Two weeks into the New Year and I promise myself a new me. Researching and reading about this downturn every day and listening to other people’s financial fretting for the past few months has started to grind me down. I’ve found myself getting fanatical about my own money matters, so for the sake of my sanity I need a new outlook.
With only minutes to go before my shift, I race into the canteen to grab some water and stumble head first into an enormous article stuck on a whiteboard by the entrance. It’s the Evening Standard heralding Sainsbury’s recent success. My thoughts are lingering on my parched throat and the tick-tock of the clock counting down to the start of my shift, but I stop to skim read the article.
A voice behind me interrupts:
‘If you’re thinking we’re going to get the bonus—we won’t, you know.’
I turn to see a Cog I don’t know too well.
‘Oh no, it wasn’t the bonus…I was just interested in how…’
‘Come on, it’s the bonus you’re after, it’s all right. But you aren’t going to get it, you know. We just don’t.’
‘I thought we all got the bonus?’
‘Well, we do, but it is not much for the hours we put in.’
She turns to the Cog she’s with. ‘It’s how it is, isn’t it? We do all the hard work and THEY get the glory.’
Down at the checkouts, there’s no ignoring the doom and gloom; redundancy tales abound. When I sit down, the Cog behind me is listening as earnestly as she can feign to a customer who’s fretting about her daughter’s recent job loss and lack of success in finding a new job.
My first customer today is a friendly woman in her twenties with cute cropped hair like Demi Moore circa the Ghost years. She works at a recruitment agency.
‘The agency has just cut half the people who work there because it’s gone so very quiet. It used to be busy and bustling with people coming in and out, but now…’ She stops packing for a second to emphasise. ‘It’s just strangely quiet.’ She resumes packing. ‘So, muggins here has picked up the workload of four people, can you believe?’
‘That must be pretty stressful,’ I say, scanning, sliding and listening intently.
‘Definitely. And the mood is so depressing. We’re supposed to be recruiting—but there are no jobs out there to recruit for.’ Not far behind her is an extraordinarily tall man with lots of his own plastic bags and a stomach so big I’m sure he’s hidden a dozen or more in there. He used to work for the Royal Mail but he’s bored stiff after taking early retirement in April last year.
‘Now I’m starting to go out of my mind with the routine of not doing anything. I’d really have liked to go back and work— even to pick up just a little bit of work. But what work? There is NO work.’
OK so I’m not going to escape the economic drudgery, I’ve just got to keep it at a psychological arm’s length.
It’s a Thursday so there are plenty of retirees like my mail man in the store. Weekdays at the supermarket are for the elderly (very old), the mid-elderly (old but somewhat sane) and the stay-at-homers (mums, the unemployed and, more recently, the redundant). They’ve all got one thing in common—they’re keen to beat the weekend rush. With the elderly and midelderly there’s a lot of packing for me to help with and my items per minute target is pretty much off target. I have to give them the time to catch up, so I slide, scan and pass at snail’s pace. It suits me though, as I get to chat and listen carefully. A woman with a giant silver cross dangling from her neck tells me she worked at a big high street bank and left last year, taking early retirement.
‘I wish I’d stayed on for severance pay as I may have been cut anyway, with the culling that took place after I’d gone. It was bloody though, I hear.’
‘Well, at least you’re getting some time off. It must be good to slow down.’ I say trying to sound positive.
‘Hmm,’ she says, packing distractedly. ‘It’s just boring, you know. I’ve been off for a few months and I think I’m ready to do something else. It’s just that, at my age…who’s going to give me a job?’ She’s a young-looking fifty-eight-year-old and I tell her that she ought to find something soon.
‘Well, I kind of have already,’ she says, suddenly brightening. ‘There’s going to be a new Holland and Barrett up my local high street and they’ve promised me a job.’
‘That’s great! See? All is not lost.’
‘Yes, but the only thing is, it was supposed to open in September and it still hasn’t.’ As we talk, it starts to dawn on her that with things being as they are it may never open at all.
Housewives flood into the supermarket on weekdays. They are my favourite breed of customer as they’ve perfected the art of small talk in ways I can only admire from the creaking discomfort of my checkout chair. They stand by my till day after day, hour after hour, opining and ruminating about the sun, the moon, the stars, and then by equal measure politics, the populace and the price of food. And if you listen carefully they often have practical solutions to problems that the great and the good of this country are currently struggling with. All this while being the linchpins of family life. They are, and I say this sincerely, a fascinating and remarkable bunch.
Dear Gordon Brown,
With every passing year I’ve found myself becoming more of a girl’s girl, so now seems as good a time as any to tell you about my people. These creatures, women in their twenties, thirties, forties and menopausal years, rush to my till day after day—in all shapes and sizes. At first I only half listened to them, my other uninterested ear concentrating on the rhythmic beep of my scanner. If you could hear them talk as I often do, you wouldn’t abandon them to the pitiful confines of daytime television, supermarket dwelling and the odd un-gratifying hobby (read: gardening, kids, cooking and interiors), but realise that as a demographic they are under-utilised resource of our time. I hear that you are somewhat occupied with a little economic crisis, but perhaps you could find a way of tapping into them? We may all be better off if you did.
Yours,
A. Cog
One such person makes her way to my till today. A mortgage broker turned housewife. ‘The mortgage market is dead,’ she declares soon after I instigate conversation about house prices. ‘My husband is still working in the same industry, but lending mortgages in the public sector for key workers, civil servants, police, who can all borrow at zero per cent interest. That market is still very much alive and well. The rest of it is dead. Dead as…’ she looks at the packet of beef steak I’m about to scan ‘…dead as this piece of cow in front of us.’
‘So when would be good to buy again then?’ I ask, passing the dead cow over.
‘Two years. Don’t buy now, and don’t tell anyone you know to buy now. Wait. Because prices are going to fall so low it’ll make your nose bleed.’ She leans forward and whispers, ‘By more than 30 per cent.’
‘WHAT? As much as that?’
‘Oh, definitely. And if anyone you know is going to buy, tell them only to go for it if they can get 30-40 per cent knocked off, otherwise it’s not worth it.’
She says this with such conviction I’m too intimidated to argue with her. And despite my promise to myself, I’m frightened witless by her statistics. It would bring my own home down to almost the price I paid for it seven years ago. And it goes against what we’re being told will happen. Reports say we are almost at rock bottom so by the end of the year the only way is up. How can she be right?
If the mortgage prophet isn’t terrifying enough, there are others to help fuel the Dread Factor. Take the carpenter. He tells me that, while he is still getting work, he’s no longer getting the big jobs.
‘It’s just little jobs here and there. No one wants to spend big money on renovating at the moment. So I’m just doing repairs and shelves and things. And if I’m really lucky, the odd kitchen-cupboard door.’ He winks. Despite his jesting and upbeat manner, I sense a marked pessimism in his words and not least in his choice of groceries; everything he buys is reduced.
As the afternoon passes, the mood gets gloomier. Shoppers today are subdued and, when they talk, they grumble. One customer complains that as a regular shopper she’s noticed our food prices have all gone up. She tells me that she also shops at Tesco and finds it much cheaper there.
‘I do prefer the food here, but I’m starting to find it very expensive to shop in here.’
Thankfully, elderly shoppers who’ve lived through more recessions than I’ve scanned fair-trade bananas don’t want to talk about money. They buy their favourite rich tea biscuits, fruit loaves and Red Label tea and smile politely at my faux American attempts to ask ‘How are you, today?’ True, many are half deaf, but often they are unexpectedly lucid. Some of the best repartee I’ve had has been with a customer in their seventies commenting, usually, on my hopelessly disingenuous customer service style. However, I’m starting to realise how elderly shoppers are increasingly being crippled by the demands of the modern supermarket. They come in during the week and avoid the weekends for fear of being trampled by the rush. I don’t blame them, only the brave and foolhardy set foot into a supermarket on the weekend.