Six months ago there were days I couldn’t quite believe that supermarkets were doing as well as reported. Now things are even better—they are bustling round the clock. Customers have also changed in that time. Back then, everyone was feeling flush, now the Basics range is flying off the shelves, people are paying in cash more frequently, they’re taking items off their lists and some are shopping more cautiously.
One customer nips at me constantly. ‘These are all reduced,’ she says, picking up three meat pies I’ve already scanned.
‘I know—that’s how I’ve scanned them.’
She throws her Nectar card down, demanding I check her points. Most annoyingly, she stops at the end of the till to check her bill. As they walk off, I see her turn to look at me repeatedly and whisper to her husband.
Even those not tightening the purse strings are on edge. ‘Would you let me know how many bags you use?’ I ask my next customer.
‘I’ll let you know once I know how many we use,’ he answers acerbically.
‘Well, that’s what I meant,’ I snap right back. No more Ms Nice Cog, I decide.
One customer has caught on to how supermarkets manipulate shoppers into spending more than they intend. ‘I know all about their frequent floor-plan changes and moving products from one shelf to the other and putting the most expensive ones at eye level. I prepare myself for these tricks the minute I walk in here.’ Nonetheless, she ends up spending £30 more than she planned.
A couple with three kids aged seven, five and four tell me they haven’t been to Sainsbury’s for years because they find it cheaper to shop at Tesco and Asda where they spend around £200 a week. They guesstimate their shopping cost at £350 and are pleasantly surprised when I tell them the total is £209. ‘Hmm, we might just come back here again,’ they say.
Others are not so lucky:
WOMAN A. Normal weekly expenditure: £130-£150. Estimate: £165. Actual spend: £181.60. Reaction: Stumped.
WOMAN B. Normal expenditure: £120. Estimate: £135. Actual spend: £170.26. Reaction: Mortified. And then embarrassed bizarre justifying to couple behind.
WOMAN C. Normal expenditure: £130. Estimate: £130. Actual spend: £151.96. Reaction: Self-hate. Followed by shopping thrown into bag angrily.
WOMAN D. Normal expenditure: £90. Estimate: £110. Actual spend: £140. Reaction: Blame. ‘If it weren’t for the clothes placed at the entrance on the way in, I’d save £30 each time. It’s very hard to walk by.’
WOMAN E. Normal expenditure: £125. Estimate: £140. Actual spend: £173.21. Reaction: Grit. She gives me her gift card, from which I redeem £30, her coin star voucher worth £18 and Nectar points totalling £7.50. This brings it all down to a more reasonable £117.71.
WOMAN F. Normal expenditure: £100-£115 Estimate: She tells me to get to £100 and then stop selling her anything. Actual spend: £82.82. Reaction: Relief. ‘It’s still painful, but at least it’s not more than a hundred quid.’
A customer tells me that twenty years ago her mother was able to fill a trolley bursting to full capacity for £50—now the same trolley costs her four times that.
Richard’s old school teacher comes to my till and tells me that he was as lovely a child as he is an adult today. Her own child is torturing her. ‘They need to make supermarkets more child-friendly—I pull my hair out when I bring him in shopping.’
Rebecca is on her usual charm-offensive and as she passes she throws some of her fairy dust over my checkout. ‘You look wonderful,’ she tells the lady I’m serving. ‘That scarf looks stunning. I bet you’re going out tonight,’ she oozes.
‘Oh, thank you. I am, as it happens.’
‘Well, you’ll knock him dead,’ says Rebecca, flashing her a charming smile.
A number of customers tell me today that they haven’t been affected by the recession themselves but they’re making plans for what may lie ahead.
‘We’ve all been talked into it, so I’ve started to make savings where I can.’ This customer uses £10 worth of Nectar points, £50 in cash and the remainder on her credit card to pay the bill of £126. This sort of split payment is typical of a shopper struggling to make ends meet.
I finally meet the customer Sainsbury’s has spent months trying to seduce. ‘I was a devotee of M&S and now I only come here. That’s what the recession has reduced me to. It’s not the same, you know—all that over-priced fair-trade stuff in their classic packaging, the extortionate mixed fruit packs, the biscuits and bread brought in directly from the finest bakeries in the land—all that tosh. Oh, how I will miss it!’ he jokes. He gives me £20 for his £12.70 shop. I give him £7.30 in change.
‘Yes, you did,’ I tell him.
‘I thought it cost £7.30.’
‘No…’ I take the receipt and show him. ‘Your shopping cost £12.70. Your change is £7.30.’
‘Aha,’ he laughs, ‘And if it wasn’t for the recession I wouldn’t even have bothered querying that—I’d just have silently walked away. Now every penny makes me tetchy.’
One customer is truly going back to basics and has started making her own cream liqueur. ‘Is this tiny bottle of rum for a cake you’re making?’
‘No, no.’
‘And I’m presuming it’s not because you’re planning to swig it back on the way home?’
‘No,’ she laughs. ‘We’ve started making our own Baileys. My husband does it with a bit of whisky, rum, condensed milk and cream. It’s as delicious as the real thing and a tenth of the price.’
A blonde with a slim band holding her curly hair back tells me she’s making ruthless cuts. ‘I usually spend at least £400 a month on my shopping, sometimes even up to £600. So now what I do is go around the store with a list and put everything on the list in order of the layout in the shop. Look—’ She shows me her list and she’s grouped all like items together in a number of different sub-lists. ‘Although, it still doesn’t stop the impulse buys.’ Today her shopping costs her £114.45.
I’ve spent the last six months watching the death of the local greengrocer. This seems to be the first pit-stop for consumers after their fruit and veg.
‘Why don’t you just get this fresh from your greengrocer’s?’ I ask one customer who has virtually every variety of fruit and vegetable in the store on the belt.
‘Because I’m lazy and I don’t want to have to stop somewhere else. This is my one-stop shop. It’s a lot easier if you can just get it all in one place, isn’t it?’
A number of my customers want to give me huge packs of bottled water to lift over the till and then scan. And someone tries to give me several heavy boxes of extra-large ready meals. ‘Sorry, could you just put it down at the end of the till and let it come down the belt? If I lift that from this position I’m going to damage my back.’ And when the customer grumbles I actually put the words ‘health’ and ‘safety’ together.
I get my break at 5.20 today, almost five hours after I started and just over an hour before I finish. When I get back I only have half an hour of my shift left.
One of my last customers today is wearing bright blue eye shadow to match her aqua blue top. She works at UBS. ‘They’ve cut 15,000 people there, then another 8000 and now it’ll be another 8500 still to go. So 30 per cent of the workforce is gone.’ She then laughs. ‘It’s so crazy that it’s actually quite funny. So I try not to worry about it because it just drags you down. And if I laugh about it—it doesn’t seem so bad.’
I see Jeremy, one of the Cogs, before I go home and he says: ‘I hear that you’re leaving. Have you had enough?’ He’s caught me off guard and so I mumble something about moving on to other things.
I give Rebecca a lift home for what will be the last time.
‘You know that Katherine’s sad that you’re leaving?’
‘Oh, is she? That’s sweet,’ I say, genuinely touched.
‘She was going on and on about it, and all I could think was—you’ve got friends here other than me? I thought you were supposed to be a Billy-no-mates,’ she teases. As she gets out of my car she leans in through the window. ‘Goodbye, Judas,’ she says with mock-disgust. ‘You betrayed me.’ And then she laughs.