The Checkout Girl

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.’

Sainsbury’s is trying to up its green credentials. At the moment they play good guy to M&S’s bad guy on the plastic bag front. People are furious about having to pay for plastic bags there. Sainsbury’s keeps bags behind the tills until someone asks, but sometime next year bags will be gone from behind the tills, then they will have to be paid for, and eventually they will disappear altogether.

Thursday, 20 November 2008

Two weeks after I started, I am finally on checkouts. At first I just shadow and then I’m thrown in the deep end. I am slow and make mistakes, and most of time I’m too intimidated to apply Think 21. But as with my first attempt at parasailing, after the horror of being flung several hundred feet into the sky subsides, the adrenaline kicks in—and I’m high as a kite. I chat to strangers with the confidence of a teen drunk. My small talk is gauche and unrefined but it hits the mark for the few minutes every man, woman and child spends at my till. Through my checkout comes a recent widower who is struggling to shop alone, a young mum, her terrible toddler and a lot of impulse buys, an older mum accompanied by tetchy teenagers with many 3-for-2 offers, and a couple of middle-aged men with an extraordinary amount of chocolate.

At 3.30 p.m. there’s a brief hiatus around the school-run time. Some of the till captains don’t like staff sitting around doing nothing, even for a moment—Samantha is ready to take me off and send me on a reverse shopping trip when it gets busy again. During the afternoon I’m handed yet more mystery customer paperwork to read. It reiterates that we have to be nice, polite and chatty.

The first offer of overtime comes my way today and I turn it down. Overall it’s quieter than I expect. ‘Around the corner, a new Asda has opened up,’ a customer tells me. Another checkout girl tells me it’s quieter this year than last.

That evening I watch a documentary on BBC2 about the beneficiaries of the credit crunch—the discount supermarkets. Lidl and Aldi claim customers can do their weekly grocery shopping with them for half the price it would cost them elsewhere. The secret of their success is no frills, stocking their own brands, making the packaging similar to well-known brands and selling non-food items. The king of Aldi says he keeps prices low by only stocking one type of cornflakes: he thinks customers in other supermarkets are simply paying for the privilege of looking at six varieties.

Giants in the supermarket world must be anxious about the fact that 55 per cent of us now visit discount supermarkets. We’ve known for a while that Tesco is trying to fight back; Sainsbury’s is keeping itself in the running by price-matching them. Fortunately for the higher-end supermarkets, customers do still like premium brands. However, after watching the programme I’m convinced that if people do start cutting back, Sainsbury’s are really going to lose out. Their focus on quality and customer service rather than lower prices seems counterintuitive as the recession grips.

Thursday, 27 November 2008

After my first few days on checkouts, the patience of the till captains has run dry. One of them, Barbara, barely makes any eye contact and rarely answers my questions. I’ve learnt that her steely exterior and no-nonsense attitude coats a tough-love approach—she wants newbies to learn by being thrown in the deep end. I’ve watched her charge around the store like she owns the place and, as she’s been here for aeons, she probably does.

Susie’s friendliness is skin-deep—she’s tired of my inane questions. To start with she would smile kindly even when I asked for the third time how to do a split payment. She’s always polite and has a gentle, amiable manner which makes her popular with the Cogs. Recently though her grin has started to look strained when I beckon her over. I’ve come to dread having to call for any of the supervisors.

On the up-side, the aisles are filled with the sound of neighbourly love. An elderly lady is shopping for an infirm neighbour, a young woman has left work early to shop for her dad laid up with flu, one man is helping his blind brother shop.

Today news breaks about the collapse of Woolworth’s and I eavesdrop on a couple telling another customer how devastated they are by the news.

‘It’s a part of our culture and landscape. I grew up with the shop and so did my kids.’

‘Yes, but do you know what the worst part is? Supermarkets will now be able to charge whatever they want.’

One person with no concern for price hikes is a well-maintained woman in her forties. Her two shopping trolleys carry what she tells me is her fortnightly shop. It takes forty-five minutes to put it through and costs just under £600. When I give her the grand total she doesn’t flinch and hands over her credit card with a voucher for 75p off her fabric conditioner. I ask if she has a big family but she says there are only four of them. Other colleagues around me are staring at her food going along the conveyor with wide-eyed awe. Standing right behind her, and in my line of sight, is a colleague with arched eyebrows mouthing incredulous expletives.

Friday, 28 November 2008

I’m on a basket checkout today and mince pies, Christmas decorations, gifts for loved ones are all starting to pass across my till now. There’s not so much time for chat—due to the huffing and puffing of impatient customers congregating in the queue here because they want to get out as quickly as possible. I know they don’t want to make small talk, but there is a supervisor hanging around nearby and I wonder if she is assessing me. And so I talk.

As during my previous shifts, I find myself chatting to customers about the price of things and affordability. At least a couple of times a shift, this line of chat is followed by hushed, embarrassed queries about vacancies at the store. Today a woman in her fifties asks straight after telling me how expensive she is starting to find grocery shopping. An hour or two later, another shopper about to start training as a police officer asks me about Christmas vacancies. I’m convinced that £6.30 an hour won’t go very far for the likes of them, but I’ve got to be wrong.

Despite the number of people complaining about the price of things, almost eight out of ten customers, with a big basket or trolley full of shopping, tell me they had just popped in for one thing. One guy tells me he’s a sucker for the subliminal marketing and product placement. Almost every customer comes to my till laden with reduced bakery items, cut-price clothes and cheap booze. And then gasps at the total.

One customer tells me today that the Morrisons in town is heaving because of the discounted whisky. ‘It’s much cheaper than yours—and it was much busier in there.’ He’s got a point. For a store that claims not to be bitten by the credit crunch, it doesn’t feel all that busy. There are definitely busy times, but usually there tend to be no more than three to four customers waiting on basket tills and one or two on the trolley tills. And when it’s quiet, it can be very quiet.

There is a fundamental difference between the customers coming to basket tills compared to the trolley ones. Baskets seem to attract men in the 30-50 age group who offer grunts rather than actual words in reply to my (usually futile) attempts to chat. They only ever purchase a couple of items, one of which is, invariably, Lynx deodorant.

Truth be known, I’m scared witless of this type of customer and usually give up at the first hurdle. But today, when a grumpy thirty-something comes my way, I decide I won’t let him go without a fight. He cracks and before I know it he’s telling me that he has no plans for the weekends in the lead-up to Christmas, otherwise he won’t be able to afford festivities this year. Somehow, though, he’s convinced it’s going to be his cheapest Christmas yet. ‘There are going to be price-cuts galore over the next few weeks. PC World, Curry’s, M&S, John Lewis—they’re all either in trouble or having big sales early, so as far as I’m concerned it’s a win-win situation.’

Although he turns out to be very pleasant, if I am too slow for the blokes in this age group they bellow like animals preparing for battle. When I need help from a till captain, one charmer shouts from the back of the queue, ‘I only got in this queue because I thought it’d be quicker.’ This is met with a rumble of approval from the other men waiting in line. One man throws his basket down and storms off.

And then a young Asian guy wearing a shirt that is so tight the button sitting at mid-chest level looks like it may pop and fly straight into my eye puts two bottles of Bacardi down on my till. I look at him, take a deep breath and ask for some ID.

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘I’m sorry, you look so young.’

‘I don’t carry ID,’ he says, turning himself away from me defensively and rolling his eyes.

‘OK, let me just get a supervisor.’

There are loud groans from the queue. The man behind him barks: ‘Just serve him—he looks over twenty-one.’

Two women join in the blood sport taking shape before them. ‘I’d sell it to him, he looks much older than twenty-one.’

Bolstered by the support of fellow customers, he turns himself back to me and snaps, ‘What’s the matter with you? I’m old enough.’ His frown is now menacing.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper pathetically. ‘Take it as a compliment.’

‘Look,’ he says, pulling up his shirt. ‘I’ve got tattoos.’

I stare at his chest and a large, dark blue scythe stares back at me. And still there is no till captain.

‘Just sell it to him.’

‘Job’s worth.’

‘I got two kids. I’m married. I got me own business.’

I repeatedly push the supervisor button and get up on my feet to see if I can get ANYONE’s attention.

Eventually the supervisor arrives.

‘It’s fine.’

He then turns to the customer and in an act of bloke-to-bloke camaraderie says, ‘It’s all right, I’m from around here.’ They both laugh and the supervisor leaves.

As for the now riled-up customer, it’s far from over. After paying, I notice he hasn’t packed his bottles. I ask if he wants a bag.

‘What do you think?’ he growls sarcastically. ‘It won’t be a very good idea for me to go back into work with those, would it?’ He aims this not at me but his supportive audience behind.

I bite my lip until I can almost taste blood. I try to explain the scale of the consequences for me but no one is listening.

The only thing that stops the shift from being a total disaster is meeting the trolley boy with an awesome ability to recall any random fact. When I say any—I mean ANY.

Saturday, 29 November 2008

My till-side view of every customer’s shopping is a privileged intrusion and lends itself to the worst kind of cod psychology. Take the single woman in her thirties buying the one carrot, a single onion, minced beef, a giant bar of Dairy Milk and a glossy magazine. I can already see her night in with dinner-for-one followed by chocolate and HELLO! for dessert. The man with the heavy bags under his eyes quietly purchasing breast pads, sanitary towels and painkillers for the new mum at home is totally knackered. The lonely middle-aged man with a penchant for red wine, who gets through a bottle a night (I know this because he’s back every couple of days for more). The pensioner with the sweet tooth, too proud to ask for help with packing her shopping, who will struggle to unpack when she gets home. By the time they get through my till, these shoppers have unintentionally shared some of the most personal moments of their life with me. In many ways I know them better than they know themselves. Sometimes it’s fitting to talk, other times I can tell this is their five minutes of peace. Either way, watching their shopping come through my till is invasive enough.