The Checkout Girl by Tazeen Ahmad

Author:Tazeen Ahmad [Ahmad, Tazeen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Saturday, 21 February 2009

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.

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