Checkout (10 page)

Saturday, 3 January: my last day. No, it’s not a dream!

All the familiar gestures and words I’ve repeated tens of thousands of times … today will be the last time. I can’t believe it! I’d like to sit down to think about it but … I have to work. (‘Just because it’s your last day doesn’t mean you’re being paid to do nothing!’)

I arrive at the Office and say hello, as I do every day (they actually answer this morning). It’s the last time I will look at the board to find out my hours and which tills I’ll be working on: Till 12 until 3 p.m., Till 13 until 9 p.m. – oh joy, next to the freezers all day! And I forgot my scarf!

As usual I glance at my cash box and check whether I have enough coin rolls for the day. Yet again, I ask for
£1 and £2 coins. I take a few sheets of paper towel (just in case a packet of crisps breaks, a bogey gets stuck to my fingers, a customer needs to blow his nose after sneezing on me or another of life’s pleasures) and leave the Office.

I only have a few hours left working for this company. I won’t feel the same about the customers I meet today. Do I have regrets? I wouldn’t go that far …

11 a.m.: Clocking-in time. No chair … as usual. But this time I get one in less than five minutes (better late than never!). And immediately I hear, ‘Are you open?’

‘…’

And for the first time I don’t answer (I don’t care!). The customers (my last three hundred!) parade past, one after the other. Amongst them are some of my favourites: the customer on the phone, Mr Smith with his holey sock and his smelly foot, the Bargain Hunters, the customer with his embarrassing loo roll, the ‘Where are the toilets’ customer. Some very nice ones too – no, not the customer on the phone who remembers to say hello – but ones who have read my articles on the website, who wish me luck and promise to treat checkout girls like human beings from now on. Hurrah! That’s a great leaving present (so I haven’t wasted my time).

8.45 p.m.: Announcement that the store is about to close. Already? The day has gone really quickly. It’s all the emotion, I expect.

8.55 p.m.: My last customer.

‘Don’t you have any bags?’

It’s always nice to end with a classic.

I glance at the aisles to check that the Closing Time couple aren’t nearby. No – what a shame! I would have treated them like kings this time. Never again would they have come to do their shopping at 8.55 p.m.!

The day is over. I clean my conveyor belt with particular care (‘I’m going to miss you, you know. Thanks for helping me so much’) and the rest of my till. It is all so automatic that you almost forget why you’re doing it. This evening though, I know that it’s for the colleague who will take my place tomorrow. I wonder who will replace me on this till? You don’t normally think about that. Why should you? 

Last check. Last look from this side of the till. Everything is in order, nothing is lying around. With my cash box under my arm I walk down the line of tills one final time to the Office. The white tiles seem to continue endlessly in front of me. My feet are taking the same path
that they have followed almost every day for the last few years though. It is difficult to tell myself that the next time I come here I will just be a customer. I slow down. I want to keep a bit of my soul here.

The security shutters come down. The blinding white fluorescent lights are turned off and we are left in the shadows. My footsteps resonate in the great empty store. A solitary
beeeep!
can still be heard like a goodbye from the tills I used all these years. But it’s time to go to the Office and cash up for the last time.

The amount is correct! It’s strange to think it’s the last time I’ll handle all those coins and notes. The money is returned to my cash box and I close it for the final time. It is given to my colleagues in the Office. The label with my number will soon be taken off the metal box and given to the person who will replace me.

Who will then become just a faceless number.

Checkout girls are often only temporary. They are employees who come and go and one looks much like the other … or do they?

A little glass of champagne? Orange juice? Some goodbye crisps at least? Dream on. You were a checkout girl, remember, not a lawyer! My colleagues hug me. It’s a good thing they’re there.

I clock out one last time (well, I hope so!). 9.15 p.m. Right on time. Ah, that capricious machine which made me enter my card over and over again. This time I win! Someone else will be using this card tomorrow.

Employees come and go and one looks much like the other … or do they?

I think that the tills will haunt me for a long time. The lights, the background noise, the familiar faces of all the customers I met over the years, all the colleagues I worked with. All that is over for me today. Eight years behind the till (amazing!). I leave with a big (recyclable) shopping bag full of memories and
beeeep, beeeep, beeeep
…

So do you still want to be a checkout girl? Is it still your dream job? No? I didn’t think so! But do you have a choice? No, I didn’t think so. Good luck anyway. And then, if it’s really terrible, do what I did and write a book. And who knows, maybe it will be sold in supermarkets for … £6.99. Keep the change.

Thank you to all the colleagues who helped and supported me and made me laugh over those eight years on the till, and particularly those who have become real friends.

Thank you to the first readers of my blog who gave me a reason to keep going and put it down on paper.

Thank you to Iris and François who helped me so much with my writing.

Special thanks to Liliane, my eagle-eyed proofreader, for her excellent advice.

Thanks to my family who are always supportive and who pushed me to fulfil my ambitions.

And finally, and above all, thank you to Richard, my husband, for always being there.

The brand-new Eiffel Tower is the glory of the 1889 Universal Exposition.

But one sunny afternoon a woman collapses and dies on this great Paris landmark. Can a bee-sting really be the cause of death? Or is there a more sinister explanation?

Enter young bookseller Victor Legris. Present on the Tower at the time ofthe incident, he is determined to find out what actually happened.

In this dazzling evocation of late-nineteenth-century Paris, we follow Victor as his investigation takes him all over the city. But what will he do when the deaths begin to multiply and he is caught in a race against time?

‘Isabel Reid’s seamless translation captures the novel’s many period charms’
Independent

‘… a clock-beating thriller … entertaining views of nineteeth-century Paris’
Financial Times

‘… a charming and amusing whirl around a time of rapid social and
intellectual change’
Morning Star

‘Reading Izner is like taking a ride into the
belle epoque
in a time machine. A
wonderfully breathtaking ride’
Boris Akunin

‘The taut pacing and vivid period detail will have readers eagerly turning the
pages’
Publishers Weekly

ISBN 978–1–906040–01–7

£7.99

To purchase this title visit www.gallicbooks.com or call 020 7349 7112.

On a wet March evening in 1890, Odette de Valois vanishes from the Père-Lachaise cemetery during a visit to her late husband's grave. Her maid, Denise, fears the worst and knows of only one person in Paris who can help: her mistress's former lover, Victor Legris

When the frightened girl turns up at his bookshop, Victor reassures her, certain there must be a simple explanation for Odette's disappearance. But as he begins to investigate he realises it is a far more sinister affair than he first suspected.

‘… brilliantly evokes 1890s Paris, a smoky, sinister world full of predatory
mediums and a ghoulish public, in a cracking, highly satisfying yarn
'
Guardian

‘… briskly plotted, intriguing second outing for Legris'
Financial Times

‘…
an extremely enjoyable, witty and creepy affair'
Independent on Sunday

‘
Terrific atmosphere, unusual, full of drama'
Susan Hill

‘
… top Gallic hokum
'
Observer

ISBN 978–1–906040–04–8

£7.99

To purchase this title visit www.gallicbooks.com or call 020 7349 7112.

November 1891.

The body of a young woman is discovered at a crossroads on Boulevard Montmartre. Barefoot and dressed in red, she has been strangled and her face disfigured. That same day a single red shoe is delivered to Victor Legris’s Parisian bookshop.

Suspecting more than just coincidence, the bookseller sleuth and his assistant Jojo are soon engaged in seeking out the identity of both victim and murderer.

In this third investigation set in
belle-époque
Paris, we are drawn with Victor into the city’s nightlife and the legendary Moulin Rouge immortalised by Toulouse-Lautrec, who features in the story.

‘… conveys the fin-de-siècle atmosphere extremely well and Paris, with its
leafy boulevards, its slums, cafés, railway stations and its night-life, is richly
conveyed’
Historical Novels Review

‘Full of pungent period detail … a satisfyingly convoluted yarn’
Observer

‘A charming journey through the life and intellectual times of an era’
Le Monde

ISBN: 978–1–906040–05–5

£7.99

To purchase this title visit www.gallicbooks.com or call 020 7349 7112.

Anna Sam

Anna Sam was born in 1979 in Rennes where she still lives with her husband and two dogs.
Checkout
:
A Life on the Tills
is her first book.

Morag Young

Morag Young studied French and Italian at Leeds University and subsequently worked for the European institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg. She now lives in Paris and works as a translator.