Checkout
Page 9
It’s Saturday afternoon, it’s raining and there are lots of people hanging around the store. I am standing in for a colleague at the vouchers desk (yes, another post checkout girls can find themselves occupying). A man arrives in a suit and tie. He buys about ten vouchers. We chat for a few minutes while I process his request and print his vouchers. When the time comes to ask him how he wants to pay, he gets out his cheque book. I have to tell him, ‘I’m sorry but you can’t pay for vouchers by cheque.’ I show him the notice on the counter indicating the accepted payment methods. ‘See, says so there.’
‘But no one told me before!’ he retorts.
Having experienced this kind of misunderstanding before (it happens a lot) and in order to calm things down quickly, you phone the Office to ask for confirmation. The customer can then see that you’re not talking rubbish (after all, you’re just a checkout girl).
So I call the Office and ask, ‘You can’t pay for vouchers by cheque, can you?’
‘No, you can’t,’ comes the reply.
I hang up the phone and turn to the customer, repeating (yes, sometimes you turn into a parrot) that no, you can’t pay by cheque. He won’t drop it though.
‘Call your supervisor, I want to see her.’
‘Of course, I’ll ask her to come.’
I pick up the phone again. ‘It’s me again. Could you come and explain to the customer why he can’t pay by cheque?’
And at the end of the line I hear an apologetic voice: ‘No, that’s not possible at the moment, I’m on my own here and the boss is already sorting out a problem at the till. You’ll have to deal with it.’
Irritated voice: ‘Oh … I’ll see what I can do.’
I hang up and turn to the customer, attempting to smile.
‘Sorry, but my supervisor is already busy with a customer. She can’t come and talk to you.’
The customer goes very red. He starts shouting (so that everyone can enjoy the situation, how generous of him) and gesticulating. Although I try to remain unruffled, I also end up raising my voice because by now I’ve had enough.
We are apparently here to serve.
We have to show them respect.
But being shouted at for something you can’t change and you can’t control, no …
Suddenly we are into a nice argument. He shouts. So do I. He yells. Customers covertly approach so they don’t miss anything. A show – how exciting! … Well, it’s not every day that you hear a checkout girl and a customer arguing at full pitch!
Our ‘discussion’ is doomed to failure though, since neither of us will give in. After several unpleasant minutes (shouting is fun in a football stadium but not so much at the till) I notice an aisle supervisor out of the corner of my eye. What luck! Given the noise, he must have heard. He’ll definitely come over and calm things down. But my hope is short-lived. He acts as if nothing has happened and changes aisle …
The customer finally gets out his bank card. With an abrupt gesture he flings it at me. It falls on the floor. That makes me even more annoyed but I pick up his card, give it to him and say calmly, ‘Sir, I refuse to serve you. You’ve gone too far and I won’t be treated like that!’
‘…’
The argument ends abruptly. The man apologises, pays for his vouchers and leaves.
Ten minutes later one of the girls from the Office finally arrives. She has come to see whether I have been able to handle the argument. I describe the brawl and she tells me, ‘Go and take your break. Someone will replace you.’
Do you need the support of a superior? The number you have rung is not available.
Are you sure that you are handling a situation properly? Careful, you are only a checkout girl.
Do you want to serve people? I repeat, you are only a checkout girl.
And the moral of the story? A few days later the rules are changed. You can now pay by cheque. OK, it’s not exactly a moral but why should there be one?
THE BIG CHRISTMAS RUSH
Ah, Christmas! A period of festivity and sharing? Frankly for you, dear checkout girl, 24 December involves exactly the same stress as the first day of the sales. It’s all about quick execution, increased scanning, big crowds, grumbling customers, empty aisles, compulsive shopping, even more impatience than usual …
Welcome to the spirit of Christmas! I know, it’s horrible but if you really want to enjoy the season to be jolly, avoid this job.
24 December, morning. The same old story. War has just broken out and the zombies are attacking. Customers are buzzing like flies in front of the store doors (which open at 8.30 instead of 9 a.m., an important distinction).
With the same fear of missing out, they leap not on the technology and clothes aisles but the fish/meat/dessert aisles. They’re stocking up for the big blow-out tomorrow. But you will feel the same aggressive atmosphere as at sale time. Perhaps it’s a foretaste of the dyspepsia to come.
‘It’s a shame we can’t serve ourselves. We’d have the turkey, sausages, smoked salmon, bacon, beef and Christmas pudding in the trolley already and we wouldn’t have to yell at the idiot who pushed in front!’
From 9.15 a.m. onwards the same generalised chaos reigns in the aisles as at sale time. The sales assistants are on the verge of a nervous breakdown the same as at sale time. Not for the same reasons, it’s true. This time it’s because some customers can’t understand why the most popular toy of the moment might be out of stock on Christmas Eve and kick up a fuss (thirty-six of them simultaneously). Others only want to give big gifts (nice ones!) but for less than £5. Others still don’t have any idea what they want to give. It is up to the sales assistants to spend two hours looking for them (and they’d better find something good!). There are also those who arrive three minutes before closing and who still haven’t made their mind up, when the lights go out (darkness isn’t great for choosing what colour plates to buy).
And of course at the tills you find the same cordiality and politeness as normal but worse … Today truly there are only bad offers to be had. All the prices have gone up for the event. And it’s obviously your fault. So you can read in their furious glances: ‘You expect me to pay an arm and a leg, you don’t want a thank you as well surely!’ and/or ‘You’re not the one who has to cook this turkey so hurry up, you stupid bird.’
But don’t forget to keep smiling sincerely even when they shout at you for the fiftieth time that day because you can’t wrap presents or because you haven’t provided a nice piece of ribbon to hide the horrible colour of the packaging, which – what bad taste – includes the store’s logo! ‘It’s not very Christmassy, your hideous packaging!’
And you must wish them Merry Christmas and Happy New Year as you give them your nicest smile. And you will have to repeat at least 350 times, about five times more than normal, ‘Yes, I check each time that you have received the reduction.’
Actually, the comparison between Christmas and the sales is not accurate. The decorations (multicoloured tinsel and plastic Christmas trees vs special-offer posters screaming ‘50% off’) are quite different. You might be wearing a Father Christmas hat on 24 December. For the sales you will be wearing a goblin hat. In both cases though you will look ridiculous (and the glamorous or grandma outfit won’t help …)
Another important difference to bear in mind is that on Christmas Eve your store will close at 7 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. (as it does on the first day of the sales). Yes, but you can be sure that you will be just as tired and at the end of your tether.
And when the doors finally close and you think that you can breathe again, don’t be surprised to see a frustrated consumer getting heated and yelling, ‘Let me in! I have to buy a present!’
‘We’re closed, madam,’ the security guard replies.
‘What? But that’s not possible, I can’t go home without a present!’
‘We’re closed, madam,’ he will repeat several times.
You are allowed to laugh (inside). If necessary, you can defend yourself by
saying it was nervous laughter …
And don’t forget that most of the presents chosen with care, or not, by your customers will end up on websites at half price on Boxing Day … OK then, Christmas is a bit like the first day of the sales after all.
Happy Christmas, enjoy your supermarket dash and be sure to be up at the crack of dawn on Boxing Day to be first online for the best bargains …
COUNTDOWN
Saturday, 3 January: my last day. No, it’s not a dream!
All the familiar gestures and words I’ve repeated tens of thousands of times … today will be the last time. I can’t believe it! I’d like to sit down to think about it but … I have to work. (‘Just because it’s your last day doesn’t mean you’re being paid to do nothing!’)
I arrive at the Office and say hello, as I do every day (they actually answer this morning). It’s the last time I will look at the board to find out my hours and which tills I’ll be working on: Till 12 until 3 p.m., Till 13 until 9 p.m. – oh joy, next to the freezers all day! And I forgot my scarf!
As usual I glance at my cash box and check whether I have enough coin rolls for the day. Yet again, I ask for £1 and £2 coins. I take a few sheets of paper towel (just in case a packet of crisps breaks, a bogey gets stuck to my fingers, a customer needs to blow his nose after sneezing on me or another of life’s pleasures) and leave the Office.
I only have a few hours left working for this company. I won’t feel the same about the customers I meet today. Do I have regrets? I wouldn’t go that far …
11 a.m.: Clocking-in time. No chair … as usual. But this time I get one in less than five minutes (better late than never!). And immediately I hear, ‘Are you open?’
‘…’
And for the first time I don’t answer (I don’t care!). The customers (my last three hundred!) parade past, one after the other. Amongst them are some of my favourites: the customer on the phone, Mr Smith with his holey sock and his smelly foot, the Bargain Hunters, the customer with his embarrassing loo roll, the ‘Where are the toilets’ customer. Some very nice ones too – no, not the customer on the phone who remembers to say hello – but ones who have read my articles on the website, who wish me luck and promise to treat checkout girls like human beings from now on. Hurrah! That’s a great leaving present (so I haven’t wasted my time).
8.45 p.m.: Announcement that the store is about to close. Already? The day has gone really quickly. It’s all the emotion, I expect.
8.55 p.m.: My last customer.
‘Don’t you have any bags?’
It’s always nice to end with a classic.
I glance at the aisles to check that the Closing Time couple aren’t nearby. No – what a shame! I would have treated them like kings this time. Never again would they have come to do their shopping at 8.55 p.m.!
The day is over. I clean my conveyor belt with particular care (‘I’m going to miss you, you know. Thanks for helping me so much’) and the rest of my till. It is all so automatic that you almost forget why you’re doing it. This evening though, I know that it’s for the colleague who will take my place tomorrow. I wonder who will replace me on this till? You don’t normally think about that. Why should you?
Last check. Last look from this side of the till. Everything is in order, nothing is lying around. With my cash box under my arm I walk down the line of tills one final time to the Office. The white tiles seem to continue endlessly in front of me. My feet are taking the same path that they have followed almost every day for the last few years though. It is difficult to tell myself that the next time I come here I will just be a customer. I slow down. I want to keep a bit of my soul here.
The security shutters come down. The blinding white fluorescent lights are turned off and we are left in the shadows. My footsteps resonate in the great empty store. A solitary beeeep! can still be heard like a goodbye from the tills I used all these years. But it’s time to go to the Office and cash up for the last time.
The amount is correct! It’s strange to think it’s the last time I’ll handle all those coins and notes. The money is returned to my cash box and I close it for the final time. It is given to my colleagues in the Office. The label with my number will soon be taken off the metal box and given to the person who will replace me.
Who will then become just a faceless number.
Checkout girls are often only temporary. They are employees who come and go and one looks much like the other … or do they?
A little glass of champagne? Orange juice? Some goodbye crisps at least? Dream on. You were a checkout girl, remember, not a lawyer! My colleagues hug me. It’s a good thing they’re there.
I clock out one last time (well, I hope so!). 9.15 p.m. Right on time. Ah, that capricious machine which made me enter my card over and over again. This time I win! Someone else will be using this card tomorrow.
Employees come and go and one looks much like the other … or do they?
I think that the tills will haunt me for a long time. The lights, the background noise, the familiar faces of all the customers I met over the years, all the colleagues I worked with. All that is over for me today. Eight years behind the till (amazing!). I leave with a big (recyclable) shopping bag full of memories and beeeep, beeeep, beeeep …
So do you still want to be a checkout girl? Is it still your dream job? No? I didn’t think so! But do you have a choice? No, I didn’t think so. Good luck anyway. And then, if it’s really terrible, do what I did and write a book. And who knows, maybe it will be sold in supermarkets for … £6.99. Keep the change.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thank you to all the colleagues who helped and supported me and made me laugh over those eight years on the till, and particularly those who have become real friends.
Thank you to the first readers of my blog who gave me a reason to keep going and put it down on paper.
Thank you to Iris and François who helped me so much with my writing.
Special thanks to Liliane, my eagle-eyed proofreader, for her excellent advice.
Thanks to my family who are always supportive and who pushed me to fulfil my ambitions.
And finally, and above all, thank you to Richard, my husband, for always being there.
The first Victor Legris Mystery
MURDER ON THE EIFFEL TOWER
Claude Izner
(Translated by Isabel Reid)
The brand-new Eiffel Tower is the glory of the 1889 Universal Exposition.
But one sunny afternoon a woman collapses and dies on this great Paris landmark. Can a bee-sting really be the cause of death? Or is there a more sinister explanation?
Enter young bookseller Victor Legris. Present on the Tower at the time ofthe incident, he is determined to find out what actually happened.
In this dazzling evocation of late-nineteenth-century Paris, we follow Victor as his investigation takes him all over the city. But what will he do when the deaths begin to multiply and he is caught in a race against time?
‘Isabel Reid’s seamless translation captures the novel’s many period charms’ Independent
‘… a clock-beating thriller … entertaining views of nineteeth-century Paris’ Financial Times
‘… a charming and amusing whirl around a time of rapid social and intellectual change’ Morning Star
‘Reading Izner is like taking a ride into the belle epoque in a time machine. A wonderfully breathtaking ride’ Boris Akunin
‘The taut pacing and vivid period detail will have readers eagerly turning the pages’ Publishers Weekly
ISBN 978–1–906040–01–7
£7.99
To purchase this title visit www.gallicbooks.com or call 020 7349 7112.
The second Victor Legris Mystery
THE PÈRE-LACHAISE MYSTERY
Claude Izner
(Translated by Isabel Reid and Lorenza Garcia)
On a wet March evening in 1890, Odette de Valois vanishes from the Père-Lachaise cemetery during a visit to her late
husband’s grave. Her maid, Denise, fears the worst and knows of only one person in Paris who can help: her mistress’s former lover, Victor Legris
When the frightened girl turns up at his bookshop, Victor reassures her, certain there must be a simple explanation for Odette’s disappearance. But as he begins to investigate he realises it is a far more sinister affair than he first suspected.
‘… brilliantly evokes 1890s Paris, a smoky, sinister world full of predatory mediums and a ghoulish public, in a cracking, highly satisfying yarn’ Guardian
‘… briskly plotted, intriguing second outing for Legris’ Financial Times
‘… an extremely enjoyable, witty and creepy affair’ Independent on Sunday
‘Terrific atmosphere, unusual, full of drama’ Susan Hill
‘… top Gallic hokum’ Observer