spout nonsense. ‘NO! I understood your reference, I just didn’t HEAR it,’ she barks at me. Another customer growls at a man who accidentally pushes in. I try to pacify them both and fail miserably.

  On the upside, I see Danielle, a Cog who is an arbiter of common sense. She’s the first person I befriended at the store—within the first two minutes of our meeting she’d bombarded me with advice about how to handle working here. She told me that the supervisors needed to be handled with an equal dose of diplomacy and casual indifference. ‘Don’t ever let them know they’re getting to you, it’ll make you feel weak in the long-term.’ She’s been here for over five years and seems to move from department to department with confidence. She could be a supervisor herself, but seems satisfied just working on rotation. Last week I asked her again for the lowdown on some of the supervisors, and she told me that they just take some warming up. She asks me how I’m getting on with them now and so I lie and say, ‘They’re fine.’

  ‘You see, they’re not that bad. You know, life
’s too short and you can’t take things too personally. If they want to be offish, let them be—you can’t let it bother you.’

  My favourite trolley boy frequents my till numerous times today and quizzes bemused customers. Most people are happy to humour him. One woman tells me she’s been coming here for years and is in total awe of him.

  ‘How can someone have such an incredible memory and literally remember things, huge overwhelming lists, in the way that he does—and yet not move beyond being a trolley pusher in all this time?’

  ‘He’s a genius of sorts,’ I say—and totally wasted here, I think to myself.

  At the end of the day Richard calls me to his office and gives me the news I’ve been waiting for. I almost hug him. He’s granted my change in shift but makes it clear that this is an exception rather than the rule.

  ‘But we’re happy to accommodate you because you were direct and approached me as soon as it was a problem.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Now look, I’ve been watching you chat to customers and I think you’re doing really well. Soooo…’

  This doesn’t sound like good news.

  ‘…once your probationary period is over we want to train you up for the customer service desk.’

  I can’t stop my face from contorting into a grimace. The customer service desk is where checkout girls go to die.

  ‘Don’t react like that,’ he laughs. ‘You’ll do really well there. You’re nice and friendly but also have balls, so I know you won’t take any crap.’

  When I get back, Louisa, who is also on the basket tills, is desperate to know what Richard wanted. She’s easily distracted, so when Betty comes over to ask what shade of blonde Louisa is intending to go next, she forgets what she’s just asked.