Thursday, March 05, 2009

The checkout girl: abused, ignored and on a till near you...

Notice anything the last time you went to the supermarket? An irritatingly long queue, perhaps? Or a mispriced product? But what about the woman - it was almost certainly a woman - at the checkout, performing one of the most thankless tasks in modern society? Did you return her greeting or ignore her as you hurried to put away the debit card and pack the shopping? Few would blame you if you did. After all, how many of us bother to pay attention to the silent underclass scanning bar codes for low pay and little thanks? 

But soon we may have to because the checkout girls of Europe have found a figurehead. Her name is Anna Sam and she worked in a French supermarket for almost a decade, smiling at shoppers but receiving little besides insults and disdain in return. She witnessed behaviour ranging from the loathsome to the lustful - queue-jumping, cheating, thieving, moaning and sometimes a quick fondle between the meat and the cheese counter. More...

See also:

  1. Sicily: chapel in a supermarket! 
  2. Big Box Mart, low prices at a high cost...
  3. Supermarkets? No thanks! We'll grow our own food...
  4. The Good Consumer. Are you one?

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