Before coming to France, I had spent nine years working in the same bank, and always thought that staying put was better than looking for greener pastures. But when I moved to France with my husband, I figured--naively, as it turned out--that with a diploma and two years of serious language study in France I might not get a job at the same level, but at least something not too far off.

Every time I went for an interview at an ANPE center (a government-run employment office), I came away feeling hopeless and frustrated. ANPE counselors always told me, "You Chinese are good at math. A supermarket checkout clerk position ought to interest you. There's an opening I could recommend you for right away." But I was young and arrogant then and always turned down such offers.

For a while, I also took temporary jobs with Chinese employers. Because the tax bureau was not particularly scrupulous in auditing them, Chinese employers evaded taxes by having undeclared employees, declaring full-time employees as part time, paying anything beyond the minimum legal wage under the table, and forcing employees to work excessive overtime. I worked simply to have some sort of employment and had only short-term work goals. There was not much of a relationship between employer and employee.

The last time I was jobless was six years ago. I had been on the dole for a while and my ANPE office informed me in no uncertain terms that if I turned down a checkout clerk position one more time, I would not be able to draw unemployment benefits any longer.

We had just bought a house and were hard pressed to make our monthly mortgage payments, so I had no alternative but to give in. Before I could get a job, my ANPE office arranged for me to undergo five months' training through a government training center. I located a small supermarket that accepted me as a trainee. My supervisor--a woman of Asian descent who had been working as a checkout clerk for 25 years--turned out to be petty-minded: she was afraid that I would be such a quick study that I would steal away her job and livelihood. She resorted to all sorts of petty subterfuges to drive me away or have me reassigned to stacking shelves, such as telling our boss that I couldn't tell apart 100- and 200-franc notes and didn't know how to subtract. But fortunately I'm not one to concede defeat easily, and another coworker put in a good word for me, so I completed my traineeship in one month.

In mid-August 2000, I started working in a big supermarket that had just been built across the street from my home. My first year was hard going. It was my first experience of the complex world of interpersonal relationships in France and the darker side of the French character.

We Asians were in a minority in this supermarket. The manager in charge of us didn't understand us and was prejudiced against us. He always picked on Asian employees, because he knew that we did our job conscientiously and didn't stand up for our rights. That first year we still had no labor union or employee representative, so we kept quiet and swallowed his insults.

Before I trained to be a checkout clerk, I had always thought, "How difficult can that be?" I figured it was as easy as ABC. In fact, thanks to scanners and fully automated systems, there is nothing intrinsically difficult to being a checkout clerk. What makes the job difficult is that each clerk has to greet and serve over 200 customers a day, of all different ethnic backgrounds. Many of them are hard to understand or to deal with. This leads to all sorts of difficult situations. You often don't know whether to laugh or cry.

One thing is certain: there are always obnoxious customers who make a nuisance of themselves at the fast checkout line for fewer than ten items or at the line for disabled people and pregnant women. Before I started working as a checkout clerk, I never imagined that these special checkout lines, which are meant to be a courtesy, would be abused by certain customers. At the fast checkout line we cannot count customers' purchases before we start serving them. Obnoxious customers cut in front and are invariably rude, loud and intimidating, figuring that lowly and unassuming checkout clerks won't stand up to them.

Moreover, disabled people often think that they are entitled to cut in front of pregnant women at the checkout line reserved for both. Arguments are unavoidable when everyone insists on getting preferential treatment. I once had a customer who began ferociously beating another customer who had cut in front of him. The supermarket security guard had to intervene.

Over the past six years, I have learned to respond with flexibility to just about any potential situation, and I usually see them coming. But sometimes you just have to stand firm. Fortunately, only one or two percent of our customers are obnoxious. I tell myself to do my job contentedly and to be as considerate as possible toward customers. This is, after all, a service industry.

In recent years, Asian coworkers have worked hard to earn a reputation for integrity and honesty. We have changed the way the manager and our colleagues see us. The CEO of our supermarket chain has begun hiring large numbers of employees of Asian descent, and we now have a few Asian managers and employee representatives.

In today's digital era, Taiwanese people want to find a job that offers more money, less work and is near their home. By that measure, I haven't done too badly: Like Ah Q in Lu Xun's famous story (who did odd jobs for temporary employers), I have found a job that doesn't keep me too busy all the time. The turn of the month, when people's wages are paid, is our busiest time, but around the middle of the month we don't have much to do. Nor could my workplace be any closer to my home: it's a ten-minute walk. Health permitting, there is no reason why I can't do this job until I retire. My one piece of advice to younger people would be not to have unrealistic expectations. It is up to the individual to find dignity in his or her work.