A look inside life on the other side of the H-E-B register

I'm a grocery store geek.

I love strolling the aisles, inspecting the ever-changing inventory of 50,000 products that won't leave the building until they are scanned by a cashier at a checkout line. What better way to indulge my obsession with food, grocery stores and people's eating habits than to see what it's like on the other side of the conveyor belt?

After a few calls, I was set: H-E-B would allow me to go through checker training and work a half-shift at the H-E-B in the Hancock Center.

So, last month, with my very own name tag, red polo shirt and a nervous smile, I went to work, ringing up a few hundred customers in a four-hour shift at one of the busiest H-E-B stores in Austin, where I quickly found out that scanning products is as fun as I thought it would be, but it's not the best part of the job.

After the beep

There's something inherently fun about scanning and bagging groceries; I recently took my son to the Austin Children's Museum, where the only exhibit he wanted to play on was the mock register. Self-checkout lines popped up in grocery stores a few years ago, which gave people like me a chance to scan UPCs, enter PLUs and, best of all, trigger the register to make that familiar sound.

Not everyone wants to be hands-on with their purchases just for the fun of it. Some people use self-checkout because they are in a hurry, but a sizable number of them to avoid interacting with a cashier, which is why when new checkers like me go through training, customer service — not how to scan UPCs — is the first lesson.

"You're the last person the customer sees before leaving the store and carrying on with their day," says Tanya Gonzales, who has been training new H-E-B checkers for 14 years. Not only are checkers on their feet for hours at a time ringing up what amounts to the company's bottom line, they are the face of the store.

For most customers — and let's face it, we are all grocery store customers — the only employee they'll have contact with is the checker, leaving the responsibility and weight of a 105-year-old company on the shoulders of a person standing in comfortable shoes scanning potato chips and Popsicles.

Say it with a smile

Customer service is almost always underappreciated, a trying reality of any job that requires interaction with the public. Those who give good customer service carry on, day after day, week after week, turning the other cheek when dealing with someone who isn't having a good day. And checkers, as I quickly found out, don't just have to be nice to customers, they are expected to engage them. "What you give out is what you get back," Gonzales says. "Customers feed off you."

In our impersonal world, small talk with people we don't know is becoming less frequent, which is why I was excited about the chance to strike up conversations with strangers. Where did you find these cool snacks? These strawberries look so ripe! How 'bout them Longhorns? Sure is cold out, isn't it? Out of the dozens of people I dealt with during my short shift, only a handful of them had no interest in chitchatting with me. Each conversation lasted only as long as the cart was full, but most shoppers were eager to share some authentic human interaction, no matter how brief.

Checkers don't have the luxury of being in a bad mood. "Leave your troubles at the door," Gonzales says. Bad attitudes multiply, she says, and before you know it, crankiness from someone at a check stand can spread faster than the flu.

You'd be surprised to hear the burdens that people share when you look a person in the eye and sincerely ask, "How are you today?" Checkers are like bartenders — easy targets for people to unload personal baggage. In the time it takes to ring up items, process payment and hand out a receipt, you hear it all: The break-ups, the financial woes, the misbehaved kids at home.

What's the 4011?

It's a number millions of former checkers will never forget. A code for bananas, the most consumed fruit in America. As a checker at any grocery store, you punch in this number than almost any other, even the employee ID that links you to the till, or as I've always thought of it, the please-don't-screw-up box full of money and responsibility.

I knew the toughest part of this job for me wouldn't be dealing with customers, but not messing up a customer's total or giving back incorrect change. My only retail experience was a summer at Kinko's when I was in college, but H-E-B gave me a mentor in Kristina Ramos, who at 21 has quickly climbed the checker ladder to be a central checkout specialist at the Hancock store and helps newbies like me. She showed me how to wipe frost and water off UPCs to help them scan better and, off the top of her head, recalled PLUs for produce other than bananas so I didn't have to look them up on the green sheet next to the register. (By the end of my half-shift, at least 10 of the numbers were committed to memory.)

The University of Texas student says interacting with customers is the highlight of her job, but competing with other partners to see who can scan the most items per minute it pretty fun too, she says. (She's barely at 30 items per minute, but the fastest checkers ring up close to 35. I would have been lucky to reach half that speed.)

"The hardest part is when you get complicated customers, but it's an experience that you learn from," she says. She says she also learns about food from customers. When she scans items she's not familiar with, "I'll ask them, 'How do you cook this?,' or 'How does it taste?' "

Just like most experienced checkers, Ramos is a pro when it comes to fitting a block of cheese, a jar of pickles, pasta and a pineapple in a single bag. There's usually a bagger and a checker on each register, but everyone in the checkout area is expected to bag when needed. Leslie Lockett, director of public affairs for H-E-B, says even CEO Charles Butt will bag groceries if he's in a store at a busy time.

An encouraging word

Even after only four hours, I was beat. My upper arms hurt from the repetitive motion of scanning products, and even though I was only there for a few hours and wore my comfiest shoes, my feet still hurt. Keeping up the energy level for each customer was exhausting, but the reward is great. "You share in customers' victories and celebrations," Gonzales says. I couldn't help but smile when a birthday cake, congratulations card, bottle of champagne or enough plastic utensils, plates and napkins for a wedding slid toward me on the black conveyor belt.

But it's the small successes that I remember most: Helping a nice woman save a chunk of change by carefully swiping each of the 25 coupons she'd cut out and used. Asking a young mom, who was stocking up on baby food and supplies, about her new baby at home. Congratulating the college student for having just finished his last final of the semester. Excitement, just like negativity, is contagious, no matter which side of the register you find yourself.