The Checkout Girl. Tazeen Ahmad

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СКАЧАТЬ he first orders me to help the old man in front of me open a bag. He then tuts loudly at my having the audacity to close my till when there are people to serve. He grabs his change from my hand and charges off like I have some unspeakable disease. I want to tell them that, while I am a mere Cog, I also have a life, home and kids to get back to. But in the manner to which I have very quickly adjusted, I say nothing. In the supermarket world, the customer is king. And so, with my head down, I serve all ten while listening to them debate my temerity as if I was no longer in the vicinity. The humiliation is complete. Eventually my cranky captain, Betty, comes over to tell me she will send relief and tells me I should have closed my till as soon as my hours were up.

      I feel punched in the guts tonight. I’ve learnt the true nature of the British shopper: they know that kicking up a fuss loudly and aggressively will get results. And having an audience helps, because mobs rule. I stare longingly at the beers, wines and spirits section as I walk back through the shop.

      I leave a message for Richard again, saying I need to speak to him. Betty says (unconvincingly) that she will pass it on.

       Friday, 5 December 2008

      As I drive in, I listen to a radio phone-in about the collapse of Woolies after ninety-nine illustrious years. Callers talk nostalgically about the bric-a-brac, mix-and-match cups and saucers, giant chocolate Dairy Milk bars and pick and mix. Why will they miss this stuff? I ask myself. It’s all available in supermarkets, anyway. Maybe that’s why Woolies collapsed—the supermarkets can now easily offer everything that made Woolworths unique.

      As I walk to the supervisors’ post, I say fifteen Hail Marys, two Quranic passages and the Buddhist mantra I picked up in RE in the hope that some god, any god, may be listening. Let me not be on the basket tills, please.

      The first thing that happens is Betty confronts me aggressively.

      ‘Did you take the till key home with you last night?’

      ‘No…I gave it to the guy who replaced me.’

      ‘Well, it’s gone missing, and you had it last.’

      I say nothing, wondering where this is going.

      Another till captain approaches and Betty asks her if she knows where the key is.

      ‘It’s hanging in the cupboard.’

      Betty says nothing and looks away.

      They allocate me my trolley till and, as I walk towards it, Betty tells me there’s no chair at my till. I take that to mean that I’m expected to stand for four hours, which is against health-and-safety rules on checkouts. I manage to locate a chair myself and am soon good to go. Just as I sit myself down, in front of a long line of customers, I fall ungraciously to the floor. After the last couple of days, I know that if I don’t laugh I will cry—and so I laugh hard.

      I’m starting to get some regulars now. There’s a really scruffy-looking guy who comes in wearing threadbare clothes. He’s a man of few words but has said enough for me to know he has a gruff voice and a gruff attitude. But he intrigues me with his regular purchase of the New Scientist magazine. I bite the bullet and ask him if he’s a scientist. He laughs and says, ‘Do I look like a scientist?’

      ‘Scientists come in all shapes and sizes.’

      ‘I just like to keep my brain active—that’s why I read it. My work is boring manual labour.’

      I chat again with the young mum who only moved here from Poland five years ago with no English. She has the strongest Cockney accent I’ve ever heard from someone who didn’t grow up in London.

      Human behaviour in the supermarket demonstrates that even the friendliest customer is never really your ally and they can turn on you in a heartbeat. An amiable, elegant and chatty older woman with a deceptively uncanny resemblance to Denise Richardson, the Agony Aunt on This Morning, has a complete change of personality when she asks me about discount petrol vouchers. I indicate that I’m not sure if we are giving them out. She asks me tersely, ‘Well, do you know or don’t you?’

      I have my four-week assessment today. Susie brings over the paperwork and starts to give me feedback.

      ‘You’re doing really well, really engaging with customers, but I’ve noticed you lack confidence.’

      ‘Oh really?’ I don’t like the sound of this. ‘How so?’

      ‘You just seem nervous, like you’re not confident with customers.’ I know she’s not aware of the recent incidents so she must mean my general interaction with them.

      ‘Really? I find talking to the customers a doddle. The only time you could call me nervous is over the technical things. But talking to customers, that’s the easiest part of the job.’

      ‘There’s just something in your manner.’

      The assessment is good, though. I get a green, which means that the girl done good. Three reds and you’re in trouble, so for now, I’m safe. I add a toadying note on my assessment saying I will try to be more confident. Susie lets me skim-read the paperwork before asking me to sign it. She then fiddles around with it. It seems to me that we are often asked to sign things first with management adding their own notes afterwards.

      Then, out of the blue, a supervisor shouts out that, thanks to Jenny we’ve just got a 100 per cent MCM. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but everyone gives a round of applause.

      Michelle is prying again and enquires about my assessment; I play it down. She’s finding it hard to get uninterested customers to engage with her. I tell her the trick is to persevere. I know that she’s not the only one who finds it difficult; from my till I can often see other checkout girls just silently doing their job. Even Rebecca, who has such a natural magnetic charm, tells me she struggles.

      I bump into Katherine at the end of my shift and she wants to talk about the difficult customers I encountered the day before. ‘They were so nasty, I felt for you. Some customers just think we are machines and have no life beyond this place.’

      Clare, who is slumped in a chair in the corner of the locker room, lifts her head long enough to say sagely, ‘In through one ear, out the other.’

       Saturday, 6 December 2008

      I read today that Tesco’s shoppers are dropping it for Morrisons and Asda. Tesco is still doing OK, but the question being asked now is—is the store losing momentum?

      After the week I’ve had, I’ve lost all momentum. But I brave it and am, thankfully, rewarded with a trolley till. My first customer is an enormous woman with five obese kids and all she buys are five jumbo packets of crisps—that’s about a hundred packets of crisps in total. She yells at her kids and they yell at her. It’s a joy to behold.

      In fairness, a simple shopping trip reduces the best of families to a dysfunctional version of their normal selves. I’m no longer embarrassed by the number of arguments I’ve witnessed between two unsuspecting adults unaware of the entertainment they’ve provided for the bored checkout girl before them. And the rows are always over small and ultimately insignificant things: plans for the evening, СКАЧАТЬ