A compliment for the New Year

On New Year’s Eve I visited Sainsbury’s in Leamington Spa to pick up a few final supplies for a mini-gathering I was hosting that evening. It was quite busy with many people doing the same. For one thing, lots of the drinks offers had already been taken from the shelves.

I’ve never worked on a checkout at a supermarket but I’ve worked for a while in a ticket booth of a busy tourist attraction. I can understand how difficult it is to serve different people throughout the day and how hard it must be to stay interested in your job. For that reason, I’m sure we all have stories of checkout operators who are surly and glum when we’re buying our goods. Of course, it’s not just up to them to speak to us – many customers treat checkout operators as nothing more than machines, and a bit of politeness and human spirit wouldn’t hurt on both sides.

For that reason I wanted to send a Compliment Corner letter to a lady called Meena, who was working on the checkouts on New Year’s Eve. She made the effort to chat to me even though I wasn’t feeling very chatty, and consequently she cheered me up and sent me on my way feeling good about my visit to the shop. Sometimes it’s just nice to smile, chat, or even just make eye contact while paying for the shopping. Meena made that easy to do. She didn’t have to do anything but scan my shopping and take my payment but she went the extra mile to brighten my day. My letter is below.