🧑‍💼 Salesperson

A salesperson helps customers choose goods and takes payment. In the dairy section they sell milk, cheese, butter and sour cream. ISCO-08 calls this occupation “shop sales assistant” (group 5223). In the US there are 4.27 million such workers (BLS, 2025).

The work starts with the customer: the salesperson greets them, helps them choose and answers questions. Products sold by weight, such as hard cheese, butter and sour cream, are cut off, weighed and packed by the salesperson. They watch expiry dates and the storage conditions given on the label, and make sure expired goods do not stay on the shelf.

At a farmers market the seller is often the farmer. Wikipedia describes such a market as a place where food is sold directly from farmers to customers, and lists milk, cream, butter, ice cream and cheese among the goods; according to a 2026 directory based on USDA data, there are about 8,863 such markets in the US.

In the past a customer usually handed a list to the salesperson, who gathered the goods. According to Wikipedia, the first self-service store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened by Clarence Saunders in Memphis in 1916. Since then customers more often pick goods themselves, while the salesperson advises and helps.

Why it matters to you. It is worth asking a salesperson about what you cannot see on the package: how one cheese differs from another, how long a product keeps after cutting, where the milk comes from. This is useful at a market and at a farm, where a product does not always have a label. But in any case check the composition, fat content and expiry date on the label, and for a product sold by weight ask to see the package or the producer’s tag.