To think this is why the high street is failing?

Our M&S pretty much had self service sussed, a good mixture of manned and a self service area with easy to use tills. Until they decided to replace the self service tills with a new design. They are awful, previously the basket was at hand height, you slid your items across the scanner and into your waiting bag, all on a level. Now the basket is really low down, you have to reach down, lift the item into a higher recessed scanner, really awkward if you are man handling a bag of spuds and then bend back over to put it in your bag. It's like digging the bloody garden.

Our Tesco is usually fine, but now won't let you use any bag other than a carrier bag, unless you wait for staff to check in your bag and verify it's empty.

No I’m much older than that 🤣 In fact old enough to remember when people understood sarcasm. Anyway, it’s an interesting discussion so I’ll stop derailing.

I stopped going to ASDA because of self service. The real issue is that stores were built with cashier tills and now converted to self service. But customers take longer to put a shop through self service. So the queues for self service became unreal.

Not back pedalling at all, I meant every word (in a flippant way obvs) but I clearly touched a nerve! It’s not that deep. Have a cup of tea.

Of course you're back-pedalling. You've referred to the type of people who don't answer their door previously too. It's nasty when you are taking the piss of people who may be struggling.

You've not 'touched a nerve', I'm very sociable with a partner, kids and a close group of friends. I also don't wfh. I just don't like nasty, goady people, especially ones who then try to act innocent. As for, it's not that deep, as a pp said, are you 14?

It was very quirky and glad somebody else remembers, the strawberry scrunch is unrivalled! The Sanctuary was lovely as well.

“Not that deep”-are you 14?

You say that as if he's being unreasonable. Currently I have rattling around in my head 12 separate 4 digit codes, for bank, safe, various door accesses, burglar alarms, exit from my father's nursing home, use of the toilet, plus longer numeric codes for 3 different bits of IT. It's a miracle that I can remember one of my card pins.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Asda has just announced they’re putting more staff on tills because customers don’t like self service. If town centres want to remain they need to make the shopping experience better. Customers don’t like self service and customers have other options.

And this is what grinds my gears - the removal of choice and the "survival of the fittest" attitude that exemplifies the current zeitgeist. Technology is moving so fast that even tech experts are going "Woah" and questioning whether it's a good thing in general.

While the younger generations have grown up with tech, there are a good cohort who have had to learn it as a completely new concept with varying degrees of success. I muddle through, and have used tech as a tool on a very basic level. I have learned various systems for various jobs by writing down step by step idiot guides in notebooks, much to the hilarity of younger colleagues, even more so when I might achieve some speed and confidence only for some new sodding system to be brought in and I'd have to start all over again.

My background is art and design (pre retail failure) and bar a bit of printing and very basic photos hopefully, give me brushes, paint and paper every time.

AI and deepfakes give me the dystopia hereby jeebies, but what bothers me even more is the absolute reliance of every part of our infrastructure on technology that, let's face it, is vulnerable to cyber attack or the intern spilling coffee or the fixer getting locked out of the server room by jammed electronic systems when something goes awry. Our dependence on it is not benign, not practically and not mentally.

In terms of society it creates discrimination - in the US sentencing is "enhanced" by algorithms that predict recidivism in the justice system and can lead to disproportionately long sentences for relatively minor crimes because "computer says no".

And we've all been there at some point - needing to spend hours trying to get through to a human because some glitch has lost your information, or someone has entered something incorrectly. Which ain't so bad if it's your new Fendi flip flops in the ether, but when it's a bank account or a prescription issue, not so much.

Honestly, I'm glad I'm 55 and will probably miss being chipped and scanned every five minutes. At least, I hope I do.

And don't get me started on the slow creep towards social credit schemes....

Not back pedalling at all, I meant every word (in a flippant way obvs) but I clearly touched a nerve! It’s not that deep. Have a cup of tea.

I actually work in change. I spend my day making sure the new technology we're implementing covers all our requirements and works as intended.

But for our society, change is only good if the new employment prospects stay in the same place. If we take away all the mining jobs in the North East and say "oh but there's these tech jobs now" but they're all in the South East, how does that help the NE?

If we take retail jobs from small towns in Wales and say "oh but we need web designers" but all those offices are in London? How does that help the small Welsh towns?

I used to work in a bureau de change....getting out at our finish time was nigh on impossible...customers think we just threw the money in the safe and swan out of the door...but there is so much paperwork and security stuff to do....there is no choice but to start cashing up before....a late customer then means all the security tags on the bags have to be redone....spreadsheets altered etc...there is an audit trail to everything that we do.

Don’t everywhere to be free but I also don’t expect to pay exorbitant amounts. Will shop online - have more choice, nicer shopping experience and save a fortune.

I agree with @taxguru, They do have to accept that things are changing.

Things always change. It's a constant evolution. Nothing remains the same forever. Nothing at all.

Plenty of jobs have come and gone over time. It isn't just in retail. Many roles were killed off by the march of technology. My grandfather was a musician in a cinema orchestra back in the days when cinemas still had orchestras and movies were silent. Then came movies with soundtracks (talkies) and bang, cinema musicians were out of a job! My grandfather took a job in the local steelworks after the Second World War precisely because there was no way back into his previous occupation.

Jobs come and go. There is no getting away from that. Technology is here to stay and won't be going anywhere.

Some staff will be needed because problems will occur, and obviously there are still plenty of people who prefer manned tills (my mother). The change isn't going to stop though, so we may as well forget that idea.

I self checked out a trolley load for the first time the other day and tbh it was less stressful because I could do it at my own pace. Checkout operators always seem to be trying to break some sort of speed record. There is the odd one who will match their scanning speed to your packing speed but they are few and far between.

I can do it, I know how to do it, I just don't want to.

So unless there's no other option, or I'm truly desperate, the shops with manned tills or online retailers will get my money.

What companies do you use? I’m done with supermarkets, the food is always rotten and obscenely expensive.

No I can do it you are right. I just don't want to. I don't want to load all my shopping, then cannot all through still on my own while the fucking thing feels at least I haven't put my item in the bagging area quite quickly enough, or because it decides it doesn't weigh the right amount. Then call someone over 4:5 times to correct or authorise things. Plus I have come to the realisation that it's actually quite nice to interact with someone and having no interaction after the shopping experience. I absolutely refuse to use the scan as you go along after basically being accused of stealing because one item hadn't scanned when they did a check. Never again, he was so rude. If the supermarkets want you to their work for them and take I the extra profit from employing fewer staff, they need to expect and swallow a few customer scanning errors.

Similarly, I do all my shopping online as it's easier (and I'm disabled) and often cheaper, but I don't enjoy it, it's a chore. I used to love a day out shopping. But it's very hard to get yourself back into the habit especially when the experience is nowhere near as good as it used to be.

£24!!

Where the hell was that?

And that's the reason some areas of the country are now struggling for employment. Because the jobs that replaced things like miners are based in the city, not where the miners were.

The same thing will happen to retail workers. They won't be able to get to the jobs that replaced them, if they even manage to retrain to do them, because they'll all be based in London offices and not where they live.

One of the large towns near me has free parking for two hours on a Saturday, probably to encourage people to shop there a bit.

It is also why mega garden centres selling lots of things unrelated to gardens have exploded over the last decade. At my nearest one you can buy food, clothes, toys, etc. It is more like a small department store. But they keep a lot of sizes in stock and customer service is very good. I bought some chinos purely because I could try them in first.

"Flippant" comments that looked exactly like you were taking the piss out of people who don't like opening their door.

Maybe try remembering that through text you cannot convey the intended tone, and so "flippant" can come across as "nasty" very easily.

And also decide whether you think flippant remarks about people's lives are actually appropriate.

I want to buy clothes in person. Quality of fabrics and sizes are too variable to order online. But every time I try they have hardly any sizes and just tell you to order online. The in person shopping experience has deteriorated so much.

I used to work on an industrial estate with limited parking on site (ie not big enough car parks) and no road parking and no transport links - it was a NIGHTMARE!! so stressful