Guy at Lidl trying to make me use self check out

I had this in sainsburys this week and ended up saying I dont want a job here they had one poor girl trying to man about 20/30 self service tills, I will no longer shop in sainsburys

Yeah, this would put me off too. ^

Luckily my Aldi still has more manned checkouts than self checkouts. Self service is OK for a couple of bits, maybe half a dozen, but not for a lot.

And as you said, (and I said before,) there is always something that doesn't register on the weighing scale, so a staff member has to come and enter a code in!

And then you have Red Bull, booze, razors, aspirins, paracetamol, Halls mentholyptys, scissors, cutlery and a whole bunch of other items that have to be 'okayed' by a staff member before you can proceed with the sale!

And then you have to wait til everything has gone through, and the bloody thing has decided to say you're OK, before you can take anything off the 'shelf' and pack it. Then as you are taking it off it starts yelling at you to PLEASE TAKE YOUR SHOPPING! Give me chance FFS!

Manned checkouts are way better for most lots of shopping.

I do. And I remember the look my mum would give me when I tried to run about indoors.

I have 4 kids one with adhd and they aren't allowed to run in shops. It's dangerous and they get in people's way. Basic parenting and good manners.

Oh come on! There's no comparison between doing a big shop with a small child in tow and getting a few quid out of a cash point!

They do indeed have more than enough to do, which is why it is an inexcusable waste of their time to be pressuring customers into self-service that they need the assisstants help with because they have a lot of items and a small child to keep an eye on!
It'd be far quicker and far less stressful for both parties to put the items through a normal till. It'd be far easier for shoppers with small lively children to keep them from running off and getting into mischeif or getting hurt as well. It's wouldn't be in the anyone's interests to have children running around the place unsupervised because their parent was tied up with trying to put a big shop through self-service, even WITH help. It'd be even worse if the child got hurt because of it!

@CoffeeCantata My son works in a supermarket and he'd say it's not up to the shop assisstants, it's come from the top. It would appear to be an move to cut staff and wages and to maximise profits. They always have to have an assitant there to help customers as the self-service tills are so inconvenient and difficult to use when you either are not used to them or have a big shop and I feel sorry for them because thye're on their feet for ages and are either bored stiff or overwhelemed with customers who need help. I would say it would b easier for the assitants to sit at a till, as it's easier for customers with kids and big shops and less stress and pressure all round.
But big companies don't care about that. They care about profit. They risk driving customers away if they start pressuring them like that though. There's no way I would want to more than a few items through a self-service till and I avoid them as much as possible. If I had small kids and a big shop I would be very unhappy to be made to feel I couldn't use a manned till and it would put me off shopping in that supermarket!

I think he should have accepted your first answer and with a lively child to manage plus a full trolley, I too would want to pay via a manned till. TBH , I would think that the amount of time and hassle would be far less for him to open another till and let you go through it with your purchases than the the time it would take to help you do it all through a self-service one, never mind wasting both your time arguing debating it.

They're just about tolerable for a few items when you've no young children to keep an eye on and even then, I always need help, so in your case, I'd say it'd have been far quicker and less stressful for all concerned had he accepted your decline in the first place and I don't know why anyone's arguing with you about it!
My son works in a big supermarket and he would say it would be discouraged to try and pressure customers like that. It'd risk putting them off shopping there again. If his manager was pressuring him too much to pressure customers into the self-service tills, I'm sorry for him but as my sons says about a few of his managers, they don't always make the most reasonable decisions, because they're under so much pressure and stress themselves.
IMO, YANBU to have declined and stuck to your guns, but he wasn't being so much weird, as showing signs of being under unreasonable pressure!

But is there an endless supply of people who actually want to do the job the public are demanding?
I mean you can demand all the human service you like, but if less and less people are willing to do the job then your demanding won't get you far.

Society doesn't think these jobs are worth much financially, worth much respect, shouldn't be done long term because they're supposed to be for students or for those who want a bit extra cash, they're not considered careers, considered unskilled - I mean if it's so unskilled a machine can do it, probably better, especially with the advancements in AI.
A culture has developed where these jobs are sneered at and looked down on, those doing them treated like they can't do any better, told to get 'proper jobs' if they want a wage they can live on and a bit of common decency shown towards them.
And now people are up in arms at the very predictable result that less and less people choose to do those jobs.
Yet those at the top are lauded for all the hard work and sacrifices they've made because they've got a bit of power and get paid more. "Work harder! Be better! That's how you are successful! And if you're not financially successful then you're worthless!"

TL;DR - society has exactly the 'service' it's cultivated with it's treatment of the people providing the services we rely on, want & need and the idolisation of those who use other people to make their money and power.

I think your being a bit weird, he sounds as if he was trying to be helpful

My friend complained about the guy in our local Aldi. I assume they'd been told to push the new self checkouts (I personally love them, she doesn't and preferred staffed tills).
Man approaches, she says thanks but no thanks, like the OP he becomes more and more insistent and friend finally says 'I don't like self checkouts thank you' to which he apparently became quite surly and told her she'd have 'no bloody choice soon because all the tills were going'. She replied 'I do, I'll shop elsewhere'.

Friend is quite a small woman and she admitted she felt intimidated by him and his pushiness. She complained but just got the generic reply.

There’s nothing in it for the staff. It’s purely for profit for the company and it’s shareholders.

I've just been in our local M & S this morning and asked for a human to check out my stuff. I have some serious questions!

Please can someone who works in food retail please explain what this move to total self-checkouts is all about? I could understand say, half and half - but why the total changeover? That's what's happened in our local M & S.

What's in it for the staff? Is there anything, or is it just for the store to maximise profits? Can they really no longer afford the staff ? What's changed? If staff have to hang around anyway (because these bloody machines are so sensitive/faulty), how does that improve matters? As a poster on another thread said yesterday, the relationship between staff and customers will change from friendly pass-the-time-of-day chat to more unfriendly surveillance and policing. Is that what the stores want?

These are genuine questions. It's not particularly popular with customers, so is it something staff have pushed for - or has it been imposed from above?

I recently read some where, that in the US there are some self scanners, in some shops that ask you at the end if you would like to give an additional tip, giving you a choice of 5%, 10%, 15% or 20%. The greed is insane.

I stopped going to my local Aldi after it became completely self service. It used to be so efficient but with self service it is so slow and tedious. Try to buy wine- approval needed. It doesn't register the weight of parsley- assistance needed. And so on, for everyone. You can't even pack properly as you go as it upsets the scale. Assistance needed.

I don't usually like self checkouts but wish out local Lidl had them. I've nipped in for a couple of things then had to wait ages behind people with massive trolleyloads of stuff. Then as soon as they announce that Checkout number X is opening, they're announcing that it's closing.

As they try to work with the bare minimum of things, I'm surprised we don't have self checkouts.

Yes what’s next? Will they expect people to load the shelves or help with the lorries. I think their profits are huge and they can employ staff. It’s one thing to put one or two items through a self scan but people often have trolleys and lots of items and it’s a joke to ask them to carry out work as well as buy the stuff. That’s why I feel people should leave a percentage of it unbought if forced into self scanning when it doesn’t suit.

Some people are very easily offended

Of course you can pay cash in, some are card only

I don't really understand why you told him no? He was offering to do it for you we do the same in my workplace. The girl was obviously needing to stock the shelves badly if he was offering to do a trolley load through the self checkouts

You said in your op they were running around. Running around a supermarket is misbehaving ADHD or not

Probably wanted the child out ASAP if they were running about and misbehaving.