Watch for the signs: how grocery store checkout cashiers can tell if you’re rich

After several decades as a grocery store cashier, Ulrike Schwerdhöfer has become a past master at sizing up the customers she encounters at the checkout. Schwerdhöfer, an employee at a supermarket in Germany, can tell you a lot about shoppers based on their purchasing habits.

“I can tell quite clearly...”

In an interview with the German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, she explains the patterns that distinguish a store’s wealthier customers from those that are operating on a tighter budget.

“I can tell quite clearly whether a customer has money or not,” Schwerdhöfer says. According to the veteran cashier, more affluent shoppers not only tend to choose more expensive products - particularly organic items - but also appear to show no interest in their price. Indeed, they often forget to even pick up their receipt, let alone check it to make sure they have been charged the correct amount.

On the other hand, Schwerdhöfer reveals, customers with less money to spend are likelier to bring a clearly thought-out shopping list to the store, even if they are only there to get a couple of things. “Their shop has been precisely budgeted and they tend to make the most of any special offers that are on,” the cashier says.

“I think: ‘Ah, lovely’”

In her interview with the FAZ, Schwerdhöfer also shares her experiences of how customers behave when they’re buying products that can cause embarrassment. For example, people purchasing magazines of an erotic nature often place the publication face down on the checkout’s conveyor belt, in an attempt to conceal what they’re buying. “But then I have to turn it over to be able to scan it,” Schwerdhöfer says. “And I think: ‘Ah, lovely.’”

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