I was in a supermarket when I was 17-18, and being autistic, it was challenging. It was a new supermarket, and there was a bit of a quandary. Back then, we only had late night shopping (until 9pm) on Thursdays, and the rationale behind it was, when people had their pay go directly into their bank accounts, they didn't have time to go shopping, so they changed it and said that people would get paid on a Thursday, and if they worked 5.5 days a week, they didn't have time to get to the shops, so they had late night shopping one night a week. There were people who'd go to just get what they wanted and go home, and others who'd have it that on Thursday night, they'd go shopping as a family, and they'd have dinner at a cafeteria or restaurant in the shopping centre, let the kids go to the amusement arcade, or leave them there while they went and got a haircut, or they took the kids to get a haircut, and the weekly grocery shopping was peripheral. Some people would try something new, some stuck to what they knew.

What was challenging for me was having a few different scanners beeping and wondering, "Is this my scanner or not?" Customers would tell the managers how polite I was, but some complained that I was too slow. I remember, one day, a man bought a packet of three underpants, which were supposed to be $3,99, but they didn't have a barcode, and when I keyed in the code on a tag that had been stuck on, they came up as $17,99. I had to call for a price check, and when I keyed in the code, it came up as $17.99. The man laughed and told me I'd get it right someday. But it wasn't my fault. I hated being on the cigarette counter, as it was also the express one. That was hard. And sometimes, kids would come in and want to buy cigarettes. Okay, they were for Mum and Dad, but they'd just increased the legal age to buy cigarettes from 16 to 18, and you were supposed to ask for ID, but some didn't. I would have favoured a clause within the law that said, "If you are 16, and you're already smoking, up until say, June 30, 1993, you may purchase cigarettes with ID, but after July 1, 1993, you must be 18 to buy cigarettes."