A supermarket cashier who worked at two German supermarkets, Rewe and Kaiser's, gave an AMA on Reddit for the users. Here are a few of their most exciting secrets:
1. Cashiers don't check egg cartons for the eggs. They're making sure you aren't trying to sneak something out of the store that's more valuable.
2. Even among supermarket employees, there's no official name for that thing that you put in between your stuff and the stuff that belongs to the person in front of you on the conveyer belt.
3. The conveyor belt also has a switch on it. There are three settings: one that makes the belt run until something crosses the sensor at the end of the belt, one that allows the cashier to manually operate the belt with a foot pedal, and off.
4. Which means that the conveyor belts don't have a reverse option.
5. Supermarket employees don't really have any right to look inside your bag. Only police are allowed to do that.
6. But if a supermarket employee ASKS a customer to open their bag and the customer complies, that's a totally different thing.
7. Under some registers, there is a hidden cash box where excess money can be locked away so that there isn't too much cash in the register at any one time.
8. Paying with an ATM card can be a lot of work. Cashiers are supposed to make sure that the signature on the receipt matches the signature on the card, and if it doesn't, it slows down the whole process. This is also true of cards with no signatures on them.
9. Cashiers prefer not to give out receipts, if you don't need one. It slows them down. And sometimes if a register doesn't automatically print them off, the cashier has to spend time doing it manually.
10. At the end of the day, if there is money missing from the register (or even too much money in the register), cashiers have to face a talk with a manager about "paying attention at the workplace".
11. It's usually nothing serious, but if it happens more than once or twice every six months, it can have serious consequences. Customers can make life easier for cashiers if they return any extra change they've been given accidentally.
12. Nothing drives cashiers and customers alike crazier than having to cancel or void a scanned product. They usually need a key from a supervisor, and it really slows down the cashier, which leads to longer lines for customers.
13. If a customer decides at the last minute not to buy an item and returns it at the register, cashiers don't just throw it away. An employee usually comes over pretty swiftly to return the item to the shelf where it belongs.
14. The employee discount is regulated differently from chain to chain. At the German chain Rewe, employees get a 3% discount.
15. At Kaiser's, there are "employee weekends", during which employees receive a 15% discount.
16. When elderly people want to pay in small change, it can be a real pain, so cashiers often help them to find the coins they're looking for. (Of course, it always helps when the change is pre-sorted, and not just dumped onto the counter in front of them.)
