To think this is why the high street is failing?

Retail, shopkeeping, hospitality all used to be careers and customers generally benefited from that experience. Now they're jobs before people embark on a career and we mostly suffer because of it.

It started with the death of small shops and high streets becoming cookie cutter replicas lacking in identity. Low service chain stores were an easy target for the internet to supplant

The high street is crap. I see plenty of things I like online and go in to try them on and they don’t have them in store. So I go home and order a few items in both the sizes I’d have tried on, and invariably send most of it back.

Then you have the “trying to buy holiday clothes in June/July” situation, only to find it’s all in the sale, barely anything left. Knitwear and winter clothes on the rails already.

Sizing is out of whack too, bought two pairs of H&M trousers recently, fitted a 10 in one pair and needed a 14/16 in the other. Ridiculous.

I used to love a day in town shopping, but it’s not a very rewarding or productive experience these days. I feel sorry for my teenage daughter and her mates, it’s nothing like the good old days of Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Bay Trading!

I've walked out of a few shops recently because I was in a rush and couldn't purchase what i needed in time. But the cost of me leaving doesn't balance out against the cost of a staff member. If we all just didn't bother when we saw a queue they would staff better. Unfortunately in a time poor society its easier just to persevere than look elsewhere.

Amen to this!

The old days of having to trail around a mobbed city centre, in and out of sweltering shops, dodging oblivious idiots crawling along four abreast, packed buses in and out or trying to find a parking spot... err no...

The advent of internet shopping is a godsend. If the High Street is dying on it's arse then that's a facet of the fact that it simply can't compete due to being outdated and that the majority of people have moved on to the 21st Century.

Agree with this

I'm not averse to self service tills, provided they (1) accept bags for life, (2) have staff available to assist and (3) bar codes work. Around here, Sainsburys are terrible for this but Aldi are pretty good

This sums it up perfectly. Thank you for saying this.

I'll just add this: there's a wee Scotmid supermarket not far from me. I've shopped there for years. They have two tills. They don't sell everything, but they have the basics. (They no longer sell meat, only a limited number of ready meals - blame the shoplifter who cleared out their meat section one day.)

I do have bad days, though I try not to go about with my face tripping me. A couple of months ago I went in, paid for my shopping...

The young lad at the counter looked at me: "Are you all right Weary? Could you do with a hug?"

You wouldn't bloody get that from a self checkout.

No one here is winning except landlords and shareholders.

Retail workers are often overworked and underpaid, and dealing with unhappy customers (sometimes aggressive - not you OP, just a big increase in aggression generally!).

Customers are getting poor service from stretched, unmotivated employees and businesses, and we are mostly now happier online shopping.

As a PP said, it's a vicious circle, but i think the bigger companies don't want to improve the situation because it benefits them.

Or perhaps, like my mother, you are 88.

Your husband and best friends have died recently and you're trying to keep busy and keep looking forward but life is a bit tough.

You still want to have some independence so you regularly pop to the shops on the bus (even though your daughter is happy to take you).

But somehow having to deal with a machine telling you to put stuff in and out of you're bag because the useless scales haven't registered your shopping properly is all a bit much and a bit scary at the moment and you'd rather deal with a person because that makes you feel happier.

But let's just call her ignorant and confine her to the house shall we?

This!!!! I HATE shopping online. The actual shops though are horrendous and seem to have no stock.
I noticed M& S now has self check outs in lingerie but I won’t use them. I won’t use them anywhere anymore.
Yes it’s 2024 so businesses should understand that not everyone finds self check out easy.
I nearly had a panic attack trying to send a parcel in a large central post office on a “self service” parcel check in thingy. There were loads of people trying to work this machine out and failing so it’s not just me.

I HAVE a job, I find my own job taxes my brain quite enough, I don’t have the mental capacity to also perform a retail role.
YANBU OP.

The last time I went into H&M you could buy kids shorts for £8. If you want to pay £8 for a pair of cotton shorts then you cannot also expect “service”.

Never have any problems in my nearest town for shopping. The biggest problem that killed our town are the extortionate rent and the cheapest car parking being £6 per hour and all roads double yellow within a 3 mile radius. The car park nearest the shops is about £8.50 per hour

Same for me. Can never find my size in store, especially in a sale! It’s been this way for 20 years at least. So online works for me. And I don’t need to the a whole day out of my life to go buy a new dress. I can’t think of anything worse than wasting my valuable days off traipsing around shops.

I get that done people enjoy the act of shopping, like a hobby. But it seems there are not enough of them left to make it worth the shops time and money to deliver the same level of service they did pre-internet.

I do a mix of online and in-store food shopping. But I use the self scanner thingies as it’s easier and more efficient to pack the bags immediately.

I think most people can and do use these methods. The issue arises when something goes wrong - an item won't scan, a discount's not removed, a tag won't come off, the price is wrong, something needs to be approved, you'd store card won't scan, a voucher or gift card won't scan.

So much to go wrong, not enough staff to deal with the problems.

Thank you. Spot 0n.

How on earth is that entitled? The service is open until 8pm, no doubt to allow people to use it after work. It really annoys me to make an effort to get to a shop at 5pm that says it is open until 5.30pm to find it closed already.

working over time for no pay isn't altruistic, it is wage theft. And if you're earning minimum wage it takes you under the basic legal pay threshold.

If it takes overtime to provide a proper service to customer then you should be paid for it.

Surely it is illegal not to pay her past her shift if she is having to cash up.

Thankfully the coffee shop chain my daughter works for pays her for an an hour after closing to do cashing up/clean up tasks. (Half an hour would probably suffice for retail).

I won't use self service tills unless I only have 1-3 small items. They never work right and it takes an age to get your shopping through.

The worst was last week in Selfridges in London though. My daughter wanted to try on a couple of items of clothing and they were security tagged to the rails. We waited over half an hour for an assistant to appear to ask if she could untag them. The only staff were concession staff associated with one brand only) and they couldn't do it and had no idea how to contact someone. We were on the verge of walking out. In the end we found someone with a name badge on who we assumed was sales staff but he turned out to be a cleaner. He was so helpful and radioed his superviser and eventually, after waiting another 10 mins) a sales assistant came.

(On the other hand I get great service in Selfridges in Manchester)

Went to M&S and only way to pay is digital unless you want real hassle. I wanted to pay £6 in cash and it took ages! But the machine also messed me about re tags on sandles (bought two pairs) - only saw socks after I had paid and really did not want that hassle again.
Iceland take cash and also have manned tills. Aldi has some manned tills. Tescoes, Sainsburys and Asda have increasingly few manned tills. Not everyone wants to use their card - I prefer my bank to be oblivious to what I spend my money on, if at all possible! - but it is getting increasingly difficult to use cash (people should think carefully about this one, as removing the use of cash is a way towards social control and monitoring people's lifestyle) or to find anyone to help in a shop, whether it's a grocers' or a clothes shop.
But shopping online is only feasible for some things e.g. shoes really don't work online. And there is no-one there to ask for assistance at all!

Maybe. I was in USA for two weeks this summer and even clothing stores had the option for a tip on the payment screen.

I do agree that staff were very helpful and friendly I stil declilned to tip though

I very rarely shop in actual shops for anything other than food.

I started shopping online in 2003, when I realised it was:
a) cheaper (because no use of petrol to drive the 40 miles round trip to the nearest High Street shopping centre and no parking fees to pay) and
b) easier to get things in my size (at the time, I was size 8 and shops rarely had things in my size).

I often used to go to the shops (usually M&S or Next) and find something I liked but not in my size, then go home and order it online. I realised that it was a waste of time and money to drive to the shops, so I went fully online.

I have no idea which shops are in my local High Street because I haven't been there for over 20 years.

This is me.

Can’t believe some of the posts on here. If a service is advertised as being available up to 8pm then it should be available till 8pm, not 7.30pm or 7.45pm. The OP is doing nothing wrong, she is using an advertised service, during its opening hours. It is ridiculous to say to her, to take it up with the company.

“you cannot expect staff to go "over and above"”. The OP is not expecting the member of staff to go “over and above”, she is expecting the member of staff to carry out the service that they are supposed to provide, again in this case (as the member of staff admitted) staying open till 8pm.