Supermarket chat

I'm a bit suspicious of supermarket checkout assistants who try and chat to me. I think they've been told to chat to their customers by their managers.

Usually I get asked 'how are you today?'

Sometimes, I get asked ''what are you going to cook with those ingredients?'

Yesterday, I got asked 'what do you do for a job?'

We had a great chat about volunteering, but when I asked him whether he'd ever volunteered he said, 'yes, but never unpaid.'

Maybe I need to improve my communication skills.