Viewing Thread:
""Would you like a hand with your packing?""

I'd bought a pint of milk and a loaf of bread.

Stupid checkout girls.

My supermarket job isn't too bad.

*Dances*

I've been lucky enough to avoid getting till trained at the supermarket where I part-timed my way through uni. (Now I'm finished, I'm stringing it along until I find a proper job).

When the shop gets quite busy, till trianed staff are called to go scan.

When it gets really busy, the rest of us gimps are called down to pack.
At the second call, I usually actually go.

The problem is, the customers don't really want you poking about with their shopping, you don't want to be there, and you're going to have a big backlog of proper work to do when you're relieved of putting pointless things in bags.

You have to go quite slowly, so that customers don't think you're being careless with / damaging their food. Then the fast ones make some lame patronising comment that you're not going fast enough. And you have to resist the urge to tell them that one, you don't give a f***, and two, some dumb*ss gurning housewife interrupting her trisha and this morning schedule to come out and try to patronise a bunch of people with degrees and masters is never going to fool anyone.
Until she turns out to have a PhD.


And all the time the post-teenage angst of virtual unemployment and fear of a future of failure and misery wells up with the bile of swallowing your ever diminishing dignity and meekly taking the cheap comments and insults of a legion of as-holes who can't comprehend that despite working in a place where they shop, you're still a f***ing human.

The personal space thing feels worst though. It's just horrible to have strangers stick their arm two inches in front of your face to reach something, cut you up and lean right in front of you, park their trolley on your heels.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if those people weren't also total clockfaces (ahh, see what I did there), but as things are, when it happens time on time, it feels like the biggest indignity of the job.
Leave me alone you freaks.


So, um yeah, packing. Yay.

I did a weekly shop the other day and the checkout girl systematically packed everything even though I didn't ask her to. Scanned an item and put it in a bag, scanned another item put it in the bag, when the bag was full passed it to me.......

Took nearly 10 minutes when it would have only taken 2 if she'd let me pack. Stupid bint!

let them pack your puny two items into a bag, then look them in the eye, remove your shopping and throw the bag down.
walk away dramatically.

not funny, but on the plus side, you might make them cry :D

Some bint at mine was literally throwing the stuff at me once and they're were NO bags. None at all.

Aha, you wouldn't cope with super scanner (me).

I reel through about 40 items a minute when we're onyl supposed to do 19.

And then when I'm do I look at them agitatedly (there's no way that's a real word, but I don't care) and will them to pack faster.

I'm great at packing, you know, reel off four/ five bags, separating items as I go along, depending on where they're going to end up. Always stick the vegetables and fruit in the middle of my shopping, as they have to weigh those items, and if necessary it gives you a chance to catch up.

And whilst you're standing there, waiting for them to put in the right code for Golden Delicious you can say:

"You need any help with your scanning?"

Though they recently put self service tills in my local Tescos. I like those. Don't have to talk to anyone, and great for when I'm sent to buy tampons/ facial scrub and other such oddities.

I don't ask people if they need a hand with their [packing unless I think they do.

If I get moaned at I'll tell them to **** off because they practically beg me to do overtime on the checkouts.

Yes, you get shouted at if you don't ask everyone. And you get watched all the time by sneaky little manageresque people.

Even if you have 2 things, you have to ask.
And, apparently, even if 2 people are having conversation right infront of you - "Have you got the clubcard" / "No I forgot it" - you still have to ask for it. Muh.

Although I'm sure you'd rather me asking you one pointless question but getting you out the shop in about 2 seconds serving you than some dozy bint charging you double, breaking things, telling you her life story and taking a year about it.

Not their fault really.
If they don't ask everyone then they'll get shouted at by the manager.

Plus, for everyone who thinks " stupid checkout girl I don't need help with two items" there is always one other tool who thinks "stupid checkout girl, of course I need help with my two items".