“Just one moment Madam” I said calmly and politely as I scanned the many rows of buttons on the cash desk. Where was the button called “find product”? Finding it, I realised it couldn’t help me either! “Head cashier!” I called, then turned and smiled at the lady waiting to pay for her books.

A few days prior I had participated in cash desk volunteer training, since I figured I could help out when things got busy, and now I had been recruited to put my training into practice. But in the heat of the moment all of my training had left me. Most items presented have a barcode that will scan but every now and then there’s a product that doesn’t scan and you have to go searching for it in the system. Thankfully the head cashier was very helpful to me. To be honest I figured that the job of cash desk was fairly simple compared to my highly technical AV job but having experienced the stress of an impatient customer and a mystery product – I have a newfound respect for the cashiers.

I hope to have many more opportunities to help these people because like me they have busy times when there are just not enough people to do the job, and I’ve always wanted to try a retail job. I also quite enjoy that most orders come to over 2000 Jamaican dollars, which is like $40 Australian, and there’s no such thing as cents!