Have you ever dumped an entire trolley of food at a till and walked out?

[sunnydaytoday0]

I was in a Lidl store today and a very long queue built up.. and it became apparent that another till was not going to be opened despite the queue getting longer and many of whom had a big trolley load of food. There are no self service tills.

I then saw a man walk to the front and dump his entire shopping on the conveyor belt of an adjacent till and stormed out.

I'm sure if there was more staff this would've been avoided so it wasn't the fault of the person on the till. I know there is pressure on supermarkets to cut costs, but is this now getting to a tipping point in terms of impacting on customer service? Or is it the case that if you go to a so called 'discounter' type shop then you just have to accept that the service levels will be bit lower which allows them to offer lower prices?

Have you ever dumped your shopping at a till and walked out? I thought if the guy wanted to walk out he could, he didn't actually need to go the effort of unloading it all on a belt in a dramatic fashion in front over the worker and then storm out.

I need to know his reaction!

A birdlike apple cheeked old dear was putting a massive shop through and it kept giving her "please remove the last item"

'Unexpected item in the bagging area' is the one that annoys me. It's a can of Tesco baked beans, in the bagging area of a Tesco self-checkout. How is that in any way 'unexpected'?

God that's rank. I know it's not your or your kids fault but still that's grim

Not a trolleyload, but I have dumped a basket load and walked out, due to the bad customer service in one of the local supermarkets. They often have only one manned checkout, and used to have a policy of slamming down the closed sign after the current customer when there was a line of others waiting behind - they don't do that any more, thank goodness, no doubt there were complaints.

The other supermarket nearby makes shopping a joy, so I go there instead.

That's a strawman argument,

It really isn't. Do you know the actual meaning of strawman argument?

Your one liners contain nothing of substance and are merely argumentative for the sake of being so. You are not lending any credibility to this discussion and it is futile to attempt to have a rational discussion with someone who is giving an excellent impression of not having knowledge, indepth or otherwise, about the topic. I am not going to waste any more time with you.

Once, and I'm not proud of it. The woman on the checkout ID'd me. I asked her what for, and she told me the energy drink. I'd picked up one of those Purdey's drinks in the glass bottles, didn't even realise it was an energy drink tbh, it just looked nice.

I remember just staring at her and going "it's 16, the age limit is 16 for energy drinks".

She persisted that I "might" be under 16. I was 31, tired, grumpy and in my full uniform for a job that you'd be very unlikely to be doing at 15. I didn't have ID. I was 31 years of age, I looked 31, and I was just trying to do my food shop at the end of a 12 hour work day.

I was so exhausted and fed up with the absurdity of it I just went "Ok you deal with that then" and walked out leaving two week's worth of food on her checkout. I sacrificed four bags for life for that flounce.

Hahaha so true.

An ostrich, or a ford fiesta, yes, would be unexpected. But these tills seem to be in a constant state of surprise at perfectly ordinary items.

I do loathe them. And the ones in any co op I've been in are dirty. You know, smears and crumbs and bits of packing debris the like. With the general dishevellment and the lighting and shitty electronic voices it's like fekking blade runner.

I appreciate your perspectives, and using chatgpt I'll do some un biased research.
To me any business that evolves it's operations e.g. Modern marvels episode on the origins of Mac Donald etc, shows that companies offer a service and then try to maximise profits, so why are self service systems any different just like with the bell hops etc it's a different way to evolve and streamline a service. So overall I don't see the differences.

I appreciate your perspectives and I'll consider them in my research.

@VeridicalVagabond in that case she was the arsehole not you.

Those saying they have abandoned their shop... that's fine if you legit need to leave as sometimes it just can't be helped, however I will say that I hope you let a member of staff know so all the chilled food didn't have to be wasted off! If you don't tell someone, they have no way of knowing how long it has been out of the fridge and therefore has to be wasted off.

I left a shopping basket once. I was in a small supermarket in a very long queue that lead to a counter with two tills. There were two female staff members behind but only one of the tills was open and the other woman was leaning against a wall and every so often they would speak to each other - the woman on the till looked irritated. When I got down to third in the queue I could hear what they were saying which was the till woman asking if the other was coming on now and the leaner saying no she was on her break. So she was standing there watching a load of people queuing and couldn't care less. I looked at my watch and it said two minutes to the hour - she really was counting down to the second! I walked to the empty till and dumped my basket and walked out. Technically she was in the right, but she could have jumped on a few minutes early because it was so busy and why stand there doing bugger all for several minutes and irritate your colleague and customers? I assume she was annoying her colleague for some reason.

I have left items at tills before a couple of times. My Mum said to me, when you get past 50 you will become invisible. She was right. I have been next in line to be served and they will go to someone (anyone it seems) else - generally someone younger - I will occasionally leave stuff for them to put away.

I'm generally a laid back person but something about shops and crappy service obviously gets up my nose!

I get people leave a trolley / basket if theve forgotten there purse, Car parking is going to run out, baby is screaming etc
BUT i dont get it when people leave it because theres a Q - Especially if you have a trolley.
You then have to go into the next shop, get all the food again…
You havent saved any time

My local store had a period where they didn’t open anything but the self serve for the first hour, I saw it happen a lot. I learned after the first time to drive on to the next one if I was doing a big shop straight after school run in the morning. Lots of people with full trolleys and no where to go, being told the store won’t check them out.

Yes. Sainsburys. Long checkout queues, had been waiting for some time, staff came and started sending people to tills they were opening up, but they took people from the end of the queue - ones who had just arrived rather than those of us who had been waiting longest. I was not the only person to just leave my trolley and walk out. I already knew I had to go somewhere else to get some things that were not in stock anyway so it wasn't a big deal.

You are brilliant!

Or maybe just people who are sick of poor customer service!

That never happened!

I would SO love to see an ostrich or a ford fiesta placed onto a self scanner.

@Valeriekat
Being 'sick of poor customer service' (not that I think that was the issue for that poster) doesn't entitle someone to behave like an asshole & inconvenience another shopper.

Many many many times, especially during covid when people went crazy.

Only a basket. It was cold weather, so I was wrapped up, and the supermarket was boiling. I started to feel very faint so put the basket on the floor and left.
I've also left a basket at a self service till. I'd bought wine which needed age verification. Not a single member of staff there to help so left the whole thing behind and went elsewhere.

Brilliant response....i love it!!!! Used to get followed when my son was in the pram.....made sure I walked through the supermarket twice lol

I did in our local coop once.
2 self serve tills that are shit at the best of time. I had queued 10 min to use the fecker. After the third item refused to scan I walked out.
Not proud but a combination of utter exhaustion and overload.
Now I do one shop first thing on a Sunday at massive tesco with the hand held scanner. Once in a blue moon I am checked which is bliss compared to self scan tills.

And those many many people who dont have a smartphone?