Dear major UK supermarket ...

[LindorDoubleChoc]

What would you like to say to the chief exec of the supermarkets you use? I'll start ...

If you are going to sell spinach in plastic bags, please at least direct that they are stored in the refrigerated section rather than on the general unrefrigerated vegetable shelves along with the potatoes and onions etc.

Thank you Sainsburys.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper i suspect the problems with self service tills are equally split between software/hardware/user errors.

But and this bit is for the STORES and their staff - The user isn’t trained at all in how to use all these different tills. It’s all just “follow the screen instructions” which don’t always make sense to non till trained customers. The staff get at least a couple of hours training - customer do not get any training, staff get to use one type of roll whilst customer have to know four or more types of self service till, because no one seems to use the same type of sodding till, even the card pints are different and the customer has forgotten the quirks of the till by the time they next visit a month or more later. So store staff please have patience, in reality we have to do a lot of unpaid work because of it, without training so yes we are going to get it wrong a lot.

Many moons ago I used to trawl the High Street going to butcher, greengrocer, etc. I'm afraid that I drifted, like I was supposed to, to a one-stop-shop at the supermarket. I did my Big Shop in the same place for years.
All this nonsense has made me look harder at the what / why / where / who. I now flit from shop to shop, cherry-picking the bargains. It seems a bit of an own goal by the supermarkets.

See this is my point. Have a machine at the front entrance to buy a variety of the trolley coins, including those you can put on a key ring. Another poster has said that Tesco do have the plastic trolly coins for sake, but I've never seen them in my local store. If we had a card operated machine that dispensed them I would be more likely to get a trolley full of shopping, especially on those days when I'm just nipping in and haven't prepared.

Yes! I kept trying and ending up holding a tiny bit of plastic.

See also - milk tops with weird flaps.

A lot of unpaid work?? Would you rather be standing in a queue for a manned till, then unloading your trolley onto the conveyor etc etc...
It's sometimes annoying when things bleep or are the wrong weight (usually what goes wrong imo). It feels like a pain to wait for the attendant to come. But in reality, it's probably still quicker than queuing up for a manned till.

Quite right you don’t get paid to do it. You pay to do it.

They won’t bring back more manned tills, the current business model is more profitable.

@Twillow actually yes I would prefer to stand in a queue with my trolly full of shopping because if something goes wrong the staff deal with it. Rather that than staff huffing and puffing because I don’t know how their tills work, or customers queuing behind me being very judgemental. Nor do I want to know how all the different tills work or wait to try and get the attention of some harassed and stress store person to come and fix whatever is wrong with the till I’m attempting to use. No, I don’t want to know why the crumpets won’t register or how to fix their receipt roll etc etc. that’s exactly what a proper manned till should do and be operated by a person being paid to know how they work.
instead, I shop online and only use a basket for one or two items in store, and invariably have to get a staff member over to fix the self service till. Ultimately I win though because I spend a lot less than I would if I went in with a trolly. Every little helps in the cost of living crisis!

There are a few things I’ve noticed while working on self service tills (and in other jobs).

People don’t read notices. There can be a socking great flashing bright pink No Exit sign above a door and people will still try to go out through there. Therefore, under pressure of time and being watched by others, there is next to no chance of them absorbing more complex information from a screen.

Touch screens are notoriously unreliable and require a level of fine motor coordination to navigate. It’s a known fact that they don’t respond as well to the fingers of older people - something to do with dryness and skin conductivity.

Scanner equipment, even at its best, relies on a steady hand as well as a flat, clearly printed barcode - and quite a lot of old folk have arthritic fingers and shaky hands. My DM will never be able to text or scroll because her fingers won’t make the necessary fine movements on the screen (quite apart from never learning keyboard skills in the first place).

And this is before you get to the myriad ways in which computerised systems can malfunction due to bugs, overload, connectivity issues, poor design, cheap and nasty programming etc. etc.

I’ve got Reynolds and in the winter my phone screen doesn’t work. So it’s not just old peoples who have trouble with touch screens

What baffles me really is how people are still (wilfully) struggling with self scan tills.

They have been commonplace since about 2006!

Obviously not including people with disabilities, or the very elderly in the above.

@StayAnonn I’ll raise you… Where the fuck is the couscous?!

@Darklane ah, remember the good old days of shops when there was always an elephant’s foot stool knocking about nearby, ready for a sneaky use by us vertically challenged lot.

I do! Bring back the 100 gram packs please Lidl.

Yes this !!!

Sorry that's RUBBISH😁

We all used to only use paper bags and coped - you just get a bigger bag for a bigger quantity. We also used to recycle cardborad boxes to put shopping in instead of plastic bags.

Self serve tills are the work of the devil. In my local sainsbury's the till whispers 'would you like a receipt?'. It really annoys me for some reason. I think because she whispers it it comes across as passive aggressive. TBH I can do without her attitude. [I might get my satnav lady onto her, she stands nonsense from no one] 😁

@Iamblossom
In Bermuda, they use strong paper bags....

DM is visually impaired. She can’t read the screens on self service tills. Looking at you M & S!

At Tesco you can enlarge the print on self service tills

How? Can it be reversed for the next customer? Can it be done on other store tills?
and how did you find out this gem of wisdom?!?

Yes! @AutisticLegoLover
Those vegetable crisp bakes were awesome.

When DP's did their Big Tesco shop in the 80's there were always piles of cardboard boxes to use at the checkout.

Stack brilliantly in the trolley and boot. Collapse and burn on DDads allotment bonfire.

When I lived in the US it was all paper sacks. Loved them for the same reason and they went down the recycling chute.

Yes, I remember when all the supermarkets would routinely leave out empty boxes for customers to take for their shopping - must have been better for them to have less waste to deal with/pay for as well.

I wonder why it's only Lidl and Aldi that still do that now?

Our local Sainsbury's does it.