by Tazeen Ahmad
‘You know that Cathy is on her own, too?’ she says, fishing for gossip for the next coffee morning.
‘Oh, is she?’ asks Colette, trying to strike a graceful balance between sympathy and empathy.
‘Yes, poor thing. Her husband had an…an…affair.’ Margaret whispers this last word, but I still hear it.
It’s quite obvious that Colette has now had more than she can take. I decide to intervene.
‘Do you need some more bags?’
Colette turns to me enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes please.’
Margaret does evidently have some shame and says, ‘I’ll let you finish your shopping, Colette. I’ll call you next week.’
Her work is done, so off she goes.
Colette’s relief is palpable. She turns back to shopping but then spends the next few minutes packing silently, deep in thought.
I serve a couple of customers that come in regularly. One tells me he shops here every day.
‘What? Every day of the week?’
‘Yup, every single day.’
‘Why don’t you just come in once a week and get everything you need?’
‘Because we run out of food or things perish. You need fresh grub.’
‘And how much do you spend each time?’
‘About £30, I’d say. Sometimes more.’
Ker-ching.
Another customer I’ve just served comes back after thirty minutes because he forgot something and adds another £10 to his shopping bill.
‘See you again in twenty minutes,’ I jibe.
My last customers of the day are regulars. They’re a couple who’ve been married for thirty-four years and are both coppers. They provide such high entertainment value with their good-humoured squabbling that they ought to have their own show. Watching couples bicker is hands down my favourite part of this job.
On the radio on the way home there’s talk of 1000 jobs cut on the London underground. And there’s a discussion about yesterday’s announcement by Asda to employ another 7000 workers and create at least fifteen new stores.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Today there is increasing unrest about the use of foreign labour. Gordon Brown’s 2007 pledge of ‘British jobs for British workers’ is being used by protestors angry that a refinery is using Italian workers rather than local staff. In the past I’d have had little time for this argument, but in the current climate, with mounting job losses and a fall in vacancies, it’s every man for himself. I completely understand the furore.
I start my shift with the usual hunt for a chair that isn’t going to collapse the second I sit on it. Betty is on shift and I know if I ask her for a chair it will go down like a ton of bricks, so I go on my own private treasure hunt and find one torn at the seams, with yellow foam poking out from beneath. It’s not perfect, but perfectly adequate. During my induction I was told to always look for a sturdy bloke to help lift it over, but today there are none to be found. I weigh up my options—go looking for someone who can help and delay getting on the till, potentially risking the wrath of the already cranky Betty, or risk putting my back out. I opt for the latter and hear a disconcerting crack as I do it.
My first customer is a chap with a wife who has perfected the art of control freakery. He tries to pack the shopping and she moves in.
‘Alan, don’t put the detergents in with the cereal.’
He picks up the bread and puts it in a new bag.
‘You can’t put the bread at the bottom, it’ll get squashed.’
So he opens another bag.
‘Alan, we’ve got our own bags! We don’t need theirs.’
He puts the potatoes in one of their bags.
‘Potatoes at the bottom, not on top of the blooming eggs,’ she tuts, and grabs the bag from him.
He looks for the card to pay with.
‘I’m paying on the credit card today—I want the air miles.’
Hen-pecked husband then leans against the till with his back to us and stands there seething quietly for the remainder of the time. She packs, pays and then pushes the trolley to the car park.
Dear Control Freak Husband/Wife,
I appreciate, more than most, the importance of packing well. Who wants potatoes squashing bread and fish stinking out your delicious desserts? But do you have to humiliate your spouse in front of me? If they don’t know how to pack, then have a quiet word in their ear before you leave, not while you are at the checkout. And if it really matters, there are other ways of getting round it. Get them to load while you pack. Get them to go pick up some ‘forgotten’ item while you pack. Get them to pay while you pack. Best of all, get them to chat to the bored Cog while you pack. Just please, for the sake of your marriage, for the sake of supermarket etiquette, don’t keep crucifying them in front of us.
Yours,
A. Cog
I get a recipe for a beef meatballs bolognaise from a lady with more fresh food in her trolley than the fruit-and-veg section at the front of the store.
Roll the meatballs with beaten egg and Italian herbs, fry gently, dunk them in a sauce made from fresh garlic simmered with tinned tomatoes and more mixed herbs; add some salt, a dash of chilli powder, tomato purée and leave to cook for an hour. Hey presto.
A customer with a pace maker tells me how he lost ten pounds in a week with what he calls the British Heart Foundation diet. He had to lose weight quickly before going in for surgery and it worked for him. It sounds like a dangerous crash diet, but he heartily recommends it. I look it up later and, indeed, it comes with a health warning. Needless to say, the BHF has distanced itself from it.
Domestic matters are, as always, high on the agenda in a supermarket. People talk recipes, extreme dieting and, of course, about their beloved pets. An elderly couple have just taken in a beautiful stray Persian cat that has lost his way. They tell me they’ve adopted him after countless attempts to find his original owner. I tell them that there are websites they can register him at in case the owner is still looking for him. They pretend not to hear me.
I serve a friendly Australian.
‘I’ve just come back from Australia and they’re not admitting to a recession, but you know when you go shopping you really feel it. The price of food is through the roof. I wonder how long it’s going to take before the price of food here shoots up.’ She stares at me as if I may have some inside information. I look back at her blankly. If I knew something like that was on the horizon I’d be buying my food in bulk down at the local cash and carry. Pronto.
Sonia is on the till opposite me. She seems to be on a mission to get shoppers to buy British meat. She tells every single customer about a documentary she watched in which animals for slaughter were kept in terrible conditions. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I like my meat, but if you had seen this programme you’d know what I mean.’ She describes in graphic detail everything she witnessed in the documentary: ‘They were caged twenty-four-seven and had this look of crazy wildness in their eyes.’ The customers look uncomfortable. ‘And they were packed into this tiny little space with most of them looking emaciated, and some were even bleeding.’ One customer looks like she’s going to throw up. ‘And they were so uncomfortable they never slept.’ Another feigns polite interest. ‘And, if you think about it, if the animal isn’t well, then what’s its meat going to taste like?’ One customer is so bored she doesn’t look away from her shopping once. Sonia is not one to give up easily. ‘It completely put me off and now I always check the back to see where the meat is from before I buy it.’
I know my recession small talk isn’t exactly sophisticated dinner-table conversation, but surely she can do better than this?
Between my credit crunch chit-chat and Sonia’s butchering stories, I’m amazed we haven’t scared most of the customers away. When all else fails there’s always the infamous forgotten plastic bag to talk about. One customer tells me she has a special bag that she always brings with her but without fail leaves it behind in the car.
‘I’ve had it f
or so long, I feel lost without it. It’s so grand that I sit it in the car next to me—in a kind of privileged position. And then I come into the shop and leave it there, untouched, unused, just waiting for my return.’
‘So it’s like bag royalty,’ I muse.
‘Yes, a Queen of bags.’
‘A virgin bag, in some ways.’
‘Yes, a kind of bag lady.’
Her son begs us to stop, but it’s still far better repartee than I get from the bloke who comes to my till at least once a day and shouts ‘BAGS!’ at me.
One thing I’ve started to learn after three long months in this job is that the customer is always right. The belt where the shopping is placed after I’ve scanned it is more or less always on the move. It’s there to transport the shopping from me to the bottom of the till so the customer can conveniently pack their shopping. It’s certainly not designed for a customer to place their cash on—especially not when it’s moving. So, along comes a lady who defies the rules of conventional transaction and puts her money on the moving belt: all £120; in six £20 notes. I watch as they slip down the moving belt and disappear into the innards of my checkout. There’s a mad scramble and then they are all gone. Fortunately this till appears to be designed with the idiocy of such customers in mind: under the till is a large open and empty space. All the notes have simply floated to the floor. I manage to rescue them all and when I emerge from the bowels of my till with my hair ruffled and glasses skewed, the customer tells me, ‘I’m glad you got them back because you shouldn’t have just let them go on the belt.’
It’s almost the end of my shift, and in the fine tradition of Cog etiquette I stand up so that a supervisor (often too busy gossiping with co-supervisor to notice) can see it’s time to bring me over a Closed Checkout sign. Standing, sitting, jumping or waving my arms—none of it has any effect. Huge over-loaded trolleys approach and the sign is still nowhere to be seen. Betty eventually tells me that I have relief on its way. So that means an extra few minutes at the checkout—unpaid.
Dear Supermarket Boss,
Today my relief came three minutes late. I know what you’re thinking—what’s three minutes, you skiving Cog? But as you know, my colleagues and I only get paid £6.30 an hour. If we are late you dock our wages. But if we work an extra ten minutes we get nothing. By the time the lovely Phillipe came down, he inadvertently, through no fault of his own, extended my shift by an extra unpaid fifteen minutes. He clocks in at the start of his shift on time. He makes his way down the stairs, through the shop and over to the till captain who allocates him a till. I think he did well to make it to me in three minutes. However, I still had to finish serving my customer with their trolleyful of shopping before I could hand over to him, and that took an extra ten minutes or so. If my shift ends at 5.30, I should be able to go home at 5.30.
Give us a break. We work hard for your money.
Yours,
A. Cog
Friday, 6 February 2009
It’s freezing today so Fatima gives me her amber jacket to keep me warm and tells me she’s moving on in a couple of weeks. She, like many of the women at the store, started working here to boost her confidence once her three kids started school. She had them in close succession, a year or two apart, and desperately needed some time to herself. Now that the eldest is about to start secondary school she wants to be at home for them again, ‘so that when they come back from school I’m around to keep an eye on them’.
We discuss last week and the mystery of the missing money. ‘I just put it in the wrong tub and they all got a little overexcited,’ she tells me.
Richard is gutted she’s leaving and her last shift is over Valentine’s weekend.
‘How romantic for you and Sainsbury’s,’ I say.
And then we both chime, ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’ and laugh hysterically.
After serving a couple of customers I turn to her and say, ‘You didn’t even stick around for your discount card?’
‘Yes, but Adil has one.’
At first I think she means her husband, who is one of my favourite customers, and then it dawns on me she means Adil, the politics student. This place is insanely incestuous. Her youngest brother is a charming, eloquent Cog who works on general merchandise. When I tell her how great a job her family has done with Adil, she beams.
A chap I serve hunts around in his pocket for the right change, wrongly believing that it will in some way make my life easier. Out of politeness I watch him dig around for at least a minute.
‘Life’s too short to look for the right change,’ I say eventually.
‘Aah, a checkout philosopher—I like that.’
I’m feeling generous towards my customers today, although not generous enough to give them their cash-back. Again and again I’m so engrossed in our exchange that I forget to give them their requested cash-back. Fortunately, most gently remind me.
Sadly, some of my encounters today are even less auspicious. A face from my not-so-distant supermarket past re-emerges. I look up and standing before me with a smirk on his smug little face is the customer with the tattoos and no ID from before Christmas.
‘So I’m not too young to serve now, then?’ he asks haughtily.
‘Depends on what you’re buying, sir,’ I reply, not making any eye contact.
‘So do I look older now?’
I smile genially although I really just want to thump him.
‘You do look young. You should have been flattered.’
He puffs out his tattooed chest with pride.
‘I always get asked for ID. I can’t even go to clubs without it. How old do you think I am? Go on, take a guess.’
‘Well…I mean…under twenty-one, of course, that’s why I asked you for ID in the first place.’
‘Thirty-one,’ he says.
He wants me to gasp in awe, but I’ve had about as much as I can take. He gets bored with trying to impress me and leaves.
Behind him is a man with bags on the brain.
‘Why should I bother to save the planet when the government is building yet another runway? Why should I bother to bring my bags in when our recycled stuff is lying in a mountain of rubbish because China doesn’t want it any more? Why? Give me one good reason—why?’ says this rather trying customer.
Another customer is buying a carrot cake with thick icing on the top.
‘Why don’t you have plastic bags for cakes?’
‘I guess because we’re trying to reduce the number of plastic bags that customers use.’
‘Well, you should have them. Look, if I put my cake in one of your bags, it will topple and all that good icing will just go to waste. M&S do them, after all.’
‘They do indeed, but then you have to pay for them.’
There are two other colleagues on baskets with me—David and Magda. They’re complaining about the supermarket’s customer service policy.
‘When I go shopping I just put my head down and get out of there as quickly as possible. I can’t be bothered to have a chat,’ says David.
An hour or so into our shift, we all notice that Magda is having an observation. It’s not exactly surreptitious. The manager stands right behind her and watches her for a good five minutes or so. Not surprisingly, she passes. We all note that she does exactly the same with two other Cogs.
A salesman from Honda cars tells me the car industry is very quiet but is not as bad as the papers would have us believe. ‘But now is the time to pick up a bargain, and cars are dirt cheap. Peugeot are offering buy one, get one free at the moment. All people have to do is come down and barter—we’re doing good offers.’
Betty drops by before the start of her shift and chats amiably with the Cog next to me. If I don’t get to join in, I certainly get to eavesdrop and learn all about the relationship, the work and the domestic arrangements—she is part of a mother-daughter Cog team. I suddenly make an unexpected error during a transaction and turn to ask her for some help.
�
�No can do, my shift hasn’t started yet.’ Fortunately, I figure it out.
It’s quiet so the Cogs are up to mischief. Some of the younger ones giggle unkindly about a customer they suspect of having had a sex change. After a little while I’m taken off the basket till and asked to tidy Red Nose Day boxes. They are full of red balls that squeal, hang off key-rings or have bespectacled faces with gritted teeth. This last one looks almost exactly like me following a dressing down by a customer, so I promise to buy myself one at the end of my shift. When I return to my till twenty minutes later, Ariana is now on baskets with me.
‘Don’t forget to ask for your break, otherwise you’ll lose it,’ she tells me. ‘Sometimes they just forget about me—I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve lost my break.’
I’ve been on shift for four and a half hours without a break. When Ayesha passes by I ask if I can get a break. She looks at her watch and reluctantly says, ‘Take a quick fifteen minutes.’ I’m entitled to twenty and after hours spent on the tills every minute counts. Just before I head up Molly comes to take some money from my till. It’s something to do with a refund at the customer service desk. She gives her customer a large refund and discovers minutes after he leaves that he was pulling a scam. It’s the second time in a couple of weeks that she’s made the wrong call. Another Cog tells me, ‘They’re not happy with Molly.’
When I get back after my break, my chair has disappeared. Magda admits pinching it after Ariana nabbed hers. It’s like musical chairs around here. Fruit-and-Veg Bloke walks past the till twice today and I give him the cold shoulder both times now that I’m on to his steal-a-hug scam.
My day-dreaming is interrupted by a man who buys a pregnancy test. It’s the only thing in his basket and I’m desperate to ask him one simple question, but there are times when a Cog needs to keep her mouth shut, and this is one. The remainder of my shift is spent messing around with Magda. She’s seventeen so always has teenage games up her sleeve. I’m pubescent of mind so enjoy these time-killing exercises. She asks all our customers to guess my age. Customer after customer has me down as a medical student. I suspect this has less to do with my brain power and more to do with the fact that I’m brown and wear glasses.
