Since I’ve been back home an entire month now, and my finances were looking sadly forlorn and depleted, I made decision to return to my favourite employer (and only employer) and become a supermarket worker again.
I wasn’t sad to be back. In fact, I missed work more than I ever thought I would. But now that I’ve been back a whole week (because my contract started on Friday the 13th) (and expires on my birthday, boo), I’ve realised a few things about my job, my old job, and working in the supermarket.
The first thing I realised was how easy it was to slot back into work. I have the same staff number and the same till number as I had for the three years I was there first, so it’s not a whole lot of new things to remember. I don’t, however, have the same job. I was a price clerk when I was there last, and now I’m a checkout operator. Although I could and did work checkouts when needed, it’s been a very, very long time (three and a half years) since I was a full-on till girl, and it’s very strange to be back there. It’s not a bad thing, though. I like working tills, because you get to meet a lot, and I mean a whole lot, of people, and you’re forced to interact with them and ask them inane questions.
I was unsurprised by the fact that I can still recite the first eight to ten digits of most barcodes of products in the store, because I typed them so many times I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. I was also unsurprised that I remembered the clubcard numbers (well, the first thirteen digits) because, well, it was imprinted into my memory.
What I was surprised though, however, is that my knowledge of products has gone way downhill. The other day I spent a good thirty to forty seconds staring alternately at an avocado and at the vegetable page of my till, wondering “what the hell are you?”. It wasn’t until the customer prompted me with “it’s an avocado…” that I went OH YEAH! It’s a fruit! and realised that I had been looking at the wrong page of pictures.
I’ve also forgotten most types of bread, meaning I stare confusedly at the bread until I eventually associate it with a picture on the till in front of me. The only bread I was able to identify without any trouble was fancy bread, because, well, it’s called fancy bread, and that’s just a cool name.
Today I realised I was talking to a loaf of bread when the customer told me it was tiger bread (which I should have realised, it’s pretty distinctive) and then proceeded to give me funny looks. I don’t know why I was talking to the bread anyways, because it’s not like it could respond to me.
Besides the minor things I’ve forgotten, going back to work has been a very smooth transition. The first few days were full of “you’re back! How was France?”, which was unusual, but now it’s back to “how’s Aoife? How’s Alex?” which is the standard repertoire for all the staff who used to work with the two of them.
I’m glad to be back, I will admit that, and in a lot of ways it’s like I never left. Not least for the manager who turned around to me today and asked where I had been hiding, as she hadn’t seen me in a while. When I told her that I had quit four months ago, she just shrugged and said it was a big shop. Clearly I might just as well have just been hiding in the stockroom as living in France.
