Induction Day Two does not transpire. Our trainer has sustained a neck injury and so we end up spending a day on the shop floor. A trolley full of health and beauty products, abandoned at the till, is pushed in my direction. My first task is to take each item back to its rightful home on the shelves, and soon going around in circles has me dizzier than a tail-chasing dog. It takes me a wet-behind-the-ears forty-five minutes to realise the best approach is to sort the trolley into different categories according to shop layout rather than pushing it back and forth up the same aisles again and again. When I attempt to return some chocolates to their home in aisle 24 I’m over-whelmed by an urge to shovel the entire packet into my mouth.
Next up, the customer service desk. After a few hours of agonising repetition I know that this is not the place for me. The refund, refund, refund nature of the desk means it’s no more than a factory. Chatting is out of the question and the customers are more irritable than Sir Alan Sugar after a round with his apprentice wannabes. By the end of the day, Anne-Marie’s unwavering courtesy, patience and total professionalism—in the face of hostile, grumpy and impatient customers—are awe-inspiring. She doesn’t crack once, works without pause and still manages to be polite and courteous not just to the customers but also to me, with my annoying questions. Occasionally I manage to show a customer to their longed-for product in the right aisle after walking in circles for several minutes with the customer in hot (confused) pursuit. The rest of the time I’m jotting product barcodes on receipts and devising reasons for why the goods were returned. I take note of the number of times people come over with bills where an item has been charged twice at the tills in error. After three hours doing this I am told that on Sundays you only get twenty minutes for lunch, so off I go muttering under my breath.
When I return there is still spare salt to rub in my wound. My new friend, Rebecca, and I are given what looks like a million leaflets detailing the in-store promotions—50 per cent off toys, 25 per cent off wine and 25 per cent reduction on TU clothing. We have to hand these to customers entering the shop. I spend the first ten minutes enthusiastically greeting every customer with an all-American ‘Hi!’ and the pressure to treat each shopper like a mystery customer is so intense that I find myself taking a seven-year-old to the card section and smiling obsequiously, you know, just in case. The zeal fades quickly though when there are no smiles, barely a hello in return, and without exception, no eye contact. Thankfully, I’m asked to return to customer service to help out. I can’t wait to be behind the desk again, but feel rotten for leaving Rebecca distributing leaflets. I tell her we’ll do a swap in ten minutes. After five minutes of guilt-ridden angst I find an excuse to get her back to help. Once she’s made her escape she’s willing to do whatever it takes to avoid leafleting and spends the next couple of hours loitering in the clothing department. Never again will I refuse a leaflet crumpled into my hand on the street and nor will I frown when I discover I’ve been handed five rather than just the one.
And then suddenly there they are. The words I’m dreading emerging from my own mouth and I’m hearing them after being here for less than two days. A young man is taken off checkouts, placed at customer service for five minutes and then promptly sent straight back to checkouts. ‘I hate this place,’ he mutters as he walks away.
Towards the end of my day, at 4 p.m., I’m asked to check if anyone wants help with packing. I run from till to till asking the checkout assistants if they need my help. They all smile politely and decline. I’ve asked most of them when one finally has the good sense to say, ‘Well, that’s up to the customer, isn’t it?’
Once I’ve recovered from my idiocy, one lady takes me up on my offer saying, ‘Only if you’re good at it.’ ‘It’s one of my life skills,’ I respond. She laughs, not realising that in this job it’s the only one that counts.
Later I help a young mum pack. She seems to have decided to clothe her entire family in the TU range. Struggling to find the right amount of money, she takes one T-shirt off the bill. Seconds after she’s said goodbye to me, I spot her at customer service returning the lot.
Rebecca repeats at least half a dozen times today, ‘I’ve got to get a job at Waitrose.’ But how will it be better? I find myself wondering.
I put my uniform on for the first time. I haven’t worn polyester since the eighties so it takes some adjusting to. When I look at myself in the mirror, I want to ask where the pasta sauce is. Unsurprisingly, Husband falls about in hysterics. Once he has composed himself he tries to take a picture. He’s laughing so hard the picture is blurred.
Today is till training. A solemn-faced, gum-chewing supervisor trains a few of us including Rebecca and Adil, from the general merchandise department, who has spent months avoiding his turn on the tills. During those six hours we learn about the slide, scan and pass technique that we’re told Sainsbury’s has developed to avoid staff getting back pain and attempting to sue the supermarket. We have to aim for seventeen items per minute (IPM); ‘If you don’t maintain it, we’ll find out,’ says our plain-speaking till trainer. All our actions are accountable; CCTV, electronic monitoring, assessments, secret observation, clocking in and out, customer and colleague feedback. With cameras in every nook and cranny there is no escape. ‘In places you least expect them,’ the trainer tells us ominously. Let that be a warning to us all. If they are doing their job, by now they must have caught me putting things back on the wrong shelves, sneaking off to the loos to send text messages, secretly sampling food and gossiping with Rebecca in quiet corners. In the bathroom there’s a sticker on the door with the contact details for a whistle-blowing helpline: If you see something wrong then say something right. One number. One website. Riskavert.co.uk/rightline. When she leaves us for a minute, Rebecca and I start singing Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’. Yet, despite the ethos and attire, this isn’t the eighties and the message is clear: no one gets away with dragging their feet.
Our trainer talks coupons, reduced-price items, fruit-and-veg prices, cards, sub-totals, split payments, cash payments, fraud, removing security tags, till maintenance, voids, mistakes, price checks—by the end of it my brain sizzles from information overload. When it comes to Nectar cards, customers get two points for every £1 spent. After you’ve got 500 points, you get £2.50 off. By this calculation you have to spend £250 before you get a couple of pounds off. When I look at my own receipts I still can’t make head or tail of it.
At Boots you get four points for every pound spent and each point is worth one pence. Isn’t that a better rewards scheme than Nectar?
Adil is a super-bright young politics student who works here part-time. He gives me the lowdown after three years in the job: ‘This Sainsbury’s branch never used to take induction quite so seriously but things changed after the store failed a number of times on customer service. Sainsbury’s know they can’t compete with Tesco on value so they’re trying to compete on customer service.’
From an employee point of view, though, everyone I’ve talked to so far speaks highly about working here. ‘If you’re nice to everyone, everyone is nice to you,’ I hear, over and over again. I also overhear one young staffer tell another how intimidating they find their manager. All the managers are pretty intimidating; they charge down corridors, sour-faced and with little time for pleasantries. My direct manager, Richard, is the exception.
I’m to go back on Sunday for Day Two of my induction. Already I feel like I’m working here full-time.
I am yet to have my ‘Think 21’ training—selling alcohol, fireworks and other age-restricted goods—so until then it’s the shop floor for what I now call ‘reverse shopping’. Sainsbury’s staff call it ‘shopping’—picking up the goods dumped by customers at the tills. Never again will I have a last-minute change of heart leaving a poor Cog to put the unwanted product back.