I walk through the double doors and all of my senses are immediately hijacked. Babies are screaming in trolleys that clank loudly as they are wheeled down the aisles. The children, ladies and men’s clothes are a multi-coloured eyesore with huge signs hanging from the ceiling signalling 25 per cent off. There is a scrum of greedy shoppers pushing and shoving, in spite of the biggest economic crisis of our time. I walk past the vegetables and the scent of the spring onion bulbs being loaded on to the shelves fills the air. As I pass the dairy aisle, I’m offered a sample of cheese which I promptly pop into my mouth—it’s so strong my lips start to tingle.
I watch a young couple gush over their baby in the shopping trolley; Dad teases her by taking the dummy out of her mouth and placing it back in again. Mum smiles but tries to draw proceedings to an end. A boy rolls a red nose by my feet and I step over it to avoid trapping his little fingers. A customer is standing right by the entrance to the back of the store engrossed in a newspaper headlining the wedding preparations for a cancer-suffering Jade Goody. I ask him to move aside and he gives me a hostile stare. It’s a typical Saturday afternoon.
I have five minutes before my shift so I stop in the canteen and have a coffee. A group of managers sitting nearby are congratulating another on his newborn baby and exchanging tips on baby-rearing. When I walk across the shop floor to the checkouts, I’m stopped by a woman looking for our make-up range. A moment later I’m stopped again: a mother looking for size-5 Huggies nappies; there are none left on the shelf. ‘Can you check at the back, please?’ she asks. I look around frantically for another assistant and a man suddenly grabs my arm; he wants razors. I ask each one to wait where they are and tell them I’ll be right back. I go to Hayley and tell her I’ll be a few minutes. I then get the customer looking for make-up and lead her to the cosmetics aisle. Next it’s on to razors before hunting down the nappies. It takes a good ten minutes and a lot of searching for products as well as errant customers. Eventually I’m free to get to the tills, and I feel quite stressed. I am someone else’s relief today and I apologise profusely to the Cog on Till 7. She’s now ending her shift an unpaid fifteen minutes late and I’m fuming on her behalf although she is nice enough about it. ‘It’s been a long morning. I’m desperate to get out of here. It’s not your fault —it just happens all the time, I never get off on time. And if you say anything, they’ll just say, “It’s the nature of the beast.”’
I serve a shop-floor assistant I don’t know too well. I’ve seen her around, but her shift pattern is different to mine. She’s worked here nine years. And like others before her, she sighs when I ask her how things have changed. ‘There’s more pressure to perform. We never had observations and assessments before, and now we have them all the time. It’s a bit much when all you want is to come in, do the job and go home.’
Two forty-something sisters with a teenage daughter are speaking fluent French and have a trolley full of clothes with them. Mum and daughter are here on a week-long trip from France. ‘The euro is so strong and your supermarkets are great. Even if it wasn’t for the weak pound, your supermarkets are still a bargain compared to ours.’ A mum and her heavily pregnant daughter have bought out Sainsbury’s entire baby range in bulk: cotton wool, nappies, wipes, anti-rash cream, baby oil bottles, baby wash, cradle cap cream, gripe water, maternity pads, breast pads, bottles, baby milk.
‘You’ve got every eventuality covered here,’ I tell them.
‘I’m going to have a credit-crunched maternity leave. And the deals are on now, so why not?’ She pauses. ‘I’m not paying for this, though. My mum’s buying this for me now because I’m preparing for not having any money over the next year. I hope my job will still be there in a year, but you never know.’
One woman tells me she’s now started to find the whole shopping experience stressful.
‘From the wandering around looking for products that have moved yet again to the amount I end up spending. I’m really considering shopping online—at least I’ll be able to control how much I spend then and not have to deal with the endless painful searching. The thing is though, I don’t want my daughters to think that food comes from the internet. They need to know that farmers make it and then we select it…’
‘How old are your girls?’
‘Seven and ten. The irony is that they hate shopping here so much they refuse to come with me any more.’
A Greek couple in their late fifties want to use their gift card to pay. I check and there is nothing left on the card.
‘Sorry, you don’t seem to have anything left on the card.’
‘Are you sure? I have lots on there. Check again.’
My screen tells me there is nothing. But I go through the act of checking again out of politeness.
‘No, there is nothing. Sorry.’
‘How can that be? There is definitely something on there—it can’t be nothing.’
I pretend to check again just for the sake of it and then shrug my shoulders.
‘Are you sure you haven’t taken it off just now?’
WHAT???
‘No, I haven’t. If I had, it would have shown on your bill and it hasn’t. You don’t have anything on there, I’m afraid.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asks, looking at me suspiciously.
‘Yes, I’m quite sure,’ I say through gritted teeth.
‘I think you have.’ And she folds her arms.
‘Look—I definitely haven’t. Now, what would you like to do?’
‘Hmm. It was there before we came to your till and it’s not there now.’
‘Look, if you just pay then I’ll be able to show you that you have nothing left.’
They grunt and pay. I print off the gift-card receipt to prove my case. The woman continues to argue but her husband puts his hand on her shoulder and stops her. Eventually they leave.
I’ve started to notice that customers are now buying a lot more fresh vegetables, tinned food and fresh chicken and fish. There are fewer ready meals being bought, although people are buying lots of comfort food like ice cream. Some are still sharing their favourite recipes and the Basics range is starting to really take off. One woman is buying Basic mozzarella in bulk.
‘Wow, you’ve got a lot of this stuff here,’ I say, scanning twenty little packets.
‘Oh yes! I love it. It’s usually so expensive, but the Basics version is half the normal price.’
‘Well, will you come back and tell me if it tastes just as good as the normal one?’
‘Oh, definitely! You’ve got to save every penny in this climate, haven’t you? What with jobs going every day. My best friend works in HR and she has to make fifty people redundant tomorrow and she hasn’t been able to sleep for weeks. There are only four hundred people in the company, so that’s a huge number gone—just like that—’ And she clicks her fingers.
Saturday is also family day at the store—and it’s not just fractious kids piling in. Grandma, grandpa, uncles and aunts are here on an outing. Today I meet four generations of one family—an eighty-something who pays the bill, with her son and grandson-in-law and her great granddaughter aged two. There are also many middle-aged men in the store today so there are pin-pad jokes galore. While all the middle-aged women instinctively hide the pad as they punch in their codes.
Dear Male but for the Most Part Female Customers,
I know banks tell you to protect your pin, so you should. But when you’re in a well-known supermarket, save yourself the trouble. Firstly, I can’t see what your pin number is from where I’m sitting, whether you cover it or not. And even if I could, you do after all take your card away at the end. Your receipt has too little information on it for me to carry out bank fraud on a massive scale. And frankly it makes you look ever so slightly paranoid. Worst of all, it ruins the cosy chat we’ve just had.
And apart from anything else, due to the slump, and your frenzied reaction when I asked you to pay, you’re obviously broke.
Yours,
A. Cog
Connor, a twenty-three-year-old Cog, is sitting three tills down. He’s not allowed to serve his family so his mum and sister come to my till. There are screaming babies and bickering couples all around us. Connor’s mum tells me that when he was a baby he would save his biggest tantrums for when he got to the till. ‘He hated coming to the supermarket as a child and I just find it hysterical that he works here now.’
‘And he still hates it—so that makes it even more hysterical,’ I tell her.
‘Yes. He’s always desperate to get out of here.’ And she whispers, ‘I bet you are, too, today.’
Not as much as the Cog behind me. She’s had a really bad day. Customer after customer has given her a tough time, and she has remained resolutely silent. Her shift finishes at 4.30 and I notice that by the time the sign goes up she still has three customers with mammoth trolleys to serve. She doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes. I resolve not to let this happen today, and at the end of my shift I start telling shoppers I’m closing, even though there is no relief and not a supervisor to be seen. The customers get irate, but I’m in the driving seat and it feels great.