Snails pace at the Co-op

[MaMaD1990]

Just interested to see if this is the same in other places. We have 3 local Co-ops and in every one, the service is so slow! I find it quite amusing and usually just use the self service so not bothered by it, but my partner and a few friends get driven up the wall with it. There is actually a well known joke between locals that you go in a youngster and come out an OAP it's so slow! Is the Co-op like this anywhere else, or is it just my sleepy little town? YANBU - yes its slow and drives me mad, YABU - no its not slow at all.

YABU. Ours isn’t slow and the staff are fab

We have a small co op round the corner. It can take a while to get in as they operate a one out one in policy. Service is ok though. They don’t have self service tills.

The co op in our village is useless. The most recent thing was the card machine was broken on one of the 2 tills but the guy behind the till didnt tell me til he'd already scanned all my shopping so I had to go outside to get cash, came back in and the same guy took payment and said 'card machine works on the other til '

Ours is a bit slow. And the self-service tills consistently get the prices wrong!

Oh dear god, yes. We have 2 and there's never anyone on the tills in the big one. You have to decide whether to stand there like a lemon waiting for someone to notice, or do a trawl round the shop hoping to find staff, who are usually all having a chat in a random corner somewhere.

The small one, used to have a particular lady on the till all the time who was sooooo sloooow. She'd say hello, and ask all sorts of questions about your day, inside leg measurement etc. All before she started scanning. Then when you paid she'd take the money and spend ages talking at you before she'd get your change. If you tried to pay with card she'd talk at you before telling the card machine to wake up. Meanwhile the queue would be to the back of the shop and growing. Once you escaped with your pint of milk she'd start the same with the next person. People would leave their shopping abandoned and all sorts.

When they put in the self service tills it was amazing. You could actually buy a sandwich without it literally taking your whole lunch break. She'd try and get people to come to her at the till and anyone local would be all 'oh, no, it's fine I'll just go here thanks byeee!'

She's retired now, bit still a local legend

Wow, not used a co-op for years. I am going to try out our local one, they used to have a nice chocolate cake that you couldn't get anywhere else.
I've found The range is the slowest on earth, ours and 2 localish ones.

Are we slagging off retail staff or the till systems they use?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327966/

I will leave you this little gem about shopping at the Coop.

It seems fairly consistent! I find it amusing when I see a huge line of people waiting to pay and the dear assistants are having a chat with Maud about her recent hip operation seemingly unaware of the 10 customers waiting. Bless her cottons.

@misscockerspaniel

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327966/

I will leave you this little gem about shopping at the Coop.

This is gold!! That poor shop assistant though, fancy writing to your local newspaper about it?!

@StacysMomMandyJessiesEx

Are we slagging off retail staff or the till systems they use?

Ahh didn't take long for one of these comments to be slipped in! Go enjoy your weekend and don't get to wound up at a lighthearted thread.

@Rubyupbeat

Wow, not used a co-op for years. I am going to try out our local one, they used to have a nice chocolate cake that you couldn't get anywhere else. I've found The range is the slowest on earth, ours and 2 localish ones.

You'll have to let us know how it goes...yes the range near me is is almost as bad as he Co-op!

I wish you had put a vote up on this one.

We too have about three locally and until they put the self service tills in, you knew it would take bloody ages. There was always one person on the tills and two others filling the shelves - meanwhile the queue was getting longer and longer ...........

Thank heavens for the option of self service.

@Faranth

Oh dear god, yes. We have 2 and there's never anyone on the tills in the big one. You have to decide whether to stand there like a lemon waiting for someone to notice, or do a trawl round the shop hoping to find staff, who are usually all having a chat in a random corner somewhere.

The small one, used to have a particular lady on the till all the time who was sooooo sloooow. She'd say hello, and ask all sorts of questions about your day, inside leg measurement etc. All before she started scanning. Then when you paid she'd take the money and spend ages talking at you before she'd get your change. If you tried to pay with card she'd talk at you before telling the card machine to wake up. Meanwhile the queue would be to the back of the shop and growing. Once you escaped with your pint of milk she'd start the same with the next person. People would leave their shopping abandoned and all sorts.

When they put in the self service tills it was amazing. You could actually buy a sandwich without it literally taking your whole lunch break. She'd try and get people to come to her at the till and anyone local would be all 'oh, no, it's fine I'll just go here thanks byeee!'

She's retired now, bit still a local legend

This is another thing I see all the time there. The use of the word 'legend' is entirely accurate here too. One lady who must be well past 60 now still works at one and she is always chatting to her mates that come in. Such a nice lady, but I always make sure to only go there when I'm not in a rush!

@MaMelon

YABU. Ours isn’t slow and the staff are fab

Long may it continue!!

" a huge line of people waiting to pay and the dear assistants are having a chat with Maud about her recent hip operation seemingly unaware of the 10 customers waiting"
I've certainly experienced something similar to this in our local co op but appreciate that the customer may have had no one else to speak to all day.

I love our co op!! The queues however always take forever...

I do find the tills are often unmanned in the morning as the staff are busy stacking the shelves.
I expect it's company policy as it's been like this for years.
Often seen customers just shout for attention or even leaving their goods and just walk out...as have I.

Definitely true of ours. Lovely staff but they are slow and chatty to all the regulars. Which is lovely for the elderly folk with lots of time and often not much company. But the end result is that everyone who needs to be quick goes to the tesco 5 mins away and now the co op is shutting down

YABU. Both my local ones are very good, serving the community well

Yes! The queue in our village co op is where we all socialise as we are stood there so long. We're no longer frustrated by it and just joke to each other. I even complained once to head office to a lady called Debbie. She promised to look into it. I called her back 3 times. She never returned any of the calls, so that's the standard that gets passed down from head office

The service at our local one isn’t particularly slow most of the time. But I did have one occasion were the till tried to charge me £100.04 for a box of eggs. And it took 3 poor staff members to try and fix the error as the queue backed up around the shop!!

Also during lockdown they introduced a one way system but unfortunately if you followed the arrows strictly you got caught in a never ending loop around the newspaper, sweet and household aisles!! And were unable to leave the shop!

We don't have a Co-op, Sainsbury's is like this though lots of gabbing at the toll, rummaging for vouchers etc. Normally I don't mind but when you're 8 months pregnant and finding it hard to stand for long in the heat with a mask on you don't find yourself praying to God that the conversation about Mauds hip replacement ends soon.

FFS just pretend that made sense please think my brain has melted in this heat.

Our Co-op is very slow at the tills. The mainly female, older staff are lovely and chatty but I get the feeling that they have never moved at much of a rate of knots in their lives.