Sitting for hours is worse for you than standing for hours. When you are standing you are more active, and many cashiers do more than just punch keys and take your money.

Here are some dangers for sitting when working

Think of the many professions that involve standing. Nursing and many labor/factory jobs come to my mind. Would you rather they sit during the day to rest their feet? They wouldn’t get much done, would they?

Most cashiers in the US do more than they could if they sat. They often have to bag the groceries too, plus be able to move around in a limited space.

The bets work position is standing with something to lift and rest your foot on, like at a bar. I worked on a trading floor and had a stool, the most comfortable (and alert!) position was standing with a leg up.

They get chairs in Germany.

@ragingloli They also get insurance and vacation time in Germany.

@jerv
But in return the government turns their babies into sausages.

Here in england town it varies from store to store, some sit while others stand.
I’d prefer it if they hopped, singing an Abba medley, whilst balancing an easter egg on their heads.

It is very rare to see cashiers sitting in America. Sitting while in front of someone at a retail establishment feels to the customer like the employee is either lazy or locked in to their position I think. Position meaning they cannot move out of the space they are sitting in. Not saying they are either of those things, only saying how it is perceived. For people who are only cashiering, seems like they should be allowed to sit. I would not worry about sitting too long, as @jonsblond mentioned, if it is optional. Office workers do it all day long. But, indeed sitting all the time is not good. Standing in place is not very good either, walking around is really the best thing for us.

Stores usually do accomodate someone if they have been injured.

In the US it’s pretty rare to sit in any retail or restaurant job while you’re working with customers. If you want to sit down, usually you have to get someone to cover your post so you can take a break.

The idea is that if you’re not helping customers, you should be doing something else that’s useful. Like in a coffeehouse, cleaning/restocking the tables and behind the bar, or in retail, straightening the shelves. If the company can’t find something for all the employees to do, it means business is too slow to justify having so many people on the clock, and they’ll often send someone home early if that happens.

I think @JLeslie is also right about the perception of laziness. Businesses want it to look like the staff is ready to help with anything at a moment’s notice. I don’t think sitting down every so often stops anyone from being helpful, but that’s the standard.

At more than one of my past jobs, the company would send secret shoppers around to make sure everyone was on task. One of the items was, “is anyone sitting down?”

When I was a cashier at a small retail store, they required us to stand. There was absolutely no reason for it, either.

I’ve seen cashiers standing and sitting. Grocery cashiers seem to always be standing—I don’t see how they could do that job sitting as they have to reach to pick up the items plus clean things up at their station. Cashiers in colleges, county and state offices, movie tickets booths, and many others are in a sitting position.

it is quite easy to do that while sitting. i have seen it many times.

The farm I worked at recently had two mantras the retail manager repeated endlessly to to cashiers and all the retail help:

“No sitting or you’re quitting.”
and
“If you got time to lean, you got time to clean.”

Not sitting? Hell, for these guys there was no stopping. And everyone worked a ten hour day with a 10 minute morning break and a half-hour (unpaid) lunch.

In one supermarket in my town they have stools on wheels—so they can choose to sit or stand as they wish. Though in the rest they have to stand.

@jonsblond—that’s an interesting article! I was thinking about getting a standing desk.

They stand at WalMart and they sit at Aldi’s.

I think its just a company policy that makes the difference.

I work as a cashier and usually I work 6–10 hour shifts. I’ve never actually worked any longer than that. I mix things up by standing and sitting later as the day goes on when I feel like I need a little rest.

I have an office job and I thought I spent the whole day sitting, until one time I wore a pedometer at work and realised that I walked more than a mile just going backwards and forwards between my desk and the printer.

I think the cashiers all sit in the supermarkets I use.

downtide, after I retired, I also did not realise how many miles I had driven in a police car in 44 years. According to my calculations, at an average of 100 miles each day, in 44 years, I have driven a police car for 2.5 million miles.

At the time, it just never dawned on me that I was driving a lot.