Today I went to Asda for a shop - running later than planned due to a bus not turning up (which admittedly I can't blame Asda for!) - but still with enough time to do a shop. Long queues at the checkout. I am directed to a self-service till which turns out to be even more temperamental than usual (even if you remove all the scanned items, apparently thin air is an "unexpected item in bagging area") so I have to call for help a few times - and, as usual, there are only one or two poor sods on self-service till duty running around like blue-arsed
flies - and on one of the occasions my till was playing up there were no staff anywhere in the self-service till area (which I would estimate has about 20 - 24 tills) for several minutes. Not blaming them as it is obviously the supermarket who understaffs the tills.
Once I've scanned my items, I try to pay with my card but it doesn't seem to be working. One of the members of staff comes over and tries it a couple of times and then says 'oh, yeah, I think the card reader wasn't working on this one'. Now, if at this point, he had said 'this is the start of a long process to make a card payment', I would have asked him to cancel a couple of items off the bill and just bought what I had the cash for but, he just said 'come with me to make the payment'.
He takes me to the customer service point (again with a long queue) and gives a print out from the self-service till to the woman at the counter. I ask if I'll be expected to queue up again and/or everything will need to be scanned again and he says 'no, just wait next to the counter and she'll take the payment after she's finished dealing with the current customer - and it doesn't need to be scanned again as she's got this slip.' He leaves and then the customer service woman tells me to get to the back of the queue. I explain the situation and that I have already queued up etc but she says that I have to go to the back of the queue. As it's the customer service point, everyone is complaining about faulty electrical items, wanting to exchange items etc so none of them are going to be quick transactions.
As time is ticking on, my options are either to continue to wait in this queue and not make a gym class that I intended to attend later that day or to give up on the shopping - so in the end I emptied the shopping on the customer service counter, told the member of staff that I didn't have time and walked out. Slightly more dramatic than I intended but the bags were mine so I had to empty the contents onto the counter if I was going to leave!
What would you have done?