To think this is why the high street is failing?

I do use self checkouts, but they invariably reject my shopping bags (‘a colleague is coming to help’ 😩) - heavy cotton ones - so now I only ever pack after paying, which means I take rather longer in a queue.

And I always take my receipt, after once failing to do so in Asda - and being stopped at the door and escorted back to the checkout between two security guards!

There was a small security tag on the back of a pack of steak - of course I hadn’t noticed and the SS till made no alert.
They found my receipt in the bin - talk about a lesson I’ll never forget! But why the fuck is there no system of self-checkout alerts for security tags??

@SilverGlitterBaubles my mom taught me that as a teenager many hundreds of years ago (that’s what it feels like anyway!). That your interaction with a person may be their only interaction of the day. I have never forgotten it. Chatting with “strangers” has been a very useful skill to have developed.

DD works in a supermarket and is heartbroken by the number of older customers who come to her till, who when she makes conversation with them they will say she is the only person they have spoken with in days sometimes a week. They say that they come in especially because the staff are friendly and they are not forced to use self checkouts which stresses them out. Sadly they are We are gradually eroding human contact from our daily interactions which is vital to those who are older and live alone.

Just to let you all know: it's about to get a lot harder to get your groceries scanned by a paid human being. Shops and supermarkets will almost certainly respond to this ruling by eliminating as many cashier jobs as possible.

Supreme court rules against Asda in workers' equal pay case | Asda | The Guardian

The easy solution to the under 18 checkout operator would to have a badge, or not to employ under 18s on tills to sell alcohol! It's actually more frustrating because you don't know they're under 18 whereas you know that the machine will definitely call someone over. But you can look for someone who looks older if you want to buy wine or a set of kitchen knives at a staffed till.

They don't need to worry about adding up because the till does it for them.

Remind me again what happens when I try to put my bottle of wine through the self checkout? What happens when I need to use a barcode and can't figure out how to enter it?

The cash I'm sure the machine can figure out much faster you are correct, that's if I can find a machine that takes cash. Most of the time the ones in Aldi are out of order due to needing emptied.

Your post also brings up the 'use it or lose it' part of our brain. It is shocking at how bad mental arythmitic has become in so many people. Likely down to cashless society.

As it happens yes I do speak out against big supermarkets. A massive failed campaign happened in a small town I lived in before to stop a large tesco opening. I still where possible, try and use small independent shops. The same with post offices.

At least with the self scanning machine you carry around you can put back any item where it won't scan properly and get one that does.
At the actual self service tills it's a manic five minutes trying to get it to do something !
All of it is a faff whatever you do though

I had my trusty Seasalt jute shopper so didn't need a bag, the machines hate it though so I have to pile up my shopping and pack afterwards, maybe they should design them to take a variety of bags, it's almost like they want you to use the plastic ones

The bag question is simply to stop you stealing them. It is annoying.

Maybe they should design them with less multiple choice questions, I don't need to be asked about bags more than once, I'm sure the bag question popped up about 3 times, it's like a test.

Nothing as bad as the dreadful self service till I used yesterday in M&S that wouldn't read all the bar codes, I would have been quicker to queue for the manned checkout, and it didn't work for the assistant either that had to help me. I only had about 6 items.

I take it you've never gone to a manned till that had a problem or a checkout assistant who didn't know how to enter a voucher or an underage checkout operator who had to call over a supervisor to put alcohol through the till, or one who couldn't work out how to deal with you handing over £10.14 for a total of £9.14? Or any number of other matters arising because of poor training or incompetence of checkout staff?

Re staff numbers, you're completely ignoring the entire new industry employing huge numbers of people to design and manufacture the self service tills, including entire supply chains, those who install them, those who train the staff, those who maintain and repair them, programmers to program them, etc.

It's a shame they can't design and program them a bit better then.

@taxguru Lets not pretend for a minute that it takes the same amount of staff hours to design, install and maintain a self service till as it does to man an actual ordinary till. There would be zero point supermarkets installing self service tills if it did not save them money. In this case it saves them money on staff wages.

Re staff numbers, you're completely ignoring the entire new industry employing huge numbers of people to design and manufacture the self service tills, including entire supply chains, those who install them, those who train the staff, those who maintain and repair them, programmers to program them, etc.

As has always happened, jobs come and go. Yes, there will be fewer checkout operators but there will be "new" jobs elsewhere. It's the way it's always been.

Were you bothered about corner shop owners who lost their businesses/livelihoods when supermarkets opened up and took all their customers?

One thing that is nice about the US self checkouts in general though is there’s no unexpected item in bagging area, so if for example the multipacks of soda or water are on a multi buy you can scan one multiple times and pop it back in the trolley

Yes this is also the case in the M&S where I live and until very recently was also the case in Waitrose but in their wisdom they've put the ones with weighing machines in, so everything takes twice as long now.

It may well be that nobody is being made redundant, but when people leave, they won't be replaced. So the overall job count goes down.

And people on here should care, because most retail workers are women, and most IT workers programming self-serve machines (and apps that don't work easily for parking, or even parking machines come to that!) are men. So we're getting rid of jobs that women tend to do.

Also, people often need a staffed till because they have age-restricted items and it's much quicker to go to a staffed till than wait for someone to come and find you at a self-serve till.

One of the supermarkets where we are (East coast US but not a major city) tried to go 100% self checkout with no manned tills whatsoever, it was carnage! People either leaving full trollies from the resulting long lines queues or some walking out with them without paying

Needless to say they backtracked, but now they have employees manning the self checkout machines where there’s an awkward dance to get the trolly past them every time.

One thing that is nice about the US self checkouts in general though is there’s no unexpected item in bagging area, so if for example the multipacks of soda or water are on a multi buy you can scan one multiple times and pop it back in the trolley

I have heard numerous times how self service is taking jobs away. I don’t necessarily want to be part of taking jobs from people. Nor do I ask for someone to man a till.

Do you work in a shop, because your attitude actually is shit, considering I said I didn’t like something because it takes jobs away? You don’t need to be that rude.

That is true. Supermarkets have hardly any staff now on the shopfloor.

Yes, they most definitely are reduced. The supermarket in my town with the least number of self-checkouts and the most number of manned checkouts has far more staff than the one where it is the opposite. I would say the one which is trying to make the customer do their work has half the staff of the other, and I called in yesterday and heard one of the staff apologise for the long wait to a customer as they were short staffed. The supermarket which still believes in customer services at busy times has enough staff to have a checkout operator, plus a packer, at each till, as well as shelf fillers, supervisors etc.

Just to pick up on 'your employee stay late for no pay'. Who is actually to blame for that? The customer without whom you wouldn't be in that job? You, because you didn't work hard enough to complete all tasks? Or the senior managers who now have you fulfilling two roles with insuficient time to complete all tasks?

I'm not in the UK and checkout operators in some supermarkets here still bag groceries for us. It's called customer service - an outdated notion these days but you will find it still very much appreciated.

When the shops either pay me to scan and bag my own shopping, or else reduce the price of the goods siginificantly, then I will do the work. Until that day comes I will shop in a store which still understands what customer service is - and I know I'm not alone in that by a long chalk. So you can bore off with your "move with the times ....." crap.

HTH

This is totally true also. I think some employers are now looking at getting staff back into offices after finding productivity does drop off on a lot of occasions.

smellydog1
Of course staff numbers are reduced. Prior to making the customer do the job of a checkout operator, you would have someone on the till and somebody filling shelves. Now you have just one person filling both roles. You may think reduced customer service with no interaction is a good thing. A lot of us don't.