Once the checkout assistant and I had exchanged a cursory greeting, the battle commenced. She was beeping the items through at the speed of light and I was trying to pack them equally quickly. No one wants the embarrassment of hearing her say 'That'll be £10.23 please' and still having shopping to pack. The humiliation! The next person's shopping is already being beeped through, they're concerned they're going to receive the same humilation, and you look like a fool with poor organisational skills as you hurriedly throw a 6 pint bottle of milk onto your neatly packed tomatoes and stuff a soon-to-be concave loaf of bread next to some frozen pizzas even though you're sure frozen food should be in a bag by itself. The humiliation!
Everyone wants to avoid this happening. Some people even deploy tactics by positioning their shopping stategically on the conveyor belt. Some people can no longer face doing a big shop for fear of failing this battle and limping out the shop with a couple of half full bags and various groceries haphazardly in their arms, pocket and mouth.
Some time can be gained by taking as long as possible with your bank card, or by having money ready. Old people, I've noticed, never prepare any form of payment in advance. Once the total's been announced it seems to occur to them for the first time they might actually need to pay as they root around for a purse or wallet, possibly asking '£10.23 did you say dear?'
Having said that, it's only the opposite of my own personal game of 'guess the price', like those 'guess the number of sweets in a jar' at school, where I estimate my total before it's announced, usually underestimate, and then win what I've just paid for.
Sometimes we try to be helpful/annoyingly clever by saying 'would you like the odd 23p?' Of course they would, otherwise you'd only be paying them ten pounds. Which would be underpayment. Sometimes it's a really complicated battle of mathematical wits though:
'That'll be £4.47 please'.
'Here's £10.07...so you can give me £5.60 change right?'
'Erm...I guess so'
'Or better still, how about I give you £9.97?'
'What?!'
In reality though, the only way to win the checkout battle is to throw in a couple of unusual fruits and veg. 'Starfruit? What's the price of that?! Come on come on, I'm losing time...' Or alternatively, hope that you've got a rogue item which refuses to beep. For, as we all know, every item that refuses to beep seems to have a manual entry code which is at least 103 characters long.
