Check me out

A national champion checkout operator has been found in Auckland. Rowena Orejana pits her skills against the best.
I am ready for this. I take off my jacket and take a position behind the checkout machine. How hard can it be?
We are in Countdown Lynfield, where I could be embarking on my fallback career as a checkout operator. I am being tutored. Not just by any checkout operator but the best from Progressive Enterprises' 158 supermarkets throughout New Zealand, 17-year-old Bianca Barone.
Bianca is very pretty with a perky personality and a really warm smile. Her eyes twinkle as she talks about the job with enthusiasm. One wonders how Countdown missed her as its commercial model.
"Some customers won't take the items out of the basket so I just turn it down sideways and take a few out," she says, all business now. "I'd then take the others out directly from the basket."
Then she starts bagging the items. "You have to put the same type of items in the bag," she says as she scans each item over the machine.
Craig Rogers, the store manager, tells me the standard rate is 15 items a minute.
She switches places with me. On the wrong side of the counter, I find myself scanning the items and thinking which to bag together.
A bit rattled, I finally bagged the last bit and looked at them expectantly. "It's not bad," she says. A quick check showed I managed not to tag any of the items twice.
It was not hard but wasn't as easy as I expected. Bianca says there are a lot of details that need to be considered, such as whether a customer is buying liquor or in quantity.
"Stuff like that makes our jobs a little bit of a challenge sometimes. We can have a conflict over the limits with a customer. You have to call your duty manager and they have to explain to the customer that we do have limits and things like that," she says.
But it can be rewarding, too, she says. "You get your regulars that come through. With them have, you have that extra ..." she pauses and searches for the right word, "... almost like a friendship. They come to your checkout and they'll line up in a queue that has three people on to be served by you. And that's the rewarding part of the job. Very, very cool."
Bianca stopped going to school in the middle of her second-to-last year. "I don't think school is for me. I'd rather be at work where I am treated as an adult," she says.
Her potential was first spotted by her checkout manager. The possibility of becoming a manager at the ripe old age of 19 beckons.
"Not many secondary school people see a career in supermarkets," says Mr Rogers. "But, in Bianca's case, in two or three years' time she'd be a checkout manager managing up to 50 staff."
Bianca sees herself as a store manager or even a human resources specialist in the future.
She has just been promoted to supervisor, which means she can approve sales of restricted products such as alcohol or deal with annoyed customers.
"I get the extra responsibility and that's what I love about it, the challenge," she says. "Every day is different."
Counter claim
The 10 area finalists from throughout  New Zealand competed in a Checkout Olympics in Auckland consisting of a practical test - processing a complex customer transaction. They were also tested for: serving a customer; previous customer service; uniform standards; scan rates; and correct amount of cash in the till.