Читать книгу The Checkout Girl - Tazeen Ahmad - Страница 22

The first hour today is really quiet. A few people come through the tills, but most of the time I’m just twiddling my thumbs. I read Justin’s newsletter and he says that Woolworth’s demise has had a knock-on effect because Entertainment UK—who supply Sainsbury’s with DVDs, CDs, games and books—is part of the Woolies chain. He talks of stock supply challenges, but states they are now working with three new suppliers. His outlook is eternally upbeat and it’s obvious to see why. Sainsbury’s prospects look bright, they’ve cornered their market fairly well and may yet ride out the hard times ahead.

But while the view from the top down is looking good, at the bottom where the wheels of the supermarket turn silently I’ve noticed a quiet indifference. Most of the newsletters sit unread and the internal magazine is usually only thumbed by me—my colleagues clock in, do their duties and clock out—and my questions about the future of the supermarket and its success are met with lethargic shrugs or bemused stares. ‘It’s just a job,’ I get told.

During a quiet period I get sent to the bakery. Sarita, a young Asian checkout girl, shows me the ropes. She turns out to be a great source of gossip, although I notice some bitterness in her tone compounded by the fact that she never smiles. As we get our hats and aprons on she tells me that two Cogs have been sacked this week—one of them for stealing. It is the stupidest thing to do because there are cameras right above the tills.

As Sarita talks, it becomes clear that she hates being on tills. ‘The supervisors have got their favourites and there is a lot of backstabbing—you’ll find out.’ She says that the customers are ‘horrid’ and the more she talks about them, the clearer it becomes that she actually hates them. Her advice to me is ‘just keep your head down and don’t get involved…everybody finds out everyone’s business and then interferes. I got some training at the cigarette kiosk and I told one person—by the time I went down everyone knew.’

She says all of this with little prompting or interruption from me. I’m starting to feel rather perturbed by the picture she paints of this place, until it transpires that she’s going through a hard time right now because she has just broken up with her boyfriend who works in the store and is the son of one of the supervisors.

‘I let business and pleasure come too close together and now I’m paying the price.’

I spend the next thirty minutes packing cookies and noting that the place is a mess. I find myself putting cookies into paper bags and leaving traces of chocolate behind on all the packs I touch. It’s not unhygienic, but the packs look really grubby by the time I’m done with them. For the next two hours I seal buns, baps and hot-dog rolls under the supervision of Sarita, only to find an hour later that I’m sealing them in packaging that is not sufficiently airtight to prevent them from going stale, so I redo them all.

I meet Marcus, a third-year Business Studies student Cog. We start chatting and he tells me he doesn’t know what he’s going to do once he graduates. He’s going to stick with this until he figures it out and ‘rides out the recession’.

I’m sure I hear my name called but Sarita assures me it’s someone else. Later she rushes to get me and says the supervisors are furious because they’ve put out three calls for me. I race to the tills. ‘I couldn’t hear you because the music in the bakery is blasting,’ I tell Susie while trying to catch my breath. She smiles, not looking remotely convinced.

The first lady through my till is a lady in her late sixties. She complains about her no-good thirty-something son. ‘He’s trained as a graphic designer but has been out of work for eight years. He’s lazy, doesn’t help around the house and I’m his financial crutch. And now we’ve got this recession and I’m more stressed than ever. He’s doing some charity work and he reckons that’s doing enough. But where’s the money going to come from?’

It strikes me that at her age she shouldn’t have to worry about taking care of a grown man. Despite her own woes, she’s shopping for her ninety-nine-year-old neighbour who is house-bound and virtually bed-bound. ‘She’s ready to go,’ she says to me meaningfully.

An architect comes through my till and tells me that work is still madly busy. ‘Credit crunch or no credit crunch, it’s just not quiet now, not even with Christmas. If the recession is going to take effect, we’ll be the first to be affected. But hey, so far so good. So let’s see.’

A man in his thirties tells me he’s decided to rent out his home because he can’t afford the mortgage; he’s found a place to rent nearby instead. With rent rates sky high at the moment, the rental income he’s getting is covering the mortgage on the house he owns and some of the rent on the place he’s staying in.

The rest of the afternoon passes without event. Thursday is often a staring-vacantly-into-mid-air day. When I look across at the other Cogs, I see them all doing the same.