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

It makes me think they must have been mentally deficient to not notice that there were no manned checkouts before completing there entire shop.

But yes, let's laugh at the poor overworked, underpaid employee who has no control over the checkout system who is now going to have to put those Modern Anarchist's shopping back. Such a brave rebellion against The Man. That's definitely the sort of attitude that's going to make people want to work in retail and make the shopping experience nice for people.

I once had a pregnancy test in with my shopping and was asked, by the cashier, what result I was hoping for.

It seemed a big question to be asked in that situation 🙈

im a cash customer. In the last week I’ve waited a total of 45 minutes more than card payments

Sometimes the checkout person is the only interaction I get out in the wild and it's one I enjoy. When we visit St Anne's there's a lovely chap on the till in M&S and he really helps make our visit a great one with his chat. If he's not on that day it's just not the same. He always remembers us and takes a friendly interest in our visit.
The co-op garage shop has a lovely guy on the till who again is always friendly and
asks with interest about our day and remembers us and our conversations.
Our local Boots could do with a self checkout though as the queue in there is ridiculous at times.
Asda there's a choice and I choose the self check out usually as never have more than a basket of items.
I've not been to a big supermarket in a long time so can't comment but locally there's usually a person not a machine.

It’s so stupid. You want to be served by someone, so you just add a pointless task to someone’s job that gives them less time to do their other tasks.

People aren’t applying for underpaid roles, that’s the issue.

I once had someone break eggs which immediately needed cleaning up, could see I was the only one on the shop floor, then stand at the till waiting to be served. It’s not that I didn’t want to serve and be chatty and friendly, but use common sense and empathy in these situations.

It makes me think they must have been mentally deficient to not notice that there were no manned checkouts before completing there entire shop.
Maybe they assumed that the shop would be properly staffed? We all do a lot of stuff on auto-pilot and assume that what happened yesterday will happen again tomorrow. It took a few goes of "inconvenient customer" before I took the hint - I didn't dump shopping but I have voted with my feet. (I complained to the manager a few times but he did the "I'm only doing what HQ says" thing.)

I had a similar experience in an unfamiliar supermarket in a different town. It was a labyrinthine layout and I didn't realise until I got to the tills that it was only self-service. They'd got staff on the door for security but not staff to serve you.

I'm not elderly (yet) but I agree with this. I want to get in and out as fast as possible and it doesn't involve chatting or making small talk at the till.

I was in the queue for the conveyor belt queue because I had a full trolley. I had stood there waiting for ages. Finally it was my turn. I’d started loading my things on the conveyor belt. This lady comes up to me and says that she has to go before me. I said why not use the self scanning check out and she said that she didn’t agree with the automated self scanning process. She then said that I had to stand aside for her because of her beliefs on not using self scanning. I looked at her and said that I had just been to the hospital for a procedure, that my trolley was too full for the self checkout and that I just wanted to get home. She pushed me aside. The checkout assistant just let this happen. I said that pushing me physically out of the way to get in front of me was not right but this other customer didn’t care. I asked her why she was shopping in this big supermarket when surely she should be using her corner shop rather than big business. The whole thing surprised me.

All my local supermarkets seem to have plenty of staff manned tills apart from Aldi, where they only have one opened at a time.
There are still queues for every till in Asda and Sainsburys. Perhaps I live in a busier area?.
I prefer to go self checkout but I understand where you're coming from with the jobs issue. I worked in Asda about 8 years ago part time, there wouldn't be many hours for me now, it was hard to enough back then getting the hours I needed and we had every till open. There was self checkout tills but not the Trolley self checkout just a few basket ones which made sense. It seems like they're slowly introducing more of them and slowly getting rid of staff.

I hate them. My local aldis have finally succumb and I'm gutted.

Some of us live in countries where checkout operators still pack bags - it's great!

I've always liked the Aldi/Lidl model: the staff are out on the shop floor stacking shelves or whatever but notice when the queue gets too long and open another till. They serve the bottleneck and then close the till to go back to shelf stacking.
I don't see why other shops can't do that, too.

Mine has too, I'm dreading going in as I suspect I'll end up going elsewhere in future.

Off to Lidl in a minute, they definitely don't have self service in my local one.

Hooray for Lidl. 😃

I really resent the way that since covid ended the corporations like M&S are nudging us none too subtly in the direction of going both cashless and working for them for free - and if that makes me a technophobic Luddite, I'll live with that. I'd rather go in the local coffee shop that has counter service and someone who actually acknowledges you as a human than the chain that expects you to order via screen and makes it obvious you're nothing but a profit source.

I totally agree with this. The cost of everything is ever increasing, why on earth should I have to pay more for the goods as well as do all the work? As for places where you are expected to order via a screen they won't be getting my custom at all. It is being made increasingly clear that the customer no longer matters, fine they can act that way, but they won't be getting my money.

Hooray for Lidl.
Yes, we need to vote with our feet!

It is being made increasingly clear that the customer no longer matters
Remember when the customer was king? Now it's the computer who is king.

See I'd have no issue at all about them commenting about folic acid, pregnancy tests etc (and yes I've had difficulty conceiving, several miscarriages etc) because I think its a good thing for these to be talked about not hushed away as though they were a taboo subject. I notice my younger colleagues are much more open than I was at their age about sexual health, fertility etc which is a good thing IMO.

Unless they are paying me to work for them I will not use the self service

Our local m& s has both self scanning and manned tills. I daresay I could get used to the self scanning ones, but I much prefer to interact with another human being.

I'm in my seventies, don't have much social contact and a trip to m & s means a cheery greeting, a warm smile and if I want it, help with the packing.

A self scanning till can't offer any of that.

I think you might be on the wrong thread.

Dont think so. Someone commented before about a cashier commenting on the pregnancy test in their basket, I think it was in response to that.

I love self service tills! So I can’t complain :)

I am an oldie and I love self service tills! I don't want some checkout person (ie complete stranger) trying to engage me in mindless chitchat or commenting on my purchases. Even worse when they think it's appropriate to call me "love"! I just want to pay for my stuff and get out of the shop as quickly as possible, so I'd be happy to see more self-service tills than there are currently.

Self scan is fabulous for many who are neurodivergent.

I do agree that best practice is to offer both. However how can businesses be legally forced to keep a till open? What precedent would that set?

I haven't used anything other than self-checkout, bar once in a blue moon when they are closed, in years. I just got fed up with the way the till operators packed my groceries - acting like they were playing tetris and stacking in everything they could into one bag, even after I had asked them to spread the load with the bags I gave them; and stuffing wet/frozen, etc goods in with dry goods, even though I had carefully arranged everything in categories on the belt.

As someone who is not a natural with small talk, it was also always embarrassing to seem them strike up a proper conversation with the next person as I moved off. I am really good at checking out and packing my own stuff out, and never overload an individual bag or pack wet with dry, and will never go back.