The Checkout Chronicles:
Beneath the barcode.
Lonely housewife? Cat Lady? Serial Killer? What does your grocery cart say about you?
Intro
Maddie’s job is boring. Really, really boring. Waiting for water to boil is more exciting—at least that ends with hot tea, pasta, or soup.
Instead, Maddie is a checker at Smittie’s Small Grocers. To quell the monotony, she engages with customers as she swipes items over the sensor. But even that feels repetitive. The conversations are painfully predictable:
“How are you today?”
“Fine, thanks. You?”
“Great.”
Occasionally, there’s an extra comment—“A pack of Marlboro Lights” or “Is it swipe or chip?”—a brief detour into the thrilling world of card readers. And then it’s over. After 60 or 70 of these exchanges a day, the routine wears thin.
Maddie has found the antidote to boredom: building backstories. What started as a distraction has become an obsession.
A new billboard just outside town reads: “Last Real Grocery Store for 200 Miles…” Somehow, it worked. People who were just passing through now stop to shop. They step through Smittie’s outward-swinging electronic doors, pick up their essentials, and disappear into lives Maddie will never see.
Between the regulars she knew by sight, and sometimes name and those just passing through, she wasn’t sure who interested her most. Who grabs a box of Twinkies and a phone charger from the impulse section? Who buys nothing but a single can of soup? In between customers, she weaves intricate, usually wicked, stories about them.
