etiquette at the self-service till...

[mollypollly]

OK ladies, I know this is petty but bear with me...

I've just come back from waitrose where I bought a few bits and bobs at the self check-out (about 3 bags worth, plus a couple of bigger items I couldn't bag-up).

So once I'd paid I then started to load the stuff up onto/underneath the pushchair (I was not taking my time over this - in fact I was desperate to get out as DD was due a feed so I was on borrowed time). It's also worth noting that there wasn't really a queue (about 2 people queuing for 4 tills)

But before I could even lift the first bag off, the woman who was next in the queue came charging over, plonked her basket down and started trying to scan her stuff through - then huffed and puffed that a couple of my bits were still in the way.

AIBU to think she could have given me one minute just to sort myself out without getting in my way, slowing me down and stressing me out?! I know this is super petty but it really annoyed me...

YANBU!

How rude of her! If I'm waiting on self service tills I wait till the person in front moves away from the till.

'My things wouldn't be in your way if you'd had the courtesy to wait until I was finished' (said with 'fuck you' polite smile on face)

YANBU. I think in that situation I would have been childish enough to load the stuff as slowly as I could, checking each bag carefully before I took it off, rearranging them ...

Very rude of her although 3 bags + other big items might have been a bit much for the self serve. Still she was rude.

Oh lord, this is what I'm gonna be faced with when working at Sainsburys.

Shit I'm so nervous.

Rude she was. But OP there is SOME etiquette in that 3 bags full and large items which didn't fit in bags is too much for self service. Those tills are really meant for one basket's worth.

Thanks ladies
It was only one basket's worth - but I agree I was pushing it slightly! Still, no need for such rudeness

Yanbu. Who doesn't wait until the person in front has moved before attempting to use the machine?

I sympathise a little OP, but one of the biggest (and pettiest) bains of my life are people (usually women, usually of a certain age), who faff-around at a checkout, holding everybody up. All too often do I watch with incredulity as the shopping piles-up, and said shopper does nothing to pack it. This usually culminates in a panicked scramble for the purse when it comes to the time to pay... as if this was a surprise! Cue digging around for the exact change, then double-back, just before putting it away to dig-out the loyalty card when prompted. Only after this rigmarole does the packing begin, all the while the queue get longer and longer.

This regular pantomime always bemuses me; I invariably have my loyalty card and/or cash ready to pay, and I pack my bags straight off the scanner in order to get out of the way of the people behind me and to minimise my time in the painful environment that is the supermarket. It doesn't seem difficult.

It's a bit like when I'm stuck in an interminable Post Office queue during a rapidly shrinking lunchtime; I do find my self wondering why I'm so impatient. I think it's because I'm in a rush and I have somewhere to get to. I know it's not very charitable, but it usually seems to be the pensioners or (apparent) SAHMs who are causing the delay. Having worked all my life, I can't tell; is there a lack of urgency that comes with not having to rush around all day? Am I the one being unreasonable!?

I agree it does sound like you had too much in your basket but she was still very rude. I suspect if you'd said anything about her rudeness you might have been told about inappropriate use of the self checkouts. In fact, she may well be starting her own thread as we speak....

This reminds me of when I was in Lidl a couple of weeks ago. The lady behind me in the (long) queue was experiencing her first visit to Lidl ever, being a regular Waitrose shopper and her first visit to our town - Much rougher than her home town. She'd had to risk it as she needed our emergency dentist.

She was so excited by the price of what she was buying and other customers were telling her what good quality it would all be. She finished by saying everyone's' so friendly here too. So, you need to find the least upwardly mobile town you can and shop in Lidl

Was it over lunchtime by any chance? If so, the woman may have been on her lunchbreak, hence the impatience.

The self service in our local supermarket is fabulously quick at lunchtimes normally, but people do get frustrated queuing behind someone that has quite a few items to put through.

S there a reason why you didn't use one of the other tills?

How'd you get one basket's worth into three bags! I hope they were your own cotton bags which aren't so bad for the environment!

I suppose that was slightly too much for self-service, which people generally see as the "really quick" till.

But seeing how you can't take the items off the scanner and throw them into the pushchair before you've finished it all, then you do just have to pack it all at the end.

And she was rude, therefore she's being U even if you were too

I always use a proper still, I have to say, so that I can sling things straight into the pushchair.

Yes, she was rude but I think, had I been you, I would have scanned and loaded onto the pushchair in one go so there was no faffing about at the end.

She was rude, but couldn't you have packed as you went? Or just picked up the three bags, and moved away while you faffed around?

Those tills are usually geared up for you to load into bags as you go, so I would be a bit irritated if you'd not done that then wanted to keep the area occupied while you sorted yourself out.

The other day I was in M&S (not the self checkout) and I and the cashier waited a bit for this woman to move her stuff, then the cashier started scanning because she was obviously going nowhere and I was obviously able to pack as I went. I'd got my shopping (a big jute bag full) packed, paid for and off, and she was still pottering about tesselating everything perfectly into her rucksak and giving us dirty looks. Odd.

No they aren't. I know people do their weeks shop via them. No signs say otherwise!

Rude cow. I would have stopped packing, risen up to my full height and given her the Eyeball of Doom.

OK just to clarify that I did pack everything into bags as I went along (aside from the loo roll and the multipack of crisps that I was going to shove underneath the pushchair unpacked) - so I literally had to pick up the bags and shove them underneath / hook them onto the pushchair - not faff about actually packing them at the end. This probably took me 30 seconds!

Owl, I don't think you can load as you go otherwise the stupid machine demands that you 'replace the item removed' or whatever until the end...

And the reason I went to the self check out is because I only had a basket and there was no queue... surely not that unreasonable?

I know it's not very charitable, but it usually seems to be the pensioners or (apparent) SAHMs who are causing the delay. Having worked all my life, I can't tell; is there a lack of urgency that comes with not having to rush around all day? Am I the one being unreasonable!?

Yes, and judgmental. Furthermore, I think you were probably the very woman who rudely charged over to the op's till before she'd finished packing.

In our Waitrose there is no limit to how much you can take through the self-service checkout. You could take a whole trolley if you wanted, and lots of people do. It is the same at our Sainsburys as well.

YADNBU!
I can't stand people who can't exercise a bit of patience. I Hate using the self service tills, but it's really rude to hassle someone else like that. Maybe she was desperate for the loo?

Yadnbu, this sort of thing annoys me no end. As do the people who stand right at my elbow as I'm chip-and-pinning on a normal checkout, trying to make me pay/pack/move faster?? (I still don't know what to say to people who do this but it fucks me right off, rude rude rude).

Babycham, that is rather unkind and more than a little self-important.

I too have a full time stressful job, but am currently on mat leave. As I said in my post, I was in a desperate rush to get home for my DD's feed to avoid a hungry meltdown, so was certainly not taking my time.

'Yes, and judgmental. Furthermore, I think you were probably the very woman who rudely charged over to the op's till before she'd finished packing. grin'

Judgmental, I accept. Rude, no. I wait (seemingly) patiently for for the feckless and the indolent to to pass their day as they faff around in front of me. I appear the very picture of placidity and poise. It's only on the inside that I'm in a tumultuous rage at the oblivious lack of awareness of my fellow citizens.

I'm only partly joking when I say there should be two queues at the Post Office, GP's surgery etc etc; one express desk for the economically active, and another for the not.