Adventures on the minimum wage

The supermarket chain Asda was recently voted the best employer in Britain. But can its staff really be that happy? Julia Stuart spent two days at the Brighton Marina branch in order to find out

Most of its staff earns less than £9,000 a year, yet Asda was recently voted Britain's Best Company to Work For out of 100 leading firms. In a confidential survey, staff enthused about being listened to and respected, as well as the numerous perks such as share-option schemes, childcare leave and the use of a Jaguar for a month if they top national sales polls. A staggering 84.5 per cent said they looked forward to coming to work, 77.6 per cent felt there was no backstabbing, and 74.1 per cent planned to stay with the firm until retirement. For years, the company modelled itself on America's Wal-Mart – now the world's biggest company – and was taken over by the supermarket giant in July 1999. I spent two days working at the Brighton Marina branch.

Day one

10.30am: I attend the morning management meeting, or "huddle" in Asda-speak. Employees, who doggedly refer to each other as "colleagues", rather than staff, are sitting around a bank of desks. Without warning, they leap to their feet and start clapping furiously. A woman begins to bellow:

"Give me an A!" she screams. "A!" they scream back.

"Give me an S!" "S!"

"Give me a D!" "D!"

"Give me an A!" "A!"

"What have we got?" "Asda!"

"I can't hear you!" "ASDA!"

"Give me a pocket slap." They slap their back pockets, a tribute to the "That's Asda Price!" television advert. "And another!" They slap their other back pocket.

"Who's number one?"

"The customer! Always! Oo!"

The monkey-like "oo" is accompanied by a hand signal that resembles a fast yank of a toilet chain. It's a truly frightening spectacle.

11.00am: Martin, 30, the acting pharmacy manager, who unconsciously flutters his tie like Oliver Hardy when he talks, says that a previous personnel manager used to lead the chant with such vigour and volume, his face would turn puce. He was widely suspected of having been the cause of last year's cliff collapse, which resulted in the partial burial of the store and a two-month closure.

11.15am: The general store manager, Jonathan, 36, whose name is on a badge on his chest, shows me one of the many staff information boards, which announces how well colleagues scored when they were last "mystery shopped". The term refers to the practice of people from an outside company masquerading as customers to see how workers perform on the front line. I note that Ted, a greeter, achieved only 61 per cent. Jonathan insists the board "isn't about naming and shaming". He's less circumspect about the position of Asda's arch-rival, Tesco, in the Best Company to Work For survey. They came 100th. "Very amusing," he says.

11.20am: Wearing the Asda uniform of black trousers and a bottle-green sweatshirt, I am put at the front of the store to greet customers. My name-tag informs shoppers that I'm "happy to help". I would, in fact, be more happy with my feet up in the staff canteen enjoying a sticky bun. However, Amanda, 37, who has done the job for five years, is so ecstatically happy to help, she was the first person in the south-east region to be awarded the title of Golden Greeter. The reason for her success, she says, is that she likes people. I, on the other hand, don't think they're all they're cracked up to be. I try to emulate her enthusiastic calls of "Good morning!" to all and sundry, but shoppers look at me with the same caution usually reserved for Jehovah's Witnesses.

Ted approaches. The sign on his chest that announces him as a greeter and "happy to help" is yellow, rather than gold. "You have to be a creep to be a Golden Greeter," he says. He blames the system for the low score he achieved when he was mystery shopped. "I think their methods are a little bit suspect," he says. "They're only here for 15 minutes, I'm on my own helping customers, and in 15 minutes they didn't hear an announcement – that's what I got clobbered on. I'm meant to do one every 20 minutes."

Ted doesn't have any Asda award badges pinned to his lapels either. "I'm not a badge man," he insists. "There are some people who don't stop talking about their badges. I had all the badges I wanted when I was in the Services." He says he got "a ticking off" when he first joined the company. "I started to say 'Good morning folks', and was told to stop saying 'folks' and to just say 'ladies and gentlemen'. I thought 'folks' would be great because it's a friendly store and we had just been taken over by the Americans."

I make an announcement on a microphone, reading from a slip of paper that Ted has given me, inviting shoppers to visit George, the clothes department, where they can now buy girls' or boys' jeans for just £4. Ted congratulates me. "With some people," he confides, "you can't hear a word they say."

12 noon: I'm put on the delicatessen counter to make pizzas with Anna who's 17. My task is to scoop toppings on to ready-made bases. It's five pieces of sweaty pepperoni on the small ones and 10 on the large. I decide that 15 and 30 is more the ticket, and act accordingly. My first one finished, I hope to spend the next hour happily gazing gormlessly into space, but Anna keeps finding me more work to do. Definite management potential.

1.30pm: Lunch, at last, in the staff canteen.

2.10pm: I'm put on the customer-services desk with Kay, who has her "wings" – a badge that indicates that she has worked for Asda for five years. A man approaches, brandishing an in-store baked baguette with a hair in it. It wasn't me, I tell him, pointing out that I'm a redhead. Kay gets out the customer-comments book. The man gets a refund and is offered £10 compensation. He asks for £15, and gets it.

3.10pm: I'm on for checking out the freshness of Asda's cream cakes, but Jonathan puts me on litter patrol in the car park. There I find Alan, 32, who has worked for Asda for 11 years collecting the trolleys and keeping the car park clean. He is wearing a gold-effect "1,000%" badge, which means that he has achieved a 100 per cent score from mystery shoppers 10 times. Alan is the only colleague in the store to have been awarded such an accolade. It doesn't end there. On his other lapel are the letters ABCD, which stand for Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, which he was given for an assortment of good deeds, including changing a customer's flat tyre. Alan likes his badges a lot. Happily for Asda, he also very much likes a clean car park. I meander around the cars, picking up all the beer cans and cigarette butts with a plastic "grabber", and dropping them into a bucket. I find it strangely therapeutic.

4.00pm: Jonathan informs me that my morning announcement had cut out halfway through.

4.10pm: A member of staff sidles up and tells me what he really thinks of the Asda chant. "I hate it," he whispers. "It's the stupidest thing that Asda has introduced. There's no need for it. We've been doing it for two years now, and it still makes me cringe. I would never lead one."

4.30pm: Huddle number two, this time in the storeroom. I'm dreading the chant, and brace myself. They don't indulge. Phew!

5.00pm: I head off to my hotel where the contents of the minibar will hopefully help me forget the horrifying news that Jonathan has just given me. Tomorrow, he says, I am to lead the chant.

Day two

7.30am: I wake up with an acute sense of dread and lie pinned to the bed.

10.00am: Breakfast with Jonathan in the staff canteen, where colleagues are reading The Sun and eating fry-ups. Jonathan says that at one general managers' conference at Asda House, Leeds, they were made to do the chant 13 times. By the end of the day, he was hoarse. Even Jonathan thought it was over the top.

10.30am: I am acutely worried about not being able to correctly spell out the word Asda under pressure. Jonathan gives me a crib sheet. I am told by another colleague to "do it large". After a series of gulps, I decide there's no other option than to go for it, and put everything I've ever learnt in amateur dramatics into the pocket taps. My efforts are declared triumphant.

12.10pm: At last, I've made it into the bakery, where I'm to fill the doughnuts with custard. I take one in each hand and shove them on to two spikes sticking out of a machine. With my thumbs, I press a bar underneath that forces custard through the spikes and into the doughnuts. I overfill them and they explode in my hands, which I give a (highly sackable) lick. I slip the evidence into the bin, but am mortified to notice that the bag is see-through. I try again, pressing the bar only once. I pull them off the spikes but a line of custard is oozing out of one of them. I prod it back inside with a finger, dust it with sugar, and pop it helpfully in a bag.

As I continue filling, I have an all-consuming desire to stuff a whole doughnut into my mouth. Such is the compulsion, I decide it's worth the shame of being caught, but Jonathan suddenly appears at my side and I'm dispatched to the bread section. I pass a granary loaf freckled with sunflower seeds sitting temptingly at mouth height, but muster enough restraint not to plunge my teeth into it.

Daryll, 38, a baker, puts me on hot-cross bun duty. I am to pipe crosses on to them using a bag filled with mixture. I move across the tray, first doing the horizontal lines, and then the vertical ones. I feel like a contestant on The Generation Game. My lines resemble the rises and falls on a heart monitor screen. "Oops!" I find myself saying at the end of each line. Daryll says he's seen worse and shoves them into the oven. Daryll, who has worked for Asda for five years, is gloriously off-message. When he heard that it had been deemed the Best Company to Work for in Britain, he thought it was an April Fool's joke. He says his basic salary of around £10,000 a year is "rubbish". "Us and the butchers are supposed to be the highest hourly paid colleagues. God knows what the others are on. I feel sorry for them. The benefits are great, but you don't get paid enough to take advantage of them," he says.

"They're trying to bring in this American yee-har go-for-it stuff and we don't fall for it. The British are reserved; it's just not us. I don't think it will work." He doesn't think he will stay with Asda until retirement. "I hope not, it would be a life sentence. You'd get less for murder."

1.15pm: Lunch.

2.00pm: I quite fancy going on "Benidorm Leave" – a perk for older staff that allows them to take up to three months unpaid holiday in the winter should they wish to head off to the sun. But I'm put on the checkout with Bet, who gives me a crash course on how to operate it. I'm only half-listening as I'm still delirious with longing for a custard doughnut. Still not really in charge of my faculties, I find myself announcing that I'm ready for the checkout to be opened for customers.

Much to my acute embarrassment, the pressure of the endless food mountain making its way down the conveyer belt towards me makes me read out the totals incorrectly. Shoppers are giving me disbelieving looks. Bet asks me whether I need glasses. I keep getting the numbers the wrong way round, she says. I've got my contact lenses in, I say, flushing violently. When I announce one customer's total, he asks me whether I'm sure.

4.30pm: Second huddle of the day. Each manager is given the opportunity to share any "issues". They have nothing of note to report. Jonathan then turns to me and ceremoniously hands me a green badge bearing an extraordinarily happy face and the words "Great Job, Bursting With Pride". I am, he announces, the first in the store to be awarded one, and I have earned it for "getting stuck in". A colleague promptly takes my photo.

The following day: Back at Independent HQ, wearing my Great Job badge, an Asda worker comes on the line. "What Asda really stands for," the colleague hisses down the phone, "is Another Sodding Day Ahead."