Self checkout tills are killing the shopping experience

[Stopsnowing]

My first two jobs )as a Saturday girl) was on the tills. I learned to chat with customers and fold their clothes neatly and handle money responsibly. Sometimes they had queries or complaints or would ask me questions when they couldn’t find anyone on the floor.
I am not a massively chatty person and I have a busy full time job. I am not someone whose only social contact is via shopping but dear God how soul destroying is shopping in places with all or mainly self service tills.
it is deathly quiet and there is no interaction with a human except for one harried person trying to whizz around fixing the scanning issues.
marks and Spencer is fully self service now and if you want to be served by a human you have to join the single long refunds queue. Waitrose had two tills open the other day and when the queues built up and a lady asked them to open another till she was directed to the empty self check outs and was told they didn’t have the staff for another till. When I shop in Aldi or Sainsburys they have one or no staffed till. So anyone who is elderly or who needs help has ti stand and wait and that is not easy.
I am now scanning a whole trolley shop. It takes longer than being served and involves a lot mor e reaching down which some people won’t be able to manage.
the Waitrose lady told me “can’t stop progress”. I said” whir about your job?” She said her job wasn’t affected as they were only not replacing leavers as opposed to sacking people so she would be ok. She seemed to miss the point that if she left her job she wouldn’t be able to find another similar one. My children won’t be able to have a Saturday job where they will get their first lessons in customer service. A huge chunk of jobs has gone forever. Another element of customer service is gone (because these till Roles have not been replaced with staff walking the floors (good luck with that). Social interaction reduced. Another step towards the death of the high street.

This piece rang true for me

https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2023/aug/02/want-a-glimpse-of-dystopia-visit-the-self-service-checkouts

i thought that as well . Customers eh? Inconvenient fuckers

I'm elderly and I absolutely love self-scanning and self-checkout. I do prefer to use the shop's own scanners and not waste my phone battery though.
I can't think of anything more tedious than queuing up to unload the trolley I just filled and then pack it up again and I detest assistants or other people in the queue 'chatting' or commenting on my shopping.

But it's only really upsetting for those that grew up used too the old model. The next generation won't care. As we didn't care that we grew up shopping in a different way to our grandparents.

Pretty much sums it up, it's a *things where better in my day/I don't like change" cloaked in an anti capitalist/what about xx group.

It is just a natural technological change and won't be put back in the box now, those harking back to how it used to be are no different to the type that is often mocked around things being better 'back in the day', it is luddite behaviour and the people generally complaining are becoming the the type of person they used to roll there eyes at.

Was at a big data conference the other week, and whilst obviously there is a capitalist streak to bringing in self service, if the uptake wasn't there initially it wouldn't have taken off, there has been an uptick in footfall because people wanting to pick up just a few bits didn't have to queue in the 5 items or less till, people realise it is a transaction and just want in and out, the OP's title of 'killing the shopping experience' is telling.

Most people understand the basic transactional experience of it, it's why the likes of Waitrose/M&S etc moved into the lunch market killing local sandwich shops, why the local corner shop is not as prevalent as they used to be, etc, etc rolling back through history. The anti capitalist streak people are trying to suggest is just that their preferred flavour of capitalism is changing to the market conditions.

Our store regularly gets positive feedback for friendliness and helpfulness, we know regulars and we do enjoy talking to them.

Retail is famously understaffed and overworked. It shows when people don’t understand this. We’d much rather have the staff to be on manned checkouts, but not at the expense of leaving frozen goods out to perish as we need to unload them.

Two ladies, possibly 40 to 50 years old, abandoned their shopping trolleys in the most inconvenient place as they didn't want to self service. Not much in the trolley just an act of defiance with a note to Manager about wanting service.
It made me chuckle.

I felt forced to use them yesterday as the 2 man tills had massive queues. 3 times I had the assistant over to shut it up because of the scale. Customer service has gone completely out of the window, once upon a time supermarkets use to pride themselves in opening new tills up if the queues got too big. Now there is rows of self serve and nobody in sight.

How utterly pointless. Would raise an eye roll from me rather than a chuckle.

Thinking about this, the other main shops in the my local high street that actually have cashiers are Savers (no self scan), Iceland (think all manned checkouts no self scan) and Co Op - manned checkouts no self scan. The latter shop is more expensive than the other one though.

My DM’s 87 year old NDN uses the more expensive health food shop to get Ecover refills and she’s partly deaf with a hearing aid but likes human interaction.

Then you need more staff. it’s not like the large supermarkets don’t post vast profits, year-on-year, and that’s after getting their large finance departments to ameliorate those profits as far as they possibly can.

I would imagine that one staff member’s hourly rate would be more than paid for itself by reducing half the shoplifting that goes on at the self-service tills in that staff member’s absence.

I hate self serve checkouts. It takes me so long. Birthday cards etc are too light to register that you have put it in the bag, so you get 'item not placed in bagging area'. Yes it is! As for the actually scanning of the barcode, I am either doing it too close or too far away for it to scan. If there is the word 'alcohol' then you have to wait for a member of staff to verify you are able to buy it. It is not alcohol but the barcode has picked up on the word 'alcohol'. I am talking about alcohol free drinks. I agree with the above poster over the 'no bag'. There is no bag and I have pressed the 'no bag' option! I don't think I have ever used a self serve checkout once without having to need a member of staff come over and swipe their card to override something, which defeats the object of it. I am not a check out person and I don't wish to be. It just takes me so long. If you are doing it regularly then you know where the barcode is. I don't, so end up turning the item round and round to find the damn thing!

I've never been in a shop that didn't have some checkers as well as self checkouts (SW London). I generally use my own scanner so I can get through the tils quickly and my shopping is already bagged. But I can see how for some they like the human touch and extra help on hand, so you would hope that markets would cater to this.
But it's like banks - any bank I go in has a long line of people who need to do banking in person - be it they don't like online banking, don't understand it, or what they need cannot be done (for me it's generally sending large amounts to someone). Yet banks are still closing!
I did find myself relying mostly on online purchases, very convenient to be sure, but I used to love an afternoon going round the shops, the buzz of the crowds, the feeling of community. Can't get that just interacting with a machine.

The annoying thing about them for me is that they ALWAYS require a member of staff to come and sort out issues.
they don’t recognise your bags- some one has to come and sort it.
Eveytime you fill a new bag some has to come and verify it.
if you buy alcohol someone has to come and verify age
if an item is really light the scales don’t regulate and some has to come and sort it/.
they need to be better.

I thought the same for years then having got a rescan which took the staff 10 mins to sort out I went back to manned tills and was so surprised when it turned out to be faster and more efficient. You get round the shop far faster by just putting stuff straight in the trolley, then load it onto the conveyor in packing order (chilled/frozen, ambient, fruit and veg) and it makes for much neater packing than doing it as you go round. Yes you can stand bags in your trolley but they flop shut, you don't finish one and start another as chilled and frozen are at opposite ends of the store. Plus you get a bit of chat, I'm definitely sticking with manned checkouts for big shops.

it is luddite behaviour and the people generally complaining are becoming the the type of person they used to roll there eyes at

Wish I was going to be around when you become the type of person you used to roll your eyes at.

I used the Sainsburys Scan and Shop a few times, but on a number of occasions I had to have the staff check my 10 random items, and on more than one occasion had to wheel my trolley down to a checkout - unload it all, have the staff member scan it all and repack. That happened twice in a few weeks and totally put me off using it again.

I am happy to stand in a queue and let someone else do my scanning

Well supermarkets lose more money through the self service system with people nicking stuff rather than scanning it so I think this has to be consumer led. If customers didn't like it they wouldn't do it.

My beef is with self service checkouts that don't work. M&S always seems to have backed the wrong horse. The system they had before and recently upgraded is one of the most frustrating - I often need to get assistance due to it not recognising that something is in the bagging area. I now have to scan everything and then bag it afterwards.

But Waitrose still offer both options so if I have more than one bags worth of food I also go to their manned till as it's just more efficient,

A lot of this has been driven by shortages in staff post covid and Brexit. Mr Monkey works in retail that can't easily be automated and recruiting and retaining staff in retail jobs is hellish.

I use M&S scan and shop but regularly go over the limit so instead of checking it out in the app I have to transfer it to a self scan till. It always beeps to summon a staff member because I buy scampi or some other kind of fish. The staff member presses a button and I can carry on with me payment. It makes NO sense. None whatsoever. What is the purpose of tagging this item with a tag that you do not need to deactivate?

I have asked every staff member who has ever come to press that magic button on the till and none of them can explain the batshit process

How do you choose which soulless supermarket to shop at? I used to do most of my shopping in one supermarket but since they've started all the "inconvenient customer" malarky, I've lost any loyalty and have spread my wings. And, of course, you then notice that you can get item X cheaper at one supermarket but item Y at a different one. I no longer buy a trolleyful anywhere, I buy smaller quantities at different shops. I'm not sure that that was what they intended nor wanted.

I go to Tesco or M&S in equal amounts. I have no reasoning for it really but the soulless aspect is what I want from a shop!

A lot of this has been driven by shortages in staff post covid and Brexit. Mr Monkey works in retail that can't easily be automated and recruiting and retaining staff in retail jobs is hellish.

Brexit wouldn't explain why self service is taking off across the US/Europe/China etc etc etc.....

It is a demographic and technological shift, much like how department stores wiped out corner shops and independent retailers, why local takeaways don't hire delivery drivers direct etc etc

At least the M& S self service ones don’t comment on how nice the clothes you’ve chosen are. You just know it’s their customer service training speaking and they probably think they are hideous.

Omg, I love self checkout.

The times I have used a regular check out recently I have had to bite my tongue. Get your money and card ready! Don't query every single transaction! And stop fucking chit chatting!

I dont have the time or patience.

Years ago I was with a friend in Asda and the checkout operator actually commented on her purchase of folic acid, mentioning her being pregnant in front of her other children!

I was utterly stunned someone could be so stupid, rude and blatant about another woman's body. Now I would probably have said something, not badly juts 'be mindful' type thing but I was very young and not at all able to take o that kind of confrontation.

What I did take from it however was a fear of biting anything related to pregnancy and childbirth as I absolutely don't want random people commenting on it (a long time before self scan)

@Justanotherlurker Well it is a bit of both. Places like France turned to technical solutions earlier for many routine jobs as their labour market was less flexible than ours due to higher barriers to hiring and firing and an aging population. For a long time the UK relied on a low wage, very flexible labour market - meaning it was often cheaper to hire people on minimum wage than invest in technology - covid, Brexit and an aging population has changed that.

It is true that Brexit has impacted hospitality more than retail - places like ITSU were investing in self service pretty much as soon as the referendum result came in.