Jeannie Pennings (64) has been working as a cashier at the Albert Heijn on Monseigneur van Roosmalenplein in Den Bosch for fifty years. And she’s far from done with it. “It’s part of my life.”
She hadn’t actually planned to be a cashier at all, but when she was fifteen, Jeannie decided to apply for a vacancy. Little did she know that half a century later she would still be a cashier in the exact same supermarket.
It is not difficult for the cashier to do the same job for so long, there are more than enough reasons why she likes this work: “The contact with people, nice colleagues, working with young people and the fact that you know a lot of people. I’m just the icon of Albert Heijn, they sometimes say.”
“It used to be about checks here.”
The supermarket industry has changed quite a bit over the years. With the arrival of scan cash registers, payment with debit card and self-scan cash registers, payment is now much faster. But that also sometimes makes it less pleasant, Jeannie thinks. “It used to be with checks here. I think it’s progress that I no longer have to manually store all products. But it all has to be done with fewer people these days, which makes it less pleasant.”
In general, however, Jeannie looks back positively on fifty years of being at the cash register. She is going to have a good party on Sunday with colleagues, family and friends. “If I ever retire, I’m going to miss this very much.”