by Anna Sam
After putting the packet down, I have a look at my fingers, curious. I notice a small, indefinable substance. I look more closely, rubbing my fingers together. I still can’t identify what it is. I stretch it, it’s elastic and remains stuck to my finger. Then I get it – it’s a nose bogey! Yes, how nice of the customer to give his checkout girl such a gift. Would you like a packet of tissues with your crisps?
I had a lot of trouble getting rid of it. It was really very sticky.
DRUNK CUSTOMERS
Drunk customers will never fail to astonish you. They are never short of ideas or ridiculous arguments. You will find them quite fascinating.
Whether it’s the one who asks you if you have a corkscrew to open the bottle of wine he has just bought.
Or the one who falls head over heels in love with the first customer he sees in the aisle and pursues her across the store, his can of beer in hand.
Or the one who thinks he’s Father Christmas and generously distributes the store’s products to customers.
The one who drinks a whole bottle of extra-strength lager there and then (well, maybe he’s thirsty and the soft-drinks aisle is too far away).
The one who falls in love with you in the beer aisle (what were you thinking of, returning the six-pack of Stella a customer left at your till fifteen minutes earlier?) and declares his passion with pauses for hiccups, releasing bad breath which could knock you over.
Or the one who is so drunk that you wonder how he found the supermarket and the alcohol aisle in the first place (a sixth sense undoubtedly). But it’s difficult to walk and avoid things which are suddenly in front of you: a trolley, a pack of water (dreadful stuff!) on the floor, a pile of loo-roll packs (good Lord, why create a Tower of Pisa? And he barely touched them (for which read, he tripped over them) and they fell all over the floor) …
It’s hard work being thirsty.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD!
Did you think that, despite the insults and the way people look through you as if you weren’t there, your store would actually be quite a civilised place? Don’t you believe it! When I tell you that working in a supermarket means seeing all sides of humanity, I really do mean all!
Screams. A chase through the shopping centre. A security guard and a man exchange blows. The first onlookers stop – and contemplate the scene. The man calms down. The security guard holds him firmly by the arm. They move away. Fisticuffs break out again. People, more and more of them, surround the unexpected scene. The fight becomes more violent, the blows harder. The people stand in a circle watching the street fight in the shopping centre. Men, women, children, bags and trolleys mingle.It takes three security guards to overcome the madman.
Curiosity. Voyeurism. The bloodier and more obscene, the better. Hey, look! Blood is pouring out of the securityguard’s nose. Wait until I tell everyone about this!
The guards try to take the man to a quieter place. The crowd follows. The guards move away again but only manage to take a few steps before the man flies into a rage once more. Is he to blame? Or is he the victim?
Four men have had a violent fight. There are at least thirty spectators but no one reacts. And there are just as many employees open-mouthed in front of this spectacle. It’s the same with accidents in the street, everyone watches but no one (or very few) reacts. The brawl ends with the arrival of the police, who take away the troublesome customer.
Once the show is over and the last curious people have left with their shopping (with the final scenes playing merrily in their heads), only the security guard remains. He wipes away the traces of blood – the last vestiges of a fight in an improvised ring.
The moment of madness has passed – a moment when man reverted to his instincts. And you, you remained behind your till, unable to react.
J’ACCUSE
When you accepted the post of checkout girl you thought that you wouldn’t learn anything except the essentials of your wonderful job. How wrong you were! You are in a perfect position to witness the entire range of human stupidity – and you will be delighted to know that it is limitless. It’s enough to make your mouth water.
Saturday, 8.30 p.m.: You have scanned the shopping of 350 or 400 customers (a good day). They have mostly been nice and some even very nice (they greeted you when they were on the phone). Your hearing is starting to go back to normal. The supermarket compere promoting the ‘special offers on beer’ finally shut up a few minutes ago. Your conveyor belt is like new. You have cleaned it with love. Your bin is closed properly. No pieces of paper or crisps are lying around. The store is almost empty. All you have to do now is take your cash box proudly back to the Office. You tell yourself that, for a Saturday, it could have been worse. To celebrate you start to whistle your favourite song (or whichever one has been played twenty times through the loudspeakers that day). Then two blokes arrive at your till carrying three bottles of beer.
CHECKOUT GIRL (pleasantly)
It’s closed, I’m afraid. You’ll have to go to the till over there. That one’s free. (She points to an open till a few feet away.)
FIRST MAN (unpleasantly)
Come on, you can take us. We’ve only got three bottles. It’s the Beer Special, for God’s sake!
CHECKOUT GIRL (firm but telling herself that she should have been less zealous in cleaning her till)
Sorry, it’s closed.
FIRST MAN
I’ll give you £1 – then you can take my bottles!
CHECKOUT GIRL (still firm but thinking that she would really like a security guard to turn up)
No thank you – it’s closed.
SECOND MAN (very pleasantly)
Come on! Checkout girls are like whores! When you offer them a tip they always say yes! Take our bottles, you whore!
The checkout girl is now wishing she were Arnold Schwarzenegger so that she could (repeatedly!) knock the heads of those two idiots against her very clean till while telling them, ‘Enjoy your beer specials, idiots!’ You can always dream.
Stupidity appears to be the most widespread of human traits, so I have some advice to stop you getting depressed: buy yourself a punchball.
CAN YOU GO TO THE NEXT TILL PLEASE?
How can you annoy a customer legally?
It requires special organisation. You are about to open but you have gone to find a free chair (yes, again). Your colleague, two tills away, is just getting settled (she has a chair) and between the two of you stands an empty, closed till (without a chair).
The customer (preferably in a bad mood) arrives at your colleague’s till. She is far from ready (what a lazybones!) and sends him to you. He lets out a sigh. He doesn’t see you (you are still looking for your chair) and thinks your till is the one just next door to your colleague’s. He waits for you. Another sigh. You return with your chair (finally!) but behind him so he still doesn’t see you.
Two customers, who have been following you, leap on your till. At the same time your colleague warns the customer (the one who’s waiting) that you are behind him. Another sigh and he says, ‘She could have told me that she wasn’t here!’ Another sigh. He heads to your till where a third customer has just arrived. Another sigh. You have started to scan the items of your first customer. Another sigh … and another and another.
Your colleague indicates that she is open (sorry, her till is open) so you tell him, ‘My colleague has just opened. You can go to her till.’ The customer lets out yet another sigh and a stream of expletives, abandons his basket and leaves, disgusted. Poor thing. Checkout girls can be so disorganised!
We’ll play again tomorrow, I promise.
WILL IT SCAN OR WON’T IT? THE SIX STEPS FOR GETTING PRICES
You are in your trial period. You want to be hired at any price. And when you got up on this Saturday morning, you decided that you wanted to be the best checkout girl of the day. This evening your number (not your name! Don’t push it!) will be at the top of the Office till league table. A nice challenge! (Though I must remind you that to
encourage you management will pay you not a single penny extra for this victory.)
You started an hour ago and you are keeping up a very good pace. You decide to speed up a bit when suddenly, beeeeep! On your till screen you see ‘unknown product’. Yes, you know what that means: the item in your hands won’t scan. And if you don’t know the price you’re stuck. Don’t panic.
Step 1: Enter the numbers on the bar code. Still nothing? That’s normal, there was only a 1 per cent chance that it would work (still, it was worth a try).
Take a deep breath.
Step 2: Call the Office. Line engaged? Bad luck. Wait and smile at your customer, who is starting to lose patience … Finally, someone answers!
CHECKOUT GIRL
The price for Andrex extra-soft loo roll please, the code isn’t going thr—
OFFICE (interrupting)
I’ll send someone over.
Wait again (I know, what fun), tell your customer (who is starting to go red in the face) that someone will be there in a second, and tell those behind him to go to another till (if not, I warn you you’ll get sighs and shouts within thirty seconds).
And on to Step 3 … a good five minutes later: the ‘runner’ has arrived (finally, but hard to blame it on him when you know he has to handle thirty tills all by himself). You immediately give him the packet of loo roll. The runner (a new employee) asks where to look. Oh dear! You want to send your customer to help him but you decide not to. He is crimson by now.
Quick, on to Step 4: Tell a few good jokes to your customer to make him relax and to make sure he stays (he might want to go, leaving you with all his shopping). Don’t be afraid to use your secret weapon: ‘I have a minibar under my till. Can I get you a drink?’ He smiles, it’s working. The runner is back already with the price and your customer has seen him too. Incredible! (You’re not so unlucky after all!)
Quick, Step 5: Call the Office to register the item, its bar code and its price on the central computer. The computer’s crashed! Don’t lose your cool now, only a ‘few’ seconds to wait. And smile, it’s not your customer’s fault.
Step 6 and … nine minutes later: beeeep! OK, the supersoft loo roll has gone through.
So you lost fifteen minutes and nine customers? Your place as No. 1 is severely compromised. Never mind, you’ll win next Saturday. Or you can make up time during your break.
Oh goody, a Bargain Hunter has come to your till. It’s definitely not your lucky day.
ROLL UP, ROLL UP: IT’S SALE TIME
The first day of the sales: an important event in the life of the organised consumer who wouldn’t miss it for anything. And also for the checkout girl (even a blasé one). It is a new opportunity to delight in being at work and not on holiday on a desert island.
8.25 a.m.: The Opening Time couples, the morning crazies, the Bargain Hunters and ‘all the rest’ can be counted in their dozens. Never before will you have felt so strongly that war has been declared or, if you watch too many horror films, that zombies are attacking.
There won’t be enough to go round today so have no pity! No scruples about shooting people killer looks, pushing and walking over one another without apology (don’t leave your feet lying around all over the place then!), being rude to each other (me first!), growling (is there a dog here?), using trolleys like assault tanks – and good for you if you run over someone’s foot (fewer competitors).
8.55 a.m.: You arrive at your till and swallow a yawn. You anxiously observe these dogged customers and prepare yourself psychologically for their relentless consumerism. It’s going to be a busy day.
9 a.m.: The wild animals are let loose. May the best (or the most aggressive) win!
Everyone heads for the technology aisle to get a good deal on a flat-screen TV. The people who came the day before to do some research are the first ones there. Too heavy?
‘Never mind. Sit on it, darling, while I go and pay for it. And bite or hit anyone who tries to take it!’
The DVD players are also going like hot cakes.
‘£30? A bargain! I’ll take the last three.’
‘They don’t have the remote control. You can’t navigate through the menus of your DVDs without it.’
‘Never mind, a bargain is a bargain.’
And the clothing aisle, so lovingly organised by the employees before opening time, has become a real battleground in barely quarter of an hour. Has a customer found the very dress she was looking for? She has grabbed it out of the hands of another girl who had just taken it off its hanger, knocking over a pile of jumpers in the process. Never mind, it is the very dress she was looking for. She beams a winner’s smile and continues her search in the aisle. But suddenly, what has she seen just over there? The actual very dress she was looking for. What should she do? Drop the first one on the floor like an old cloth. The sales assistants can pick it up. That’s what they’re paid for. And grab the actual, very, only dress she ever wanted. Is it much too small?
‘Never mind, I’ll go on a diet tomorrow.’
Further along, a customer has grabbed the woollen sock of his dreams, green with nice sprawling octopuses. Is the other one missing?
‘Never mind, I’ll upend the box to find it. Too bad if most of it goes on the floor. It will be easier for other customers to find what they want. Are people walking all over the socks? Who cares?’
9.10 a.m.: Over to you, dear checkout girl. It’s an emotional moment, the first compulsive shoppers at the till. You will be surprised (even if nothing surprises you now) at the number of items sold by your store, items of whose existence you were not even aware (even though you’ve been working there for several years). It’s a parade of unsold and unsellable, useless items. The waltz of the sales beeeep begins.
Sometimes, a little lucidity (what am I actually going to use that for?) or guilty conscience (I’m already £800 overdrawn) or both will make customers abandon some of their great bargains at the last minute. So don’t grumble if you find barometers in the shape of rolling pins, solar alarm clocks (without batteries), enormous cow-shaped slippers (with udders), granny knickers and shovels without handles in the chewing-gum display at the end of your till. After your day’s work go and put them back in their aisles ready for the next sales. It’s a chance to stretch your legs after a whole day sitting at your till.
And more than any other day you will feel that you have become a refuse collector. Most of your customers will confuse your conveyor belt with a bin and literally upend their trolley or basket. It’s your job to take each item and sort through their mountain of bargains as quickly as possible. Few customers bother with politeness – too much of an effort for today. Luckily, you might be able to count on your friend, the conveyor belt. Its jolts will make the pile of garden gnomes, flower-pot holders and planting trays fall over and will easily swallow a few little pairs of knickers and some T-shirt sleeves (oh bother, it’s all ripped and it was the last one too).
You are well trained but be prepared to see the same scenes over and over again throughout the day:
‘Is that the reduced price? I think it’s a bit expensive!’
‘Yes. I check each time that you have been given the reduction.’
‘The price isn’t on it but it was £1.’
‘I’ll call to check.’
‘If you must! But you’re making me late.’
An aisle assistant arrives with the actual price: £15.
‘Really? As much as that? That’s not what I saw. I don’t want it.’
You will also have to call your supervisor (with a smile and in good humour) at least twenty times to cancel purchases. Some customers will have been a bit too quick to believe that the sales won’t actually cost them anything. Apart from misers, it’s not the wealthiest people who come that day. Wealthy people don’t need to shop in the sales. It’s those on low and middle incomes who come to exact their revenge for the normally high prices and to prove that they too have the right to consume. The sales are a good way of making
people who don’t actually have any money spend it anyway.
The first day of the sales is an ideal opportunity to get a good look at the personality of the twenty-first-century consumer. It is an exceptional day that any checkout girl worthy of the name must experience at least once in her life (and more if you enjoy it). And if some of the complexities escape you on the first day, you have six weeks to get to grips with it. The twenty-first-century consumer will no longer hold any secrets for you.
Have you missed the sales period? Don’t worry! After that there are special offers, stock clearances and other one-off sales. The year will be full of bargains!
THE WEEKEND SHOW
Do you still want some excitement? Have you been hoping to show the world that checkout girls can still be their own person, or nearly? With a good dose of self-sacrifice and a bit of luck you could experience this kind of situation.