WIBU To ask for a different lady to scan my shopping?

Scan-as-you-shop is absolutely designed for people with a large number of items - in fact, that's exactly who it's aimed at, because it's massive trolleys of stuff that take the most time at an ordinary checkout or a self-checkout. It's designed to save time when you're doing a big shop.

Scan-as-you-shop isn't the same thing as just using a self-checkout. At a self-checkout you scan everything at the end of your shop and then pack it. Scan-as-you-shop is when you scan and pack everything as you walk round and then all you do when you check out is pay.

No disagreement from me on either of those.

Obviously OP didn't do that - you can tell from her posts on this thread (and actually starting it) that she is kind and considerate and didn't want to upset the woman. Many of us would be the same.

But surely you must know that lots of people are not like that, and have no patience with elderly or disabled people's needs at all and would react very differently?

You did the right thing OP. You don't need to martyr yourself by being late because of someone else's incompetence. She might not have been aware she was so much slower than everyone else. She might actually try speed up a bit now!

The solution is to lower retirement age and make disability benefit easier to get but people on here would hate that

But OP didn't shout at her and OP didn’t swear at her.

OK... then I don't know what the solution is if they choose to ignore reasonable adjustments for disabled and otherwise lower-capability staff - and are happy to have them shouted at and sworn at by irritated customers.

That's if you can get a credit card, of course.

Even if they can, maybe more privileged people just don't understand the fear that many poor people have of getting into unpayable debt and/or falling foul of the rules and having to pay a lot of interest or other penalty charges. If you have very little money to work with, it's much, much better for your peace of mind to be able to know that what you've just bought is now completely paid for and you don't owe anybody anything for it at a later stage.

Yes, many people do manage credit card accounts very successfully and never pay a penny in interest or charges for them; but those people aren't the driving force for banks offering credit cards in the first place, are they? Like with the gambling companies who protest too much keep insisting that they genuinely don't want to make millions and millions of pounds from problem gamblers.

I didn’t miss that update the update was sent after the person asked the question

If you are front end of a supermarket you do it all self scan, scan and go checkouts,csd, kiosk, amazon, evri, put backs, baskets, handsets, cleaning, security. Most jobs there is half the staff there where 10 years ago people leave retire they don't get replaced. This is how companies make profit by getting everyone to do the job of 3 people.

I went to Tesco today, you can actually go in the trolley manual checkout area and still use the scanner - my store has a trolley self checkout, where you can use the scanner if you wish to, as well as a basket self checkout, and then a dedicated scanner checkout. So you could use a different area if your store is the same.
But yeah, doing it online does not mean that the money will get taken out of your account before Thursday. But if its so important, why not use a Tesco credit card so you can pay regardless of whether its pay day or not?

What's changed, then, as there always used to be loads of traditional checkouts, each staffed full-time by a worker - rather than one or two people overseeing a dozen or more where customers are doing most of the work themselves? It's not like the prices have come down to take the reduced staff costs into account!

I guess it's up to the shops - the usually enormous businesses that routinely get hardworking staff making them lots of money by paying them less than a living wage which the taxpayer than has to top up via UC - whether they want to support disabled staff whilst also enabling their customers to shop in a satisfactory timescale; or otherwise risk customers abandoning them for a rival if shopping there no longer works for them.

Actually, I should have thought of it before, but why couldn't this lady work on the self-service tills, rather than the scan and shop? That way, she would never be in a position of having to scan scores of items, but would just be pressing a button now and then to confirm alcohol/other restricted purchases or to override it when people tell it that they're using their own bags and then it complains because there's something the weight of a bag on there.

Plus, essentially blocking someone from taking overtime marked as ss would reduce her earning ability. Tesco is not a full-time contract; you are at the mercy of picking up overtime.

Incidentally, make of this what you will, but I have a personal theory that one way to lessen your chances of being called for a rescan is to scan one or more new bags for life (scan them as ordinary items, rather than waiting to add them in the screen that comes after the barcode or the recall instruction.

Obviously this rather depends on whether you actually need any new bags; but considering that their algorithms will be trying to identify people who accidentally or deliberately leave items unscanned, with my layperson's hat on, I would guess that actually remembering and being honest enough to scan your new bags to pay for them would go heavily in your favour, and increase the likelihood that you have indeed scanned all of your other purchases too!

There isn't the staff levels to do anything you mentioned

Of course I'm not proposing that she have to leave the store. I'm just not convinced that she is in the best place - especially as, with scan and shop, you don't usually get a choice of assistants who come over to deal with a rescan.

Might it be possible to filter it out so that she's only called over for rescans when it's half a dozen items or fewer, and one of her much speedier colleagues is called for massive/full rescans (or could she just refer the big ones to other colleagues herself)? Could she possibly work in partnership with another colleague, so they each scan some of the items - albeit she scans 5 and they scan 75?

Maybe she could work on one of the traditional checkouts (assuming they have at least two). There would probably be a lot of people who are in no hurry and would appreciate a slow-paced service along with a nice chat - some people don't have hugely busy schedules and see going to the shops as a social event, or at least an enjoyable, significant part of their day. She could also then sit down, which would likely be more comfortable than being on her feet all day for an older person.

So there are two traditional tills operational: one which is clearly moving faster with less of a queue, which many people will automatically opt for; and then Sheila's till, where the people who are happy to take their time, and maybe appreciate not feeling rushed Aldi-style to pack their shopping at lightning speed, and who know that Sheila is friendly and 'methodical' and thus will gladly queue up and wait for her till.

I think it's great that she is employed, valued and included; but any considerable slack must be supported and mitigated by the employer and not the customer. It can't be nice for her at present, as I bet a load of people complain about her slowness and there will always be some who will verbally lay into her personally. 20 extra minutes is a completely unacceptable time to make people wait to pay, after they've already taken the time to scan their own shopping.

I've worked in a supermarket for 20 years and never seen one this high even on a double trolley Christmas shop I think there is some exaggerating going on in this post

I'm finding it funny that posters (who have clearly never worked in retail!) being like just move her to another department like stocking shelves, yes doing fill and dragging around cages and hefting products up onto shelves is notoriously much easier physically than serving on self service or tills . Realistically, serve is probably the most appropriate place for the woman.

Checking 80 items on a Scan and Shop is ridiculous!

We have a tesco delivery every Friday morning.
The money is never in the account until Friday morning, which is when tesco take their payment.

OP has not advocated for the staff member to be dismissed, especially in the overdramatic way you have childishly conjured up.

The question was, was she unreasonable to request the other available staff member instead.

You think SWBU and I think she wasn't. That's all that was required here.

You missed this update:

Sorry. This week was a one off. My boss asked me to do a couple of extra hours at the pub I work in at weekends tomorrow (I take my daughter with me to this btw and she sits quietly in the staff room, it's a tiny family pub with a friendly and understanding owner), so as a return favour I asked him to pay me early so I could do the shopping today instead of tomorrow and this has totally thrown me and made me think today is Thursday when its Wednesday.

My mum wrote a shopping list on the back of packaging from a premium brand of ready meal fish pie and I somehow scanned the barcode accidentally. Sainsbury's gifted £9.50 by my mistake!

With a big shop I find it easier just to use a manned checkout.

YANBU @goodoldsussexbythesea - I recommend next time you are bag checked, go to customer service and ask them to check your account as you seem to be getting a lot of them. This is what we did when we had the same (on the recommendation of staff) as they told us that sometimes if you're picked once, the system puts in you in a cycle which can be long! Whatever they did sorted it out for us (PS husband works for a Tesco sister company so a bit weird we were checked every week).

Also, not sure why everyone is trying to get you to do an online shop when it's absolutely fine to just ask for someone else. We all shop to suit ourselves and our family, not sure why you're being asked to consider someone else's feelings quite so much.