I’m so lost in the dilemma that I almost miss my stop. It’s only when the lad with the beanie hat jumps up in alarm that I notice where we are. The driver has started to move, but I call a ‘hang on’ and he stops once more for me to get off. From here, I only need to cross the road to get to work.
Crosstown Supermarket is something of a throwback to times that are almost gone. Somehow, the owners have held out against the giant superstores and are still running a singular, medium-sized, independent shop. Nobody – most of all the people who work there – can quite believe it’s not been bought out yet.
When I get into the staff changing room at the back of the store, Daff – who does not like being called Daphne – is arguing with someone on her phone. She nods at me in acknowledgement as I get my uniform out of my locker and then she continues to ask whoever’s on the phone quite why they’ve charged her interest on a credit card payment she says she’s already made. I listen in without making it obvious and inspect my taped-together trainers, which have held together remarkably well.
Daff finishes her call with a flourish of, ‘Yeah, well, you can whistle for it, darling’, and then tosses her phone into her bag.
I ask if everything’s all right and she snorts what is probably the filthiest laugh I’ve ever heard.
‘Can’t let ’em grind you down,’ she says, before taking an envelope out of her locker. There’s a moment in which I’m confused, as if everyone I know has been delivered an envelope of cash, but it’s not that at all. She waggles it towards me.
‘You got a pound for the lottery?’ she asks.
It’s hard not to sigh at this. I’ve never been interested in gambling – even a pound twice a week for the lottery. The problem is that everybody else who works here – literally every single person – does chip in two pounds a week for the syndicate. Rationality tells me we’ll never win and yet I know I couldn’t face seeing all these people around me sharing out the millions as I rue hanging onto my two pounds. I don’t know how anyone could ever deal with that. I know I couldn’t – and so I go along with it all. It’s lose-lose, of course – because if I was to count the number of weeks I’ve been chucking in two quid and add it all up, I’d only depress myself at the money lost. We once won ten pounds, but that went back into ‘the pot’ and was, of course, lost in the following draw.
I pass Daff a pound coin and she drops it into her envelope, before writing my name on the front.
‘Cheer up,’ she says with an enthusiastic grin.
I return hers with a forced smile of my own, wondering what precisely people think might happen when they tell others to ‘cheer up’. Oh, great, all the things I was dealing with are solved because someone told me to be a bit happier.
Daff starts wittering about some night out she’s planning this evening. ‘Everyone’s coming,’ she promises, presumably referring to the people with whom we work. It’s little incentive for me. These are the people with whom I’ve been thrown together. It isn’t as if we chose to work with actual friends, not that I have many of them either. Even though I never left the town in which I went to school, I have no real friends left over from those times. I gave that up when I moved in with Ben all those years ago.
Either way, I have numerous issues with going out that involve, but are not limited to:
I have no money
I like being in bed early
I have no going-out clothes
No group can ever make a decision as to a venue
I’m too old for morning-after hangovers
I make small talk with Daff and give a non-committal ‘maybe’ when she asks if I fancy coming out with ‘the girls’ later. If I was honest, I’d tell her, ‘Not a chance’.
As the clock ticks around to the start of our shift, Daff puts her bag in her locker – as-per company policy – but I know I can’t do the same. Not with the envelope of money inside. I need to feel it close. I stuff mine under my arm and head to the tills, before burying it in the space underneath the conveyor belt.
A person can learn a lot about others when working on a supermarket checkout. It’s a bit like sharing a bus, I suppose: there’s a bit of everything – of everyone. Everybody needs to eat and so everyone uses a supermarket sooner or later. Most go about their business as quickly as they can – a swift in and out and they’re done until the next time. There’s always a minority, of course. Those who drop something like milk on the floor, watch it splat and spread, and then walk off as if nothing has happened. It happens almost every day. Then there are people who scatter trolleys here, there and everywhere in the car park because a short walk from their car to the front of the store is seemingly too much.
Some ignore the ‘10 items or fewer’ and wheel through full trolleys but then act incredulously when told they need to check out in a different place. A surprising amount try to use coupons meant for one product to try to get money off another – and then there is the thing that makes it clear to absolutely everyone that the person involved is a horrendous human being. It’s not as if I want a lengthy conversation with the people who pass by my till. A nod and a ‘hello’ is usually enough. Sometimes people ask about my day (how do you think it’s going, seeing as I’m working at a checkout?) – or I’ll ask about theirs. It’s all fine. What is really hard to stomach, though, are those people who spend the entire process talking into their phone, ignoring me as if I’m some sort of robot at their beck and call. I want to slap their phones away, to stare into their eyes and remind them that I’m an actual, real human being. To let them know that I have feelings and that it’s really not that much to ask that they acknowledge me in the merest way imaginable. A good start is actually looking at me, or muttering ‘hi’ – even if they don’t mean it.
I don’t do any of that, of course. I scan their shopping, take the money, and let it simmer.
Time always seems like it passes quicker on Saturdays, mainly because there are more people trying to get their shopping done. At times, it is a stream of one person after another. Through it all, I think of the seven pounds and fifty pence I’m making every hour. With my lunch break, it is £52.50 a day and it’s hard not to calculate how many days of work there are sitting in my bag at my feet. How I could remove three twenty-pound notes right now and be better off than I am spending seven-and-a-half hours in this job.
I’m lost in those thoughts as a young woman arrives at the till cradling a baby in one arm and pushing a trolley with the other. Her dark hair is dirty and there are some murky-looking stains on her top. She has to be twenty at the most and struggles to make eye contact as she places her items on the conveyor belt. Her child has no such worries, gazing at me with deep blue eyes that haunt and charm in equal measure. The mother is so gaunt, so small.
There is a packet of formula, a box of rusks, a bottle of lotion and a bag of nappies. Everything is the cheap, own-brand items that we sell. Other than that, there are four packets of ten-pence noodles and a large bag of porridge oats.
We share a look that lasts barely a second, but, in that moment, it’s as if we are sisters. Out of everything, we’ve bonded over porridge oats.
She pulls out a tattered shopping bag and waits at the end of the conveyor belt, still balancing her child with one arm.
‘I’ll pack,’ I tell her and she nods. There is acne around her mouth and unfilled piercings in her ears. I wonder when she last ate.
I pass the rusks over the scanner, waiting for the beep and the price: £2. The girl stares at the amount and then her eyes give her away as she glances back to the trolley. It’s impossible to miss now: there are two further packets of nappies sitting on the rail underneath the main trolley. I look at them and then at her. She holds my eyes and we’re still sisters.