I decide to count the exact number of customers I serve today—I’ve just been making rough estimates for weeks and it will help pass the time. I’m serving one of my first customers when Susie comes over with a price enquiry. The customer I’m serving is struggling with the pin-pad so I’ve swiped her card on my till. ‘Can you take your card out?’ I ask absentmindedly.
‘No, because you have it,’ says the customer. And then Susie and the customer laugh at me. Not with me—AT me. That’s important.
One customer has left his ailing wife in the car. ‘And because of that not only have I saved my ears from all her moaning, I’ve saved money and time. Twenty minutes flat, it took me.’
Anya Hindmarch’s ‘I’m Not a Plastic Bag’ is yesterday’s news. Today a customer is showing off her large Missoni-style bags imported from a Mauritian supermarket for 25p apiece. ‘I’m the envy of all my friends. I keep getting asked why I didn’t buy dozens. But I did—just not for anyone else.’ She giggles.
‘Mother, how did we manage to spend that?’ asks her eldest daughter breathlessly as her mum hands over a cool £251. ‘Mother’ blames the youngest for buying a few pencil cases and T-shirts. Taking a quick look at the bill, I can see most of it is actually ‘Mother’s’ doing.
The scanner is playing up again and does this just as a woman who definitely does not need to add to the extra inches on her hips tries purchasing a particularly creamy carrot cake. The barcode is at the bottom of the pack and I have to turn it on its side to scan it.
‘Just leave it.’
‘I have to scan it, I’m afraid, and it’s not scanning from this angle.’
‘You’ll spoil it.’
‘I’m trying to make sure I don’t.’
‘Leave it.’
‘I’ll try typing in the barcode, but I still need to turn it on its side to read it.’
‘No! Leave it.’
‘If I don’t scan it, you do know you can’t have it?’
‘You want to leave it then? Are you sure?’
It suddenly scans.
‘Well, now you’ve spoilt it.’
I haven’t spoilt it.
‘It’s only the tiniest bit of cream at the top of the pack,’ I plead. And there is just a bare smidgen of cream pecking the inside of the plastic lid. I leave it on the belt for her to stare at for a while.
‘Give me another bag!’ she snaps, just to have something to snap at. She takes the cake and neither of us says goodbye.
One of my regular customers is suffering another one of her migraines. She seems to get them every time she comes to the store. She’s been asking my advice (it’s that medical student thing again) so I suggest yoga, stretches, fresh air and massages. ‘It happens as many as three times a week now and I’ve got to be careful about which painkillers I take because of my epilepsy.’
‘You’ve got to get it checked out properly,’ I insist.
You don’t need to be a doctor to know her lifestyle is also a contributing factor. She teaches at a school where she deals with autistic children. She has three kids aged sixteen, thirteen and eleven, of whom the two girls are driving her around the bend. She tells me about the latest drama involving her teenage daughters and I try to reassure her that, once they get out the other side, they’ll be OK. She was frazzled and tense on arrival and is smiling broadly by the time she’s paid up. My work with her is done.
One man puts all the scanned shopping back into his trolley—despite having two large bags with him.
‘Sorry, can I ask—why aren’t you packing it all in the bags?’ I enquire.
‘It’s quicker. I know what it’s like to be waiting in a queue. I get fed up if someone is spending their time packing. I’ll just do it when I get to the car.’ He’s probably pulling his hair out when he’s stuck behind a customer being chatted up by a Cog.
I have my tea break and as I head back to the floor I see a tearful supervisor saying, ‘I just don’t want to do it.’ A distraught-looking manager follows close behind. It’s unnerving watching her cry because she’s always so together and in control. I learn later that he wants her to start taking on an extra task she’s not keen on—observing the customer service of the Cogs on duty. I don’t blame her, it’s not a job that makes any of the supervisors popular.
I serve a customer based at head office who tells me she’s witnessed Sainsbury’s emphasis on customer service for as long as she’s been with the company—at least five years. Her husband joins in. ‘It’s well worth it because the whole supermarket experience at Sainsbury’s is head and shoulders above Tesco.’ She adds, ‘They’re going to hire lots more shop-floor staff now too, because they’ve just got rid of a raft of middle-management jobs.’
‘So they’ve got rid of expensive employees so they can hire cheaper ones?’
‘NO. NO. It was just taking too much red tape to get the littlest thing done. Now things will be a lot better, simpler.’
A woman with dyed orange hair, blood-red lippie and thick kohl lining her eyes is buying an expensive anti-wrinkle cream. I tell her gently that I don’t believe they really work. ‘Oh, I know that. It just makes me feel better and it feels nice—and when you see the gorgeous skin that Hollywood stars have, it does make you reach for the creams.’
‘But you DO know that it’s not the cream that’s done that—it’s probably the round-the-clock nutritionists, expensive facials and cosmetic surgery on tap.’ I say.
‘Oh yes—some of them do look dreadful though, don’t they?’
We list the names of the worst faces in Hollywood and I suddenly notice that husband looks quite left out—so I draw him in playfully.
‘So what do you think, should a woman age gracefully or get work done?’
‘Oh, get work done, definitely.’ He grins and I laugh. But his wife does neither. ‘You can talk—you need work,’ she says, glowering at him. My grin gets uncomfortable. He says nothing. ‘I could make a really long list of what you should get done.’ She’s really scowling now. He distracts himself with rearranging the shopping and I scan more quickly. ‘In fact, you should get yourself down to the plastic surgeon, right now,’ she finishes.
More trouble onboard the love boat when another couple arrive at my till. The wife asks me to do a sub-total of the first ten items. They include merlot wine, chocolate mousse, apple-and-blackberry pie and three doughnut rings. It comes to £13.28. She whispers to me: ‘Don’t say anything, just continue.’ Husband is at the other end of the till loading on the rest of the shopping. When he finishes he comes over. ‘Well, how much was your stuff?’ She smiles guiltily but pretends not to hear him. ‘She spends a fortune when she comes shopping. When I come alone it takes forty minutes to shop, but when SHE comes alone she spends two hours! So now she gets her bits separately and I pay for the stuff that’s actually ON the shopping list.’ He tells me he’s been compiling a shopping list ever since the credit crunch kicked in and following it religiously. ‘We only replace what we eat now and don’t buy anything extra unless we’ve run out—but if I let her shop we throw lots away. She really needs to eat before she comes out too. ‘Their shopping comes to £52.70. ‘If I hadn’t bought the extra stuff it would have been thirty something, wouldn’t it?’ the wife says pensively.
Rebecca and I drive home together. ‘This customer actually asked me for a discount today. And she was one 100 per cent serious. I was like, “Um, madam, I’m not quite sure how you expect me to do that?” And do you know what she said? “Well, what about your discount card—can’t you use that?” Can you believe the gall?’ Rebecca then tells me about her soap-opera moment. ‘This family had a massive argument RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. After which the daughter and her boyfriend just stormed off, leaving Mum to pay.’
‘How embarrassing…’
‘Especially as Mum then started going on and on about the dodgy boyfriend and how he sponges off them both. And all I was thinking is, this isn’t the Jeremy Kyle Show, love—it’s a supermarket—have some dignity.’