Down at the till captains’ post, Michelle is telling Susie that she’s feeling poorly. Susie is sympathetic and says she can go home if she’s not up to it—which, by my reckoning, is very reasonable. I’m not convinced that Michelle really is unwell because as she turns a corner away from Susie, she glances back at me as if seeking assurance that she has pulled it off. She doesn’t want to be here—and it’s becoming quite obvious. I don’t think she’s going to last.
It’s so busy today, I can hardly breathe. Shrieking tots accompanied by over-wrought parents, disapproving couples in their fifties and sixties muttering to each other about toddler tantrums, and highly strung male shoppers gather at the basket tills. In every aisle there are trolleys so full that food is tumbling down the side.
Every customer has their own theory about why the place is heaving.
‘People have just discovered they’ve got more money than they thought they had now that the expense of Christmas is over.’
Another says: ‘It’s because people are not eating out or having takeaways as frequently, so they’re spending more money on eating in—and they’re cooking! Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Yes it does. But even eating in is costly. A young couple having French onion soup and lamb burgers for dinner have bought soufflé for dessert. They also buy other food that needs to be cooked from fresh. They end up spending £157.40.
The word of the day is ‘Basics’. Basics range, Basics vouchers—and customers are being told about it (by the likes of me) and encouraged to buy it (by Cogs handing out coupons). It’s cheap and cheerful but, according to Sainsbury’s, still ‘sourced with integrity’, and it’s selling. One twenty-something young man who is nifty in the kitchen is buying basic lamb mince. He gives me his recipe for simple burgers which he swears smell so good that they will ‘make your mouth water till you beg for mercy’.
Mix the meat with a touch of mustard, finely chopped onions, chopped peppers, a handful of oats and your own preferred seasoning. Finally a bit of salt and pepper, roll, flatten and fry. Within ten minutes, I promise you perfect burgers.
It’s not all good food and good cheer though. A Royal Mail employee comes to my checkout today. He’s distraught that there are cuts on the horizon.
‘They want one person to do several jobs.’
‘That’s just the way it seems to be now, doesn’t it?’ I say, not unsympathetically.
‘That doesn’t make it right though, does it?’ he snaps.
‘No, no, of course not.’ He’s misread me, but no matter, I’m long accustomed to misunderstandings at my till. A sixty-second conversation that attempts to delve too deep will drip with misinterpretations, and in any case I’ve become an expert at apologising and back-tracking.
One customer comes in especially to buy something from the Tchibo range ‘before it becomes history’. Tchibo’s demise has been well reported in the papers; it’s a German coffee brand that sells coffee as well as other consumer goods. It’s now scaling back business in Britain due to the recession and its presence in supermarkets will be gone this year. The Tchibo range has always struck me as a bizarre one—it’s the come-to-life version of the mini catalogues slipped inside the Sunday papers that offer a wide range of seemingly useful goods that you think you need but will, inevitably, never use.
Customers today repeatedly offer big apologies for forgetting their bags and it’s starting to get boring.
Dear Customer,
I know that you feel pretty lousy about forgetting to bring back one of the dozens of bags you’ve got sitting in some cupboard in the kitchen. But honestly, stop apologising. It may surprise you to hear that it makes no difference to me. Ultimately it’s between you and your conscience. Save the world for your kids currently standing at the till yelling, or leave it to rot—it’s your choice.
If it was up to me I’d just leave the bags on the till until you get your act together. But for those of you who forget bags in the car there is no excuse—if you really cared you’d just leave your shopping with one of the numerous happy-to-help Cogs in the store and nip back to the car.
One of my customers told me that in Ireland they have the same ruthless bag policy as M&S—if you forget, you pay. So stop making excuses and offering annoying over-the-top apologies. Just politely ask for a bag. We don’t need to talk about it.
Yours,
A. Cog
I have two Romany customers today who give me a hard time. But when the spectators behind try to support me, the check-out-chair socialist in me shushes them gently. The two women with minimal English spend a long time at the till. First they dispute who will pay. This takes a while to resolve. Then they decide to pay for their shopping separately. Next they accidentally muddle the shopping so the nappies, carrot soup and apples end up in the wrong person’s shop and then they blame me for it. I sort out their illogical mess with a bit of voiding on the till screen and rearranging on the belt. Waiting customers are not impressed. Then to reward me for my patience both women start to argue with me about the number of Nectar points they have left. Contrary to what many customers think, Cogs have no control over this and can only go with what the screen and the receipt say. I try to explain this to them but they look at me simultaneously perplexed and hostile. This goes on for a minute or two.
‘Look, she can’t do anything about it so will you just get your shopping and go?’ interrupts a woman from the back of the queue. Under normal circumstances I’d be begging for this kind of help, but I feel for how the language barrier has rendered these women incapable of querying a simple point. I turn to the woman in the queue and say, ‘It’s all right, I can handle it.’ I turn back to the women and point to the customer service desk. ‘Take it there and let them help you. Me? I can’t do anything. OK?’ They shrug their shoulders, pick up their shopping and give the waiting customer a steely stare before wandering off. The waiting customers make politically incorrect observations about them and I resolutely refuse to join in.
Not many tills down, I can see Rebecca and Louisa sitting together at the basket checkouts. Louisa has recently had her hair coloured and it seems to make up the main bulk of their conversation. Studying Rebecca’s face closely, I can see furrows deepening across her brows.
At the end of my shift I go over to say hello. Louisa gets up to take a toilet break and as she leaves she asks Rebecca to touch her newly coloured hair.
‘It feels really light, doesn’t it?’
Rebecca touches it with a conspicuous display of indifference while muttering such an unconvincing ‘yes’ that the customers standing by all laugh. I ask Rebecca how she’s coped sitting next to her all day.
‘It’s OK I guess, until you hear the same story for the hundredth time.’
Now that Richard has sanctioned my shift change Rebecca and I will finish at the same time. I feel deeply indebted to Richard for being so accommodating about my childcare problems. He’s a good manager and manages downwards as well I’m sure as he manages upwards. Of all the people I thought I’d meet in a place like this, I wasn’t expecting my line manager to win me over so convincingly. So I pay it forward and offer to give Rebecca a lift back.
I’m shopping as usual and take it to a till where the Cog serving is a nineteen-year-old university student called Paulo. He gets called on to checkouts whenever they are short-staffed and hates it. Katherine is teasing him. ‘You hate it here because you lose your freedom, don’t you? On the floor you can do anything you want.’
‘No, no, that’s not true.’
‘Yes it is,’ she laughs, taunting him further, ‘and it’s worse because you can’t talk to any of the girls when you’re stuck here.’
‘No, no! Katherine…’ He smiles and starts to blush.
‘Yes, it is—I know what you’re up to…out the back…pretending to work…but just checking out the checkout girls…I know.’
This is excruciating and he is now a deep shade of crimson. It’s like being teased by your mum and so I force her to stop. She’s right, though; this is heaven, if ever there was one, for boys on the make. There are single girls in their teens and early twenties in every nook and cranny in this store; no wonder the boys spend all their time skiving in the back waiting for young Cogs to pass by to flirt with.
As I’m about to walk out of the door I bump into Danielle. She was the first person I met at the store so I have a soft spot for her. We talk about more of my customer service fears and she tells me, ‘I told Richard that you would be great at customer service very soon after I met you.’
‘Oh, right, so you’re to blame.’
‘Come on, girl, it’s not that bad. You’ll be fine. And anyway, you look clever and that’s all that counts. Not that you have to be brain of Britain or anything.’