To Not Use Self Sevice Tills

[TitusOatesLivesNextDoor]

Because:

1. I'm not employed by the supermarket as a cashier and don't want to work for nothing

2. They will eventually put cashiers out of work.

Also, if there are no cashiers available, I generally go and ask for one

You most certainly have a reputation as one of “those” customers. This would definitely annoy staff. They have other tasks to complete through their shift and if these tasks aren’t completed, eg sorting a delivery, they might reprimanded or be seen as inefficient by management - which in turn may make them lose their job if they’re given less shifts or are not kept on after probation etc. You are literally just disrupting them by doing this with no good reason.

Was at a WHSmith in a train station recently, a woman demanded staff serve her, she purposely ignored the self service tills. Staff member came over and asked her if she needed cigarettes to which she said no, they then directed her to the self checkout tills😂

I'm not employed by the supermarket as a cashier and don't want to work for nothing

so why do you go into a supermarket in the first place instead of going to a traditional shop where you are served at the counter?

A few posters say they hate human interaction is that in all aspects of life or just shop assistants/strangers I am not being goady just wondering why this has become the norm for some people I find it a bit sad.

I hate them with a passion. Without fail, every time I use one something goes wrong and I'm left there for ages.

Same here Silly - I might as well wear a tee-shirt saying "Don't stand behind me in this queue unless you want to be here all day."

Nothing goes right . . . invariably I need the assistance of the Woman With The Till Key; lots of buttons end up being clicked; a supervisor is requested; and many other ills occur . . . .

I would rather wait a while and be served by a Human Being.

It must be cheaper for them and the reason for that is because they don't have to pay a cashier. So, more cashiers out of work!

It's displacement. Fewer low skilled cashiers, but more better skilled technicians, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance etc.

Just like the way the superstores "displaced" huge numbers of shop owners/staff in small corner shops.

Things change - always have and always will. There are no "jobs for life" anymore, hence the push for better educated/skilled workforce.

If they don't, I leave my shopping and go but appreciate not everyone has the time to do this.

Therefore taking more cashiers away from the tills as they have to return your shopping to the shelves, and potentially waste the refrigerated/frozen items as they have no idea how long they've been sitting out.

Really great idea

Because there aren't any around these here parts and going into a supermarket does not mean that I am not entitled to service.

It's not a race to the bottom you know.

I always queue for a serviced till because I like to see jobs for people.

I like them, you can check that offers have gone through correctly, and I don't think it's particularly a lot of effort. However, shops should still keep open manned tills for those who can't (due to accessibility issues) or don't want to use them. Most people I know prefer them. I don't think they're putting staff out of work, I used to work in strategy for a large supermarket and it didn't affect staffing levels.

I always use self service - I don’t like people!

The retailers will simply carry on their march of automation. Within the next decade there will be very few cashiers. Maybe just a couple on shifts to supervise the checkouts.

I’m with you on this, OP. My main objection to unnecessary automation is that it reduces the number of proper jobs available. (I hate the so-called gig economy with a passion. It’s just exploitation with a pretty name.)
The fact that the damn self-service tills are a nuisance just adds insult to injury!
And there aren’t always staffed tills open as an alternative.

I remember the packers at the tills. You put your stuff on the counter, the till staff scanned (typed) them through and the packer put them in bags and put them in the other trolly. It was great unless you got the inexperienced worker who would outs the tins of beans on top of your loaf. Blimey I feel old.

Such behaviour is the expected norm

not but it's a very silly attitude to pretend to have such high expectations when you are go to a bog standard supermarket

I always queue for a serviced till because I like to see jobs for people.

So you queue at a bank rather than use a cash machine? Presumably you insist on using cash to buy stuff to keep the "cash" industry employed, i.e. back office cashiers, security cash vans, bank of england coin/note manufacturers etc?#

Amazing how you can find a petrol station where staff fill the car for you rather than self service and car parks where there's a bloke in a kiosk taking money instead of a pay n display machine?

Or how about old fashioned shops where everything was behind the counter and you had to ask for it.

I hate self service machines and they hate me. Last week one decided to have a tantrum, i scanned a 10L bag of cat litter and got the surprising item in bagging area message from it. It knew about the cat litter, i scanned it and it was displayed on the screen. After scanning everything and the machine being surprised several more times i attempted to pay but my note wasn't perfectly straight so was spat out. When i eventually got it to accept my money it stopped working, an alarm went off and i got zero change. I had to wait ages for someone to come and help me

I hate them for the same reasons as you OP and I don't use them on principle. They are there because they save the companies money, not to help us out as some people seem to think.

Self serve is great apart from in Boots and I prefer scan and shop. It means I don't have to put everything in the trolley, take it out at the till, put it back in again and then take it out to put in the car. It's much quicker, what's not to like?

I hate shops that don’t have a self service option. I find self serve a lot quicker and I also don’t have to make dodgy awkward small talk.

I don't use them myself. They always fuck up for me. They got rid of them in our local Lidl and Aldi.

Who are all of these cashiers who make conversation? Never happen to me - must have that kind of face

But people still work on self service, for example there's always 2 at the place i work and there can be as many as 4 or 5 when it's busy.

I love self-service tills and I think it's great that automation is doing away with boring drudgery jobs so that people can do more interesting things instead
No one complains about having to use self-service bank tellers

I’m old enough to remember Sainsburys when you visited the counters to place your order so you went to one counter to get dry goods, another for bacon and cheese, another for fish etc. All these were weighed out and wrapped for you. Then you paid at the checkout for all your goods, you would interact with 4/5 people in the course of one visit. When self service supermarkets with prepacked goods were introduced many people lost their jobs. And eventually so did most greengrocers and butchers and milkmen.

I remember the glorious day we had gas central heating fitted (Dad did it himself apart from paying a CORGI engineer to check it and issue a safety certificate). It was so clean and comfortable but central heating lead to the coal men and their horses becoming redundant.

Now we can access news at the press of a button we no longer need newspaper vendors on every street corner selling the latest version of the evening papers.

However when I grew up no-one needed the services of a gym, or a nail technician or a washing machine repairman or a data base manager. We didn’t get mini cabs and the only fast food available was fish and chips or pie and mash.Now those industries are thriving and employ millions of people..

My point is that things change. New technology makes some jobs obsolete and has done since the invention of the printing press (Won’t somebody think of the scribes!), the vacuum cleaner (the poor redundant maids) and the spinning Jenny. We could stay in the past and never change but in the whole the changes that catch on do so for good reasons.

The assistant with the barcode always looks pissed off I am sure they sigh when they have to check the bagging area error !

Jobs like these are not only FT, but they also traditionally provided PT employment for people, including students, who weren't yet skilled/qualified to apply for others.
Automation slashes these jobs.

I live in France and there is a motorway toll by my town. The motorway company used to employ several hundred people to man the booths in our region, many of them women looking for PT work, and in the summer they were perfect for students. Sure, it's dull and was hot in summer, but they were often for top-up income. One of my neighbours worked there and was laid off when they automated. She hasn't found another job with flexible hours that allows her to work while caring for an ill family member. She liked her job and the brief exchanges with drivers. It's a bit condescending to decree that such jobs should vanish in favour of more skilled ones, TBH.

Now it's all automated. There's no cheery voice, no information for people who're lost and need directions, and when the automated system fails, there's a huge queue and no one to sort the problem out.
I can't really see why that is progress.

So, no, I don't use self-service unless I am in a raging hurry and the checkout queue is too long.