Bookarmy Interview - Anna Sam talks to us about her book, Checkout

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Bookarmy Interview - Anna Sam talks to us about her book, Checkout

Anna Sam spent eight years as a checkout girl, pouring her frustrations about the job in a blog that soon won her fans all over the world. Anna then turned her blog into a book, Checkout: A Life on the Tills, which is well on its way to becoming an international bestseller.
We talk to Anna about championing supermarket cashiers and changing attitudes, one customer at a time.

Bookarmy: Can you tell us a bit about your debut book?
Anna Sam: I always used to dream about changing customers’ attitudes to cashiers. Generally customers seemed to have a low opinion of us. I found a solution through the internet. It’s easy to create a blog. More and more people visited my blog to read my stories. Within a year of starting it I was contacted by a publishing house and asked to make my stories into a book.

BA: What first made you decide to blog a life that in your book you call “completely ordinary”?
AS: When you work as a cashier you often feel you are a robot or an object, rather than a human being. I wanted to use my humorous little stories to explain to people that cashiers are just as important as other people.

BA: What would you say has been the major change that the success of your blog has brought about?
AS: Fortunately nothing has changed in my personal life. But my work life is radically different ... I was a cashier and now I am an author. I know that my book and blog have been important to checkout workers because they send the message, ‘You are not alone, and your experiences at work are replicated at all supermarkets.’ I think that many supermarket workers smile when they read my stories, and smile again when they encounter the same thing in their own work.

BA: Has it always been your dream to have this kind of success in a literary field, or do you harbour ambitions for something else?
AS: I could never have imagined the success that I have had. It has taken me completely by surprise! When I was younger I did used to dream of becoming an author and today I am. I’m not sure what will happen to me in the future but one thing I am absolutely certain about is that I want to continue to help make the working lives of cashiers better.

BA: One of the keys to Checkout’s success is the honesty and wit with which you write. Did you ever get overly disillusioned by your job and find it difficulty to keep up that tone?
AS: When I began to write up my till stories in my blog I immediately realised that I would have to write with humour. I believe that if you can laugh about your situation you automatically feel better. And if I had a bad day at work, I thought about how I would write about it humorously ...
Of course there were times when it was hard to smile at a particular situation, but in the end I always managed to find the irony. Even today I continue to try to find the humour in things.

BA: What’s the next step from here? For the blog, and for yourself?
AS: I am continuing to write because I enjoy it! I published another book in French in June 2009, this time written from the point of view of the supermarket customer. I thought that would be interesting after looking at everything from the point of view of the cashier.
I am also continuing to work with supermarkets. You see, when I started my blog my intention was to speak up for cashiers. A few days ago I met the boss of the one of the large supermarket chains in France and we are going to work together to raise the status of cashiers in supermarkets.

My dream is that one day cashiers and shopworkers will feel proud of themselves for the work they do, and that people will think positively about supermarket work as a career. This will be quite a challenge but it is so important for so many people.