Supermarket checkout chit chat - Love it or hate it?

[TaliZorahVasNormandy]

Not really a AIBU.

I've just had an interview for tesco for the checkouts, they had me shadow someone for an hour. Apparently I didnt interact enough with the customers, I chatted with some, did polite, Hello/do you need help packing/goodbye stuff. But I'm aware some people really dont want the chit chat.

So Mumsnet, do you love it or hate it?

I use the self checkout, because I dont like chit chat generally, and am really tired of the same talking point at every store.

Yes, I am foreign,
Nope, American, not Canadian
california, yes the weather IS very different!
Yes, live here permanently
My husband is British (but even if he werent, who makes career choices based on weather) (i say that part in my head. Usually)
For a year so far

I usually like it, except for the one time the cashier woman at Tesco started telling me that I was on a slippery slope to alcoholism because I'd bought some cocktail ingredients! Feeling the need to defend myself I explained that it was just for my friend's party to which she replied "you tell yourself that love, but I know how this is going to end"!!

I was too to say anything so just took my change and slunk off .... never been back again!

I am retail staff. I talk all day to people. Not about menstruation though. Well. Can't think I have :D

I wonder if its a smaller shop with regular customers that makes the difference here, because where i work its mainly the customers that tell ME all their problems, what they've been up to, how their dc's are doing at school, how they've split up with their partners, how they have been to the vets to get their cat pts then start crying, everyone has their problems so i always feel you shouldn't create ones that aren't there, i.e moaning about someone doing their job.

I hate it so much. Hello and thank you are all the conversation I need from a checkout assistant. I especially hate it when they comment on individual items in my shopping.
At my local Sainsbury's I have about 4 checkouts I will go to because I know they'll be friendly, but unobtrusive. My husband laughs, because even if I avoid the till operators who are 'talkers', I will always end up with somebody striking up a weird conversation with me - it's like I have that kind of face or something!! It happens all of the bloody time - and it's very annoying.
Blimey, I sound like a right mardy cow don't I?!!

I actually am a checkout operator ,and have been on the frontline for years, I'm naturally friendly and bubbly ,some like me,some do not

Waitrose is the worst for lengthy chats at the till. There are ways of being friendly without holding up the queue and the till operator shouldn't be extending the chat by endless comments.

Good God, don't talk, but don't ignore me, don't mention this, don't mention that…why do all the people that find it such a chore to be pleasant do all retail staff a favour and order online?

I'd never ignore a retail assistant, but when you get one who chats endlessly at the checkout it's frustrating. One stopped putting things through the till while she gave a full recipe to a person about how to use the asparagus she had bought, followed up with what she was having for tea that night - then after the stuff was all through the checkout, the customer starts packing and rummaging for her purse and vouchers! Grrr........

Hate it and have complained to Tesco about it before. I do not need teenage boys asking about when I’m going to eat the pudding I’ve just bought. Ugh.

The thing is, sometimes you have to go and buy food even in the middle of a major catastrophe, when even making eye contact with a person can be enough to send you into sobbing hysterics. And I can’t work self service tills at the best of times. I really, really don’t want ‘friendly’ conversation from a stranger to negotiate as well.

I don't hate it, but Im more than happy to not have it, if that makes sense

See I hate it if they don't speak. Lovely check out ladies at my local (big) Tesco and we have a lovely chat. I find it more awkward if all that beep-beeping is done in silence. And I don't feel at all judged about the wine in my trolley

Absolutely hate it. I also hated it when I worked on the tills. Some people love making pointless smalltalk, others just want to get on with it.

it depends on who I’m talking to-I’ll talk to anyone but some people are hard work and I just want to get out
others I’d stand and chat about nothing all day
i work in customer care and I have a built in radar on who’s up for a good chat and who really doesn’t

my dp can’t understand how I can chat crap to strangers every time we go out

Weirdly, I enjoy the interaction even though I’m a very solitary, quiet person. The staff at the local Sainsbury’s are a hilarious bunch of characters- giving me their world view whether I liked it or not!

At the other end, a few summers’ back I worked on the tills on a break from teaching. Unfortunately I am ashamed to say that I’ve never felt so ashamed or embarrassed of myself: at doing a job people look down on, being not very good at said job and being so terribly self conscious as I looked so fat and ungainly in the uniform. I also hated working with the public for the above reasons! I had one kid say “I want to do that job”, and the mother tell her kid: “no, you won’t! I don’t pay for private school for you to want this!”.

I think you can get good/bad customers and good/bad cashiers!

I interact. Always have.

I hate it. Is why I use self service checkouts.

Everyone who doesn't like it (on this thread to start with) should do it as well, or at least encourage them trust their staff enough to read a situation/customer and act accordingly. You can usually tell if someone is up for a bit more interaction than basic pleasantries from the greeting/first interaction and body language.
I've worked in retail (though not a supermarket, somewhere where some people wanted to be in and out for a specific item quickly and we had a script and to make add on sales) and it does feel like you're supposed to chat at the customer whether they want to or not and when there's things like targets to make and punishment for not sticking to the script, you dare not not do it, even when you're cringing inside because the customer clearly doesn't want to, or is horrible to you.
I really resented not being trusted enough to know basic human interaction and react according to the situation.

Maybe there should be a dedicated slow/chatty checkout for customers who do want to chat (as their stuff is being scanned).
I said in a pp that I use self service because I hate small talk... but during the first lockdown, seeing cashiers was the only human interaction I had.

I take my cue from the checkout staff member. If they want to talk, I’ll happily talk.

I see too many customers act surly with staff.

Staff often ask me about what I have purchased (especially sale stuff likes clothes) and I happily tell them if there are any more left, for example.

A positive encounter helps affirm that we all need eachother.

In my local Morrisons, they chat for ages with the person in front even after payment when it comes to me silence and then they seem to be surprised when I'm silent at payment so these days I process my own.
I find it rude that they have a nice chat with someone else in my time and can't be assed with me.

"good morning how are you?"
"(cheerily) not bad thanks"
"would you like any help with your packing?“
“no thank you (smiles)"

That is the literal extent of the conversation I want at a checkout, and nothing irritates me more than standing in the line with my bread and milk waiting while the checkout person and the customer have a good old jolly chat - fucking get on with it!!!

I think it's important to respond to the customer and to keep the chat not too personal. A busy mum tryi g to deal with young children and pack their bags I wouldn't want a long conversation but an elderly person perhaps does.

As a teen I used to work at my local Co-op on a 1950s housing estate with quite an aged population, during my till training I was told that it was really important to talk to our customers because for many of them it would be the only conversation that person had all day. If you are retired, widowed, grown children live away I can see this being very true and has always put a different slant on things.

This. I have a very low tolerance for fakeness. I can tell who is talking because they feel they have to make a bit of chit chat, and really do not give a fig about the answer. I just want to pack and go.

I don't mind a short chat at a checkout but if I could cut my own hair I would do so. I loathe being trapped in the chat chair at a hairdressers. There's no escape.

I do expect the cashier to say "hello" - and maybe be aware enough not ask if I want a bag as I plonk my own large carrier at the end of the counter.
I usually avoid the staffed checkouts in Lidl as they as they always seem on a mission to chuck everything at you at the speed of light.
On reflection I rarely do "big shops" so generally have the choice to avoid cashiers.