Well this seems to be the case in this country. I’ve seen men at checkouts in the US but not here except once, a friend of mine was working the checkout. I should have asked him why he was such a rarity.
Either I do not shop at supermarkets, or I am unable to distinguish males from females.
Because we don’t deal with coupons well.
My guess would be that men (traditionally) do not deal well with jobs in which they are stationary – call centers, cashiers, etc – and therefore do not apply for those positions very often. That is actually the reason we do not have a single male salesman at my call center. No male applicants = no male call center employees. It could be more than that, but that’s my WAG.
Different country.
That’s really weird. I’ve worked in two call centers here and both were almost entirely staffed with black and Puerto Rican/assorted Hispanic males.
What country are you in?
I just changed what’s written in the location box so people can tell more readily. I’m in Ireland.
When I was in high school the girls did checkout while the boys worked as baggers. A quick glance around the store suggests that is still the case.
Wow, your store still has baggers? I haven’t seen those since the mid 90s, although on a slow day one cashier might take over bagging to help clear another cashier’s line more quickly.
Australia (non-scientific study):
Gender ratio in supermarket staffing seems about 50/50. There is a slight over-representation of females on the checkout, and a slight under-representaton of them in shelf-stacking, trolley collection (but maybe they just swap rosters amongst themselves). Supervisory and management positions seem 50/50.
I have heard that women are better at jobs which require quick hand movement and sorting (like pulling out defective widgets on an assembly line), but then again I’m a male postal worker, and I can sort mail faster than just about anyone else I’ve seen.
The guys are shooting snooker at the pub. Priorities, y’know.
I should mention that we are in a smaller town. Now, when I worked for the Evil Conglomerate AKA Sprint – that was in Nashville proper and we had a boatload of guys there. It’s different in a smaller town, where the guys can get roofing/construction/physical labor jobs pretty easily and make as much as they could in a call center.
When my mom worked in a grocery store (about 30 years ago) women did not do any of the shelf stocking type jobs. I don’t think it’s store policy anymore, but traditional that men with jobs in grocery stores do more of the “heavy lifting” type jobs.
In my local Giant there are young men who work at cash registers, but I don’t recall seeing any older men who are more likely to be planning to retire from Giant working as cashiers.
It could also be more sinister and maybe men are promoted away from registers to management and women stay at the checkout counters.
When I worked at a grocery store, most of the people who worked there were teenage girls (like me), teenaged guys or middle-aged women. The one middle-aged guy we had was in charge of produce - and we later learned he was actually secret security. w00t!
The teenaged guys were always stockers. I was a stocker too, because I don’t quite like working with the public and I am good at lifting heavy things. We had to climb ladders, use box cutters, lug around heavy boxes, get dirty and dusty, go outside to collect carts, clean toilets and mop all the floors. One of the guys even had to lug around the big floor waxer once a week.
That sort of work is just not in your typical teenage girl or middle-age woman’s repertoire. The guys all loved it (me too).
It was just more sensible to put the girls up front on the register and have the boys getting dirty and sweaty in the back.
The baggers at my grocery store (Fareway) also take the cart out for you and load the stuff in your car. If there’s more than one person in line, they’ll open another station. The only time I’ve waited more than a minute for a checker is on Saturdays, and weekdays after 4. Sometimes the checker hauls my stuff out, if I’m at the store at a slow time. I guess they really don’t want carts left in the parking lot, and they don’t want a cart-area taking up parking spots. I love that store. They aren’t open Sundays or major holidays, but that’s fine with me.
The checkers are women – baggers are guys and girls both, teenagers. The meat-cutters are usually men, but they’ve had some female cutters.
The Publix where I regularly shop has a fairly mixed group of cashiers men and women, young and old. There’s one old guy who I swear is flirting with me.
And we still have baggers, they’ll even take the groceries out to your car if you want.
But 'round the corner at Albertsons I can’t remember ever seeing a male cashier. Go figure.
AFAIK all Publix locations have baggers.
That seems to hold true here in Canada. Cashiers are pretty well 100% female. I may have seen the occasional male cashier, but there’s no way I could recall where or when. Stockpeople are probably 80-90% male. Meat/deli counter seems to be mostly female, but I’ve definitely seen men working those, probably an 80/20 female:male ratio there. Management varies so it’s hard to tell, it’s probably pretty evenly matched there.
In a related field, most greeters seem to be men for some reason.
Publix, my dear. (Well, all the other stores still have them, too.) If you don’t watch out they’ll try and take your groceries to your car, too, and they aren’t supposed to take tips.