Southern England cashiers are tolerant of slow shoppers. It is the slow shoppers’ human right to take as long as she likes. When fronted with a slow shopper, the cashier folds her arms and enters a static state, smile frozen on lips.
A slow shopper’s armoury consists of a number or tactics that she can adopt. Slow shoppers use one or more of these tactics per episode.
A slow shopper’s armoury consists of a number or tactics that she can adopt. Slow shoppers use one or more of these tactics per episode.
Bag minimizer
The Bag Minimizer laboriously packs and then re-packs items into her shopping bags before paying, taking great care that, in each bag, the types and shapes of the contents are coordinated. This bag minimization packing process is similar to solving one of those wooden block puzzles that require fitting irregular-shaped blocks of wood together. The Bag Minimizer does not rest until each plastic shopping bag is a solid rectangular box, with six smooth surfaces. Due to the random way that the shopping passes through the checkout process, this involves multiple unpackings and re-packings, or re-solving the block puzzle several times. Hard-core bag minimizers coordinate on colour as well.
Finance illiterate
The Finance Illiterate pretends not to be aware of the relationship between money and the process of buying groceries. The fact that the cashier expects a cash amount for the groceries comes as a complete surprise to the Finance Illiterate. The Finance Illiterate apparently thought groceries were free. The hard core Finance Illiterate extends on this theme, and the cashier also has to explain what money is.
Searcher
When the groceries have been packed and it has been established that there is a monetary cost involved (and not a second before), the searching process can begin.
The Searcher typically carries a large sack-like bag that contains all of her personal belongings. Searching involves removing items from the bag one by one, until finally a purse containing the cash or card is produced. If it's a card, the cashier often has to explain the theory of automatic cash transactions, and how the automatic teller machine works. The Searcher typically manages to locate two or three ATM cards, and has to try each a number of times, before she can get one to work. If a Searcher pays in cash, she starts a new search in her sack for the exact money amount in paper and coins. This involves rootling around in the sack for extended periods, with all the care of a fossil hunter searching for dinosaur teeth.
I struck an interesting embellishment on this in Waitrose in Wallingford one Saturday morning recently. A classic searcher was attempting to collect enough money for her grocery bill. She conducted an iterative process where she would rootle through her bag for loose change, which she would find a coin at at a time. She would add this coin to the little pile of money that she was accumulating, then laboriously she would count the pile of money to see if she had sufficient yet. Then, after numerous iterations, just before she had reached the required amount, she decided that there was no more coins to be found in her bag, and the cashier had to teach her the theory and practice of using an ATM card to pay for the groceries.
How it's done in Paris
It's refreshingly different in supermarkets in Paris. Parisian checkout staff make short shrift of the slow shopper. Each checkout has two grocery packing areas, separated by a wooden gate-like barrier. So after pricing a customer's goods, with slow customers, the cashier promptly slides the gate across to isolate the slow shopper’s purchases, and begins pricing the next customer's goods. The slow shopper can thus take as long as she likes to go through the packing process. The finance illiterate method is a non-sequiter in Paris. No-one dares to try it with a Parisienne cashier, for fear that the result might be a physical assault. And with the searcher, the cashier spits on the ground and demands to know if the searcher really wants to buy these goods, because if she does, she had better stump up the euros sharpish. If not, then it is no problem at all to shovel the shopping into one of the baskets at hand, and hand it off to one of the supermarket goons for re-shelving. In fact, the clock is counting down as the cashier speaks, and a goon stands nearby looking as if there is nothing he would rather do than to re-shelve those goods.
Probably as a result of this, there are many less slow shoppers in Parisian supermarkets.
How it's done in Paris
It's refreshingly different in supermarkets in Paris. Parisian checkout staff make short shrift of the slow shopper. Each checkout has two grocery packing areas, separated by a wooden gate-like barrier. So after pricing a customer's goods, with slow customers, the cashier promptly slides the gate across to isolate the slow shopper’s purchases, and begins pricing the next customer's goods. The slow shopper can thus take as long as she likes to go through the packing process. The finance illiterate method is a non-sequiter in Paris. No-one dares to try it with a Parisienne cashier, for fear that the result might be a physical assault. And with the searcher, the cashier spits on the ground and demands to know if the searcher really wants to buy these goods, because if she does, she had better stump up the euros sharpish. If not, then it is no problem at all to shovel the shopping into one of the baskets at hand, and hand it off to one of the supermarket goons for re-shelving. In fact, the clock is counting down as the cashier speaks, and a goon stands nearby looking as if there is nothing he would rather do than to re-shelve those goods.
Probably as a result of this, there are many less slow shoppers in Parisian supermarkets.
