Best of the Web: check out Anna Sam
Anna Sam is making a big splash with Checkout, her account of the eight years she spent working behind a French supermarket checkout. Here’s some of the best coverage, and a link to her appearance on BBC Radio 4′s Midweek too.
Anna was a guest on BBC Radio 4′s Midweek – listen now.
In the Telegraph, Celia Walden wonders whether any of us is innocent of mis-treating checkout staff at some time or another:
Sam’s anecdotes make uncomfortable reading for the average shopper. Are you the person who completes an entire supermarket transaction with your mobile phone wedged beneath chin and shoulder? Or forgets to say “hello”, “goodbye” and “please” because what’s going on in your life is more important? Do you try and sneak 11 or 12 items into the 10-items-or-fewer queue? Steal kisses in the frozen foods aisle and have sneaky sex while perusing the detergents? “Idiocy” seems like a benign word for some of the behaviour Sam describes and yet the psychological revelations behind her tales make for compelling reading.
Over at the Times, Adam Sage has interviewed Anna:
Then there are the mothers who point at the checkout worker and say to their child: “You see, darling, if you don’t work hard at school, you’ll become a caissière like the lady.” Mrs Sam tells them that she had five years of university education. “There are a lot of students with literary, sociology or artistic degrees in supermarkets in France,” she said. “Not many of them really want to become checkout workers.”
Read an extract of Checkout now
