I guess that I should start by introducing myself, not only to add a bit of background but I also hope to dispel the stereotypes and typecasts that people put on all supermarket employees. Just because we spend our days replenishing displays and scanning and packing your groceries, it doesn’t mean that we all have the mental capability of a plastic bag. Sometimes it does feel as if my brain has been fried by my job: for every beep of the scanner, for every ‘next customer, please!’ and for every minute that feels like an eternity, I die a little inside, slowly but surely decreasing any brain cells that I did have into a big supermarket slush. But this doesn’t mean that we are all inane and brain dead, the dregs of society, in fact – far from it.

I started working for a large supermarket chain (which, for obvious reasons, shall remain anonymous) four years ago. The shop is located in a quiet, leafy, affluent suburb of London where I have lived for the majority of my life. Pressured by my parents to start fending for myself, I reluctantly applied for a part time job to fit in with my A Level studies. After a series of bizarre interviews with questions including ‘what animal are you most like?’ and tasks that involved me selling a gingerbread man to the interviewers and making paper towers out of newspapers (how this shows my capability to work in retail I will never know…), I was finally honoured with the obligatory vile nylon uniform and was assigned my very own check out.

My first ever shift was awful; I was a fresh faced sixteen year old thrown straight in at the deep end. I was paraded in front of various members of staff: branch managers, section managers and supervisors, who all welcomed me to the ‘family’ assuring me that I would fit right in straight away. They all had this weird faux grin plastered onto their faces, almost like a synthetic mask: the emotion they were conveying seemed too over the top to be genuine, so their exuberant welcome only made me even more apprehensive. At this point, I made a mental note not to become brainwashed by the glazed eyes and wide grins of the supermarket authority. I however would come to realise that this grin would be required to be permanently plastered onto my face: it would come to be part of my uniform – a checkout girl essential.

Later, during my training it was drummed into me that I was required to be happy 24/7. I was there not only to scan groceries but to give the customer a ‘shopping experience’; eye contact and smile at the beginning and end of every transaction was mandatory, I was to make friendly and general chit chat but not to be overbearing, and to take a genuine interest in the customer but not be interrogative. How I was supposed to take a sincere interest in every customer was beyond me, especially when the whole customer interaction regulations were so formulaic and repetitive. Chatting to customers doesn’t sound too hard does it? Well, I would soon find out that it was hellish, as understandably not everyone wants to make idle talk. Yet under the watchful eyes of our managers, we were forced to try, even if it was painfully awkward. Four years on and this forced friendliness isn’t any easier. So when you see checkout staff making awkward and frankly unnecessary conversation, don’t think that we actually give a damn: we don’t care what you are making for dinner or that you have had a terrible day (I can assure you that standing behind this till isn’t a bundle of laughs, either) and we certainly don’t want to be your new best friend. Learn what I learnt on my first day: checkout girls are basically required to be supermarket sluts – charming customers and smiling inanely and anyone that makes contact with you. It may sound easy but it’s not, and right now I am wondering how I managed to last for four years.