To want to shout at check out assistants who...

[addictedtofrazzles]

seem to want to check out your shopping trolley as fast as they possibly can (like there is an unspoken race with their colleagues) and leave the conveyer belt on so that all your food just keeps piling up.

It really gets my goat!

In ALDI new customers are usually told taht they shouldn't pack at the till. And they have now put up a notice in my local ALDI saying the same thing.

ALDI is very cheap because they cut costs including the amount of checkout staff. So they employ people who scan very fast - you are supposed to put it all in the trolley and then pack it away from the till. That means they can have less staff without making queues horrendously long.

TBH where i shop everyone does this, so it should be obvious that this is what is expected in ALDI.

Do it online.

Haven't had time to read all this. However, I have observed that Sainsbury's has a policy of offering to pack your bags if you have under 5 items, i.e., when you don''t need any help, and then leaving you to struggle if you have a trolley-full and children in tow. I get my own back by packing my bags and paying really really slowly and meticulously, thus fucking up their targets or whatever it is that makes them so impatient and unthinking

Don't all Sainsbury's have the 'zapper' systems, where you scan everything yourself when you walk round and pack it as you go?

Not a single supermarket in this area offers this. I would love it.

Well I have to say that I like my stuff to come at me fast. I take my own bags, know what goes where and I can pack as fast as most of the checkout operators can scan so it isn't an issue for me.

I also have sympathy with Steps and the other checkout operators here. I worked at Safeway (as it was then) when I was doing my Masters and dear God some customers were so rude. You could be having a great day and being smiley and helpful and someone would come along with a totally hideous attitude,; they treated you like you were thick and you couldn't do anything right - you would end up really feeling like a pile of shite. Who needs it on that level of pay? I lasted eight lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng months and went to work in a pub until I finished my course.

Some of you really need to get a bigger size pair of judgy pants.

Aldi only do trollys. Sometimes I nip in and don't have a pound on me, which results in the dreaded 'toddler in pram' shopping trip. i can generally gather a bit of shopping one handed while pushing the trolly, but this does mean i dont have a trolly to shove my shopping in at the end.

Checkout lady can CLEARLY see this. i have no issue with her scanning quickly, what I DO have an issue with is the glaring and tuttung as i am taling longer then the permitted 5 seconds to shove my ten or so items in a bag. THIS is when a bag gets shoved at them.

I was a checkout supervisor at Iceland in the 90s and if I didn't meet my targets for all the tills: scan rate, void/refund rate (errors needing correcting), cash losses (tills balancing at end of day) I would have been out of a job pronto.

Supermarkets solve the problem of long queues at checkouts by making the cashiers work ever faster, rather than increasing their £s per manhour (and reducing shareholders' dividends) by hiring more cashiers.

Doing away with manned checkouts altogether would clearly not be tolerated by most customers, or all the supermarkets would have done it by now.

I never have a problem with shopping piling up and always do my own packing (but I never have children with me either so much easier). What does rile me, not just in supermarkets but other stores, is when till staff chat to colleagues while serving me. And it's equally rude for customers to carry on phone calls or talking to companions while being served. Let's have good manners on both sides.

AIBU to want to shout at customers in Aldi and Lidl who insist on packing their bags slowly at the till?

I used to work at Sainsbo's shelf-stacking and can confirm that targets for both shelf-stackers and till staff are a bloody nightmare. I have loads of sympathy for the harrassed staff at the till and try to approach the whole process as teamwork. The biggest problem I find in my local sainsbo's is that the conveyor belt is not long enough. I can't fit all the stuff on and get the trolley to the other end before the space has run out for the scanned items, whether they are packed or not. It wasn't always like this - the shorter tills were put in a couple of years ago to free up more product space.

In spite of the frustrations, I will avoid the self-scans like the plague because I much prefer to deal with a real live person, however stressed they are. I always smile and exchange a few words because I know what a shitty, thankless task it is and when I get a smile and a few pleasantries back (and most of the time I do) it is genuinely appreciated.

Sorry steps I think I misunderstood :-)

What is this 'no packing at the til' thing? I've never heard of that.. am baffled

I hate it when I do a really big shop and struggle to fit everything on the belt and the checkout person sits and waits till I've struggled to get it all on before asking if I wanted help packing. Couldn't they have asked earlier when they saw how big the shop was so at least some of it couldhave been scanned and allowed me to fit more stuff on? I've always suspected it's because they don't really want to help me pack (although I may be being unreasonable there). I've also noticed that if I have a basket sized shop then I don't get asked at all, but men will always be offered regardless of how small the shop, like they are incapable of packing a bag!

ethelina that system is great until you are selected for a re-scan and then you have to take everything out of the bags and put them through the checkout (bearing in mind it takes twice as long to do the shop when scanning yourself). Happened to me twice in a row and I gave up after that!

"I have a massive, MASSIVE issue with the whole "customer is always right" thing. No. The customer is sometimes a rude asshole."

Too right. Most customers are entitled fucking arseholes with superiority complexes big enough to match the chip on their shoulder.

I hate customers. They need taking out.

"In ALDI new customers are usually told taht they shouldn't pack at the till. And they have now put up a notice in my local ALDI saying the same thing."

"AIBU to want to shout at customers in Aldi and Lidl who insist on packing their bags slowly at the till?"

Where are you supposed to pack your shopping in Aldi or Lidl?

when I do my shop by car I have a big folding box that I put in my trolley. so I am usually very fast at packing, because I don't need bags. gives me some admiring glances from the people behind me...

Jareth, if you go to cheap shops like Aldi and Liddle they are cheap for a reason. One being that they keep staff to a minimum. So, when you get to the checkout, expect your shopping to be hurtled through the scanner on to a very small area at the end. There isn't even really room to stand bags up and pack, because they don't want you to. They want you to throw your shopping back into your trolley as quickly as possible, pay, and then take your trolley to the shelf area beyond the checkouts to pack at your leisure.
Personally I think it's brilliant. Not only are the queues always short and rapidly dealt with, I can then pack my bags in my own time, not rushing to keep up with the checkout as you do at many major supermarkets.
That's the way they run their supermarkets and most of their customers like it. It's quite irritating to see people moaning about this and boasting about how they deliberately hold up the process. If you don't like it, shop somewhere else. You're not just irritating the shop staff and holding them up, you're affecting other customers as well.

Oh, and in case anyone doesn't realise this - they don't take credit cards.

"Where are you supposed to pack your shopping in Aldi or Lidl?"

they have tables opposite the tills. at the till you quickly put your shopping back into the trolley, then you can pack at the table at your own speed.

YES Lucy you are very right.

I went to Aldi the other month to get a few bits. Long queue, which is par for the course but they generally get dealt with pretty quickly so I don't care.

THEN the twatbitchfromhell in front of me decides just as the poor Aldi minion has finished scanning her last item that she has actually forgotten a few things, so she swans off to get them. No hurry to it, just swanning around in her fucking revolting linen trousers, picking up items, insoecting them and putting them back down. For about 3 minutes. Loads of people in the queue are getting huffy, me included, so I speak for everyone when I ask the checkout girl if she can just carry on serving the rest of us and if the other customer thinks we're all hostages of her shopping time then she needs to learn a lesson. The checkout girl looked all angry and went "Yeah you're RIGHT" and threw all of the woman's stuff into a basket and started scanning everyone else's.

Then the twatbitchfromhell came back and wanted to know what had happened to her shopping. The checkout girl told her to re-join the queue of about ten shoppers. HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHHHAHHAHHAHHAAHAHAH!!!!!!!

I think I need to get more important things to worry about.

I am totally the opposite to you op, I go for the fastest looking queue, I want them to scan as quickly as possible, don't mind the polite chit chat as long as it doesn't slow them down. I can pack as fast as they can scan and as soon as they say the price, I shove my card in the chip & pin machine and pack last few items while it's processing the card.

I'm always waiting for the receipt.

When I think about it, I put items on the belt in groups of how I will bag them up, bread last etc. Does everyone do this or am I a little OCD?

It slightly irritates me when the customer in front is still packing their items after having paid and I am waiting for the checkout person to start on my goods .

Go to waitrose. My answer for all supermarket related problems!

"It slightly irritates me when the customer in front is still packing their items after having paid and I am waiting for the checkout person to start on my goods"

Even worse, when they have finished packing yet the small talk continues. There is a checkout biddy in the local Iceland (yes I do go there as they sell all the WeightWatchers stuff for £1 instead of £1.89 like Sainsbury's) and she is notorious for it.

She tried it with me and my mate yesterday morning, despite us both looking like sour-faced cowbags and us not giving any indication that we wanted any chit-chat about how early she has to get up for work/where her journey commences from/what time she leaves and what she must cook her husband for dinner. Don't care, pet. I just want my bargainous frozen fayre scanned and paid for as fast as possible. Thanks.

P.s I'm not a cunt to shopworkers as I am one myself. I just can't be doing with idle chit-chat when people are waiting to pay.

Adelaidegirl - You are half way there. The real answer is 'do it online'.

I will always treat the checkout personnel politely, as long as they are polite to me. I have a tendency to mirror their behaviour - if they are very silent and don't say anything to me, I often am the same. If they are rude, I will point out that there is no need to be rude. Most are polite and friendly, which is fine. But if they are going to act like checking out my groceries is a massive pain in their bum, then they're most likely going to get a comment from me about it. I have had employees make comments on things we were buying that were rude as well, and I won't tolerate that either - I will speak up, as it's not appropriate or professional.

I don't believe that the customer is always right, as obviously they are not. But I do believe that if you are in a job that is customer-facing and service based, that you need to present a professional, polite, and friendly appearance. It's part of the job. It's easy to be friendly and polite to most people anyway. But I think it's important to remember that some customers may seem quiet or distant because they are distracted or thinking about something else, and a friendly hello may make a difference. I know that over the last week after my dad passed away, I've been to the supermarket a couple times (distracted, forgot a couple things) and I'm sure that while I wasn't rude, I wasn't really friendly, just quietly going through, not smiling, just trying to focus on "get stuff packed, pay for it, get out before bursting into tears in front of anyone." The employee may have thought I was being snobbish, I suppose, as I didn't really speak to her, but it was self-preservation at that point - get through and get out, IYSWIM.

I've never had anyone be rude to me at a checkout, and I do supermarket shopping at least 3 times a week.

I don't regard working fast and not chatting as rude, though.

I always say hello, goodbye, thanks etc, and if they make small talk, chat back but don't go out of my way to engage them in conversation if they don't.