Tazeen Ahmad - The Checkout Girl

When I return there is still spare salt to rub in my wound. My new friend, Rebecca, and I are given what looks like a million leaflets detailing the in-store promotions—50 per cent off toys, 25 per cent off wine and 25 per cent reduction on TU clothing. We have to hand these to customers entering the shop. I spend the first ten minutes enthusiastically greeting every customer with an all-American ‘Hi!’ and the pressure to treat each shopper like a mystery customer is so intense that I find myself taking a seven-year-old to the card section and smiling obsequiously, you know, just in case. The zeal fades quickly though when there are no smiles, barely a hello in return, and without exception, no eye contact. Thankfully, I’m asked to return to customer service to help out. I can’t wait to be behind the desk again, but feel rotten for leaving Rebecca distributing leaflets. I tell her we’ll do a swap in ten minutes. After five minutes of guilt-ridden angst I find an excuse to get her back to help. Once she’s made her escape she’s willing to do whatever it takes to avoid leafleting and spends the next couple of hours loitering in the clothing department. Never again will I refuse a leaflet crumpled into my hand on the street and nor will I frown when I discover I’ve been handed five rather than just the one.

And then suddenly there they are. The words I’m dreading emerging from my own mouth and I’m hearing them after being here for less than two days. A young man is taken off checkouts, placed at customer service for five minutes and then promptly sent straight back to checkouts. ‘I hate this place,’ he mutters as he walks away.

Towards the end of my day, at 4 p.m., I’m asked to check if anyone wants help with packing. I run from till to till asking the checkout assistants if they need my help. They all smile politely and decline. I’ve asked most of them when one finally has the good sense to say, ‘Well, that’s up to the customer, isn’t it?’

Once I’ve recovered from my idiocy, one lady takes me up on my offer saying, ‘Only if you’re good at it.’ ‘It’s one of my life skills,’ I respond. She laughs, not realising that in this job it’s the only one that counts.

Later I help a young mum pack. She seems to have decided to clothe her entire family in the TU range. Struggling to find the right amount of money, she takes one T-shirt off the bill. Seconds after she’s said goodbye to me, I spot her at customer service returning the lot.

Rebecca repeats at least half a dozen times today, ‘I’ve got to get a job at Waitrose.’ But how will it be better? I find myself wondering.

I put my uniform on for the first time. I haven’t worn polyester since the eighties so it takes some adjusting to. When I look at myself in the mirror, I want to ask where the pasta sauce is. Unsurprisingly, Husband falls about in hysterics. Once he has composed himself he tries to take a picture. He’s laughing so hard the picture is blurred.

Today is till training. A solemn-faced, gum-chewing supervisor trains a few of us including Rebecca and Adil, from the general merchandise department, who has spent months avoiding his turn on the tills. During those six hours we learn about the slide, scan and pass technique that we’re told Sainsbury’s has developed to avoid staff getting back pain and attempting to sue the supermarket. We have to aim for seventeen items per minute (IPM); ‘If you don’t maintain it, we’ll find out,’ says our plain-speaking till trainer. All our actions are accountable; CCTV, electronic monitoring, assessments, secret observation, clocking in and out, customer and colleague feedback. With cameras in every nook and cranny there is no escape. ‘In places you least expect them,’ the trainer tells us ominously. Let that be a warning to us all. If they are doing their job, by now they must have caught me putting things back on the wrong shelves, sneaking off to the loos to send text messages, secretly sampling food and gossiping with Rebecca in quiet corners. In the bathroom there’s a sticker on the door with the contact details for a whistle-blowing helpline: If you see something wrong then say something right. One number. One website. Riskavert.co.uk/rightline . When she leaves us for a minute, Rebecca and I start singing Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’. Yet, despite the ethos and attire, this isn’t the eighties and the message is clear: no one gets away with dragging their feet.

Our trainer talks coupons, reduced-price items, fruit-and-veg prices, cards, sub-totals, split payments, cash payments, fraud, removing security tags, till maintenance, voids, mistakes, price checks—by the end of it my brain sizzles from information overload. When it comes to Nectar cards, customers get two points for every £1 spent. After you’ve got 500 points, you get £2.50 off. By this calculation you have to spend £250 before you get a couple of pounds off. When I look at my own receipts I still can’t make head or tail of it.

At Boots you get four points for every pound spent and each point is worth one pence. Isn’t that a better rewards scheme than Nectar?

Adil is a super-bright young politics student who works here part-time. He gives me the lowdown after three years in the job: ‘This Sainsbury’s branch never used to take induction quite so seriously but things changed after the store failed a number of times on customer service. Sainsbury’s know they can’t compete with Tesco on value so they’re trying to compete on customer service.’

From an employee point of view, though, everyone I’ve talked to so far speaks highly about working here. ‘If you’re nice to everyone, everyone is nice to you,’ I hear, over and over again. I also overhear one young staffer tell another how intimidating they find their manager. All the managers are pretty intimidating; they charge down corridors, sour-faced and with little time for pleasantries. My direct manager, Richard, is the exception.

I’m to go back on Sunday for Day Two of my induction. Already I feel like I’m working here full-time.

I am yet to have my ‘Think 21’ training—selling alcohol, fireworks and other age-restricted goods—so until then it’s the shop floor for what I now call ‘reverse shopping’. Sainsbury’s staff call it ‘shopping’—picking up the goods dumped by customers at the tills. Never again will I have a last-minute change of heart leaving a poor Cog to put the unwanted product back. The one three-quarters-full trolley I have takes me two whole hours. After staring aimlessly upwards in a vain attempt to find an aisle that looks like it might be home to the items in my trolley, I find myself going distinctly doolally. I spend more minutes than is healthy carrying cans of Air Wick air freshener, Fairy Liquid bottles, baked bean cans, 3-for-£15 DVDs, a size-16 leopard-print blouse, an over-priced cuddly reindeer and 2-for-1 cookie selection boxes. Despite asking for guidance, no shelf can be found for the truly homeless—the Peppa Pig umbrella, a bag of mixed nuts and raisins, the rogue Christmas light and Pantene shampoo for thick and glossy hair. They go back to the trolley by the supervisors post and next time I look they’ve vanished.

Adil gives me a heads-up on the mystery shopper.

‘They will always ask for something at the other end of the shop to see if you will just point them in the right direction or actually take them there—which is obviously what you need to do. That’s inside information—use it well.’

I get my chance today. A smartly dressed, well-spoken lady in her sixties approaches me while I’m loitering in the household cleaners’ aisle and asks me if we have any Christmas biscuits other than the ones in the aisle across from us.