Check Out Lines / Check-Out

This is the first of a two part series about grocery store check out lines and little old ladies. In order to understand the experience of little old ladies in Salzburg grocery stores, one must understand the culture and etiquette of the check out line. Thus, check out lines tonight and little old ladies tomorrow...

Grocery store check out lines are a model of efficiency and speed in Austria. The cashier is focused, 100% on each customer, with no bagger to carry on a lengthy conversation about last night's party or when the next work break might be like you find at The Pennington Market. It's not just that there are no baggers in the grocery stores here (just as there are no bags), it's that when you work at a grocery store you have no time to waste on frivolous conversations.

Working at a supermarket is considered a career position here. The various chains hold career days, recruiting people right out of school to work at their stores. And it's not just to work at their store for a couple months until something else comes along, it's a career choice. At Hofer, for example, new hires embark on a three-year apprenticeship before they are a qualified Hofer associate. And people aren't just hired to be cashiers, they are hired to be part of a team running a business. If you work at Hofer, you spend time at the cash register, but you also spend time refilling the shelves, carting huge pallets of goods around the store, and changing price tags. Shortly before closing, you may tidy the bins of "specials", the clothes and toys and miscellaneous items that change on Mondays and Thursdays, or you may be mopping the floor. At some point in your career, you may serve as store manager, which seems to rotate among the workers, helping with returns or complaints or general nuisances. I would guess that because workers are involved in every facet of the store's running, buy-in and dedication to the store are high.

So back to the check out lines. At first glance they look similar to check out lines in the US with a conveyor belt leading up the the cash register. There are bags available, for a price, under the conveyor belt, or you can bring your own. You unload your groceries onto the belt, neatly (do not pile everything in a mountain), and place an order divider at the end of your stuff. Do this quickly, or the next person will begin to unload their things in space you will need and they will invade your personal space with their cart pushing against your body.

When it is your turn to check out, the race is on. The cashiers are quick, ringing through item after item without pause until they reach the divider. Unlike US check out lanes which have a roomy area after the cash register for all the purchased items to pile up, Austrian stores have a tiny little shelf which cannot hold more than a couple items. Generally, if I know I am buying more than three things, I get a cart (for which you must insert a coin to unlock the cart which you get back at the end when you return the cart which, cleverly, ensures tidy and efficient cart cleanup). The cart isn't because I couldn't carry more by hand, but because upon checkout I need that cart to catch all the things I'm buying as I scoop them from that little shelf into the cart so they don't fall on the floor. Even with a cart, the cashiers work faster than I can scoop, and I am usually left grasping for teetering items and my wallet, both at the same time.

Cashiers in Austria are not only quick fingered, but they are good at math. Before a customer even fishes out his or her money, cashiers are already anticipating what notes or coins a customer is most likely to use, calculating the difference and counting out change so that it is in your hand the instant you hand over your money. There's no time to wait for a cash register to calculate the change, the cashier to dish out the money, and then recount it into the customer's hand. No sir. By the time the money is in you palm, the next customer is already coming through and so you have to clear out of the way, at which point you head over to a built in counter to pack your own bags.

Should you slow the process down by wanting to pay with a debit card (no credit cards accepted), the pre-calculated change is dropped back in the cash register, and while the card rings up the sale, the cashier scurries off to tidy up packaging some customer left in the packing area (why would you want to take the box home with the cereal, after all?!), or clears off a nearby shelf, or unpacks a carton of fresh-cut flowers, knowing that the twenty seconds it takes to ring through a debit transaction could be used for something more important than sitting at the cash register waiting around.

It is an awe-inspiring process, indeed. When we first got here, I would have to brace myself for the amount of stress such a quick transaction can produce. But now, after seven months, it's old hat. Instead, each time I go through the check out line, I marvel at the streamlined efficiency with which it is all done and wish that we had something even remotely similar back in America.