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'm autistic and I bloody hate them. They always have the sound turned up just a little bit too high so it goes slightly buzzy on the speakers and hurts my ears.

Then the fuckwit at Christmas who decides telling them to say "ho ho ho" in our local Tesco needs tying up by his neck (can use tinsel if you want to be festive) and beating to death with glitter shedding wrapping paper. Festively.

The new Waitrose ones have that irritating headmistressy voice asking you to scan your Waitrose card and all the other stuff you're supposed to do. Pity the staff having to listen to that all day.

Given the choice I’d go to a human checkout any day of the week . Problem is there are none .

I was out of the country during and after lockdown (2.5 years) and I was pretty shocked at the changes at my local Waitrose. Noticeable change in stock/product availability (okay, reducing waste), the change over to majority self scan tills, no staff manning the cig/lottery counter, and overall reduction is staff numbers. Okay, all well and good, but even the shelf stacking has gone to pot. I'm a bit of a short-arse and so can only reach stuff on top shelves if it's at the front. Recently went there for some soft drinks, all of the stock on the top shelf was right at the back and no staff around to help. Left without buying anything. Tbh, I don't know whether this local will last at this rate. Not for the first time have I had to go somewhere else due to lack of availability of products.

Love a self service 1st choice
Aldi has taken 3 tills out and 12 self service which means I can now buy my lunch there as wouldn’t have time to wait for the person in front with 2 full trolleys was being served

also pricing is cut throat it’s one way of reducing costs to keep prices down

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I agree I live near a big Sainsbury's in the town centre
There are only two manned checkouts right at the end I'm disabled and use a rollator and only buy a few items which takes me a while to scan... but now they have installed security gates where you scan receipt to exit
I've set the alarms off a few times pushing the wheels forward to scan my receipt!!
I hate the way that progress just makes everything more complicated

I like the choice. Basket, self check out, trolley, proper manned checkout please. Fortunately both Waitrose and Morrisons where I am meet that. Lidl however drives me mad as only a huge queue of massive trolleys for the often one only manned checkout and no self service for the half a dozen items I buy in there.

I used to love working on the checkout as a Saturday girl but that was a lifetime ago Agree it helped develop confidence to deal with people of all different types.

As a customer I hate people serving me. Don't want human contact or small chat. I've worked serving customers customers customers are just just absolute nightmare so jo idea why you would even like it ... as for till jobs going, that is true but there's so many other jobs in the shop for staff to move to. It is freeing up a cashier, still making money and using staff in better spaces.
Your kids might jot even want a job like this. My husband has never worked serving the public and is high up in his profession.

In your experience. In the shops in your area.

Fully disagree, manning a checkout was the worst job I have had. I worked in primark and it wrecked my shoulders standing scanning that volume of stuff even at 18. It was incredibly boring and soul destroying and i would rather have had a machine do it that be employed as a human machine. We are worth more than that.

Personally hate using manned till. Give me scan and shop any day of the week. Hell even a big Morrisons self service shop. The only issue I have is waiting to be id checked apart from that I love it.

Sainsburys scan and shop app should really have a way to add my id or something. Or maybe them all smarter so I can flash my id at it.

Which country was it that had the slow till where you could stop and chat as a lifeline for lonely people? That would be nice.
Agree op, it is shit and the less socialisation the more mental health issues.

The idea that self service checkouts and the like take away jobs doesn't quite work how people think, because it only looks at one side of the equation. On the other side: all of those machines had to be researched, designed, built, installed and maintained by somebody. Somebody(s) right now is working hard at the next generation of them, improving them and slowly and painstakingly ironing out all the problems with them. All of that = employment.

Rather than destroying employment, what automation often does is SHIFT employment from unskilled to more skilled sectors. So in this case we have less work for checkout operators with no skills or qualifications, and more work for programmers, engineers, AI experts etc. If the OP's children end up going into one of those fields, the net result for them may well be positive.

Societally, that means less of people's time spent doing grunt work. Isn't that a good thing? Yes, from a narrow perspective it increases unemployment in certain demographics and probably increases inequality, but that's because of the political choices involved. The problem is not automation, but the fact that we allow the fruits of automation to accrue to a small privileged minority, at everyone else's expense. Increasing automation needs to be part of the same conversation as universal basic income etc - a holistic view of the fact that we as a society just don't need to be spending our time doing these boring manual tasks any more.

Hate it. I would never choose a hill with Al person. Self service has made my life sooooo much better. The new Amazon shops are the way forward

I try and do most of my shopping online but when I do have to go to a shop I much prefer self-service checkouts. I don’t want to have to interact with a person trying to make small talk and don’t like all of my shopping being handled and potentially judged by another person, especially if I am buying anything personal. I also don’t want people at the checkout trying to sell me extras or loyalty cards etc. I also like the fact that self-service is always at my pace as well, so often I feel at the checkout the clerk is either ridiculously slow or way too fast and makes me feel like I have to rush to pack things. Generally if I’m at a shop I want to be in and out as quick as possible and without getting caught up having to interact with anybody, self-service is perfect for this.

It’s a way for shops to dodge paying and taking on new staff, thus saving them money, but the price of your shopping is still going up. Utter c*s the lot of them! 😡

don’t like all of my shopping being handled and potentially judged by another person, especially if I am buying anything personal.
Is your online order picked and delivered by elves?

I doubt a handful of staff would make a huge dint in the increased wage rises increased energy increase increased fuel cost for vans and increased wholesale cost of goods

I used to work on checkout and did "judge" as in reflected on people's lives. Hard not to. Friday evening and a dude comes in to buy a bottle of wine and some flowers etc.

When it was dead quiet me and my mate used to compete to see who could lure the shopper over with the most welcoming face.

I prefer self checkouts and always choose one over a cashier but I do think it's sad that more self-service will result in cashiers being put out of a job.

Lots of people prefer a cashier so really shoppers should have both options but, as ever, these things are about profits, not people.

I’m not in England but we pick up a scanner before entering the shop, and scan as we go. It’s excellent if you want to keep an eye on the total amount you’ll pay.

I’m disabled.
The issue with self scanning till are

• they’re often not suitable for people in a wheelchair (too high, hard to reach screen…)
• They’re more tiring and take longer.

I would not be able to do a full shop and self scan.

And tbh all the staff I’ve ever seen in shop (M&S, Boots, Tesco) looking after those tills seem to all very aware of it too!
The result though is that I avoid doing any ‘big’ shop in a shop now. I suspect I’m not the only one.

And then there is tte silence. I went to Boots and it was so silent, it was awful!
Compare that with some shops in the Netherlands where they’ve introduced slow lanes so people can chat and combat isolation….

But you need to be registered with that shop and hand over all your shopping details in the process….

Works well when you always shop there. Not do much if you are on hols, want to try something else etc…

Yeah you do. You get special prices on items you buy often. But I know what you mean.
Some shops have the same scanning system as you, it works well too but I wouldn’t like it doing a weekly big shop. This way I have time to pack my food nicely, chilled items in one bag etc. I worked in food store as a teenager, some old people shopped many times a day (one item at a time) just because they were lonely and wanted to chat. It was always nice to talk to them actually.