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 did dump a basket of stuff a couple of years ago. It was a small store with a few local branches, not a large multinational.
I had a temp job some miles from home and hadn't used that shop before. I'd popped in at lunchtime to pick up a few bits. I didn't have a shopping bag with me, so I asked for a carrier when I got to the till. They didn't have any. Not the cheap ones, nor any of the more expensive reusable ones. Nothing. No boxes either. I didn't have a car to dump it all in. So I said, well how am I going to carry this stuff home ? Response was 'not my problem'. Everything had already been through the till at this point, so I just walked out. Needless to say never went back.

I've left a basket full at the checkout in New Look. Only one person serving and the lady in front of me said yes to a store card. After 5 minutes I just walked out.

And those many many people who dont have a smartphone?

'Many many' people? Are there? I don't think so.

Those people are much more likely to be assiduous with keeping their cards in a purse (which many smartphone users have dispensed with) or they can avail of a PP suggestion re customer service.

Just having a strop that due to their error they can't avail of the Clubcard prices, then leaving their shopping, is ridiculous.

Put your stuff back then? How is ok to just leave your stuff, with no discussion with a staff member, because you didn't want to wait.

Leaving is fine. Just making a job for someone else & possibly wasting stock is rude & entitled.

Nope. My teen works at a supermarket and I'm encouraging him to look elsewhere.

I would if I needed to.

Maybe him storming out was actually just him walking out fast because he needed to be somewhere urgently. Or he desperately needed the toilet or felt sick? I don’t think they have toilets in Lidl do they?

In the early years of Lidl I had to abandon a full trolley of food: got to the checkout to then be told that they couldn't accept cards In those days they only accepted debit cards, which I knew and was ok with, but I didn't have that amount of cash on me. There was no sign up as you went into the store saying that the card readers weren't working.

Dh tells the story of the time over 30 years ago in the States where he and a colleague, who'd just come over from Scotland, abandoned a trolley with over $300 worth of stuff in it. They refused to let his colleague buy any alcohol (a few beers) as he didn't have acceptable ID to verify his age - and no, a UK passport didn't count They very magnanimously said that they could pay for the rest of the goods but dh and his colleague just said stuff it and walked out.

Dh's secretary was livid (about the supermarket) when she found out the following day. She sorted out a driving licence for dh's non-driving colleague, which didn't allow him to drive but would serve as age verification. The colleague rang his wife back in Scotland to tell her that he'd got a licence to drink

Yes my 81 year dad last week in Aldi. The woman took his basket off him and insisted he go through their new self service till. He said he didn't want to, she insisted he try it, so he walked out!

He then got another basket and went round again and bought the same stuff. She clocked him again and asked him what he was doing he said 'buying my shopping' 😂 He will not use self service tills as he sees it as someone losing their job.

This comment from that article is both hilarious and 🙄at the same time

The move to self-checkout has created unintended consequences for stores as well.
Retailers found that self-checkout stations were not autonomous and required regular maintenance and supervision, said Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University and author of “The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets and the Do-It-Yourself Economy.”

Well, yeah. Anyone could have told you that. Ditto that some people will expolit them to shoplift. Yet for some reason it never occurred to the great minds in retail who introduced the things.

I haven’t but I’ve been tempted.

Our local Asda decided in their wisdom to gatekeep their bags for life in the self checkout area, so rather than just being able to grab some and take them to the till with you, you have to flag down the member of staff holding them and ask for them. It’s annoying, but also completely pointless as they don’t even check you are scanning them!

But it’s even more annoying as they only have one member of staff to around 20 tills, so when they wander off you end up standing around for 5 minutes with no bag. Then when they return they inevitably have to deal with the 5 red flashing lights on tills before you can get a bag. So when I was stood there for nearly ten minutes with no bag and a flashing red light on my till because I’d bought a bottle of wine, with no staff member to be seen, I wasn’t hugely impressed. But frankly it was still quicker and easier to just wait than go elsewhere.

(I do usually bring my own bags but sometimes I forget or haven’t been home to grab them first)

@EarringsandLipstick yes I did speak to them.

She was undoubtedly a prat, but I could have been more adult and just gone "oh just take the drink off then" instead of flouncing off and leaving some poor shop employee (probably not the one who annoyed me either) to put all my shopping back!

I accept my role as equal arsehole in the situation.

More than you would think.
Most of my neighbours dont have one, my partner currently doesnt have one. Out of a street of 120 houses, I can say with certainty 15 people dont have a smartphone. Extrapolate that across the country and (as I'm shit at math) a fair percentage of people dont have smartphones.

Those people are still as likely as anyone to forget wallets and purses.

People will have strops, feel sick, get emergency calls, all kinds of reasons for leaving your shopping. Who cares, shit happens and you being all sanctimonious wont stop these things happening.

That's such a dick move, honestly.

No, I have never left a full trolley or basket. It's rude to do this (unless a true emergency) and also wastes food (perishables). Can't really put cold goods back if they've been out too long. What a waste.

Lots of impatient people on this thread, it's not that hard to wait.

Only once and it wasn't at a Supermarket. It was at B and Q. We were buying quite a lot of stuff for a project so trolley was full, and we had to ask a staff member about another bit we needed . The rudest most patronising man we ever had the misfortune to come across and his attitude was appalling. We are never rude to store staff as we know what a hard job they do, and takes a lot to get us angry. Yes we did speak to a Manager, and he was only slightly better. So we abandoned the trolley and left and told them why.

Went to Wickes who couldn't have been more helpful, and they were cheaper too.

It was a dick move, happy to accept the criticism.

However, having worked in a supermarket you might be surprised at how long chilled stuff sits out on the floor when it is first delivered to the store. Large stores have large deliveries and it can take a long time before the final cage gets done. In theory it should go into the chiller and be collected from there when required. But in my limited experience that varied from night manager to night manager. Most of the time it was taken straight through to the shop floor for the replinishing staff to deal with. Fine if there were plenty of staff allocated and each person just had one or two cages to plough through. But when they were short staffed and it was one person to 4 or 5 cages, and one of the large yoghurts was squashed and leaked down through the entire cage, so the individual contents of one cage would need wiping down before putting in the shelf, then it could be a lot longer than you might think.

Our huge ASDA had weird lighting system put in once. Babies lying back in trolley supports started screaming. Adults started feeling unwell, ditto staff. Apparently it was X number of cycles a second of the new lighting that was affecting the senses making people ill. Many trolleys abandoned during this time. Was the oddest thing. My friend worked in customer services said that it was a real phenomena customers she'd known a long time were suffering.

They did adjust it

Yes, I have left baskets many times if they refuse to open tills, I just say "Ill go and see if the competition will open a till then" and walk out, the staff dont care though they just want their shift to be over.

You think the shop floor staff have any control over this ? You think we can just open a till when we are told not to/would have no one else to then stock the shelves all day / we control how many staff are employed?

It's the managers but it's always directed towards the staff at the bottom. Hate this attitude

Yes, I have left baskets many times if they refuse to open tills, I just say "Ill go and see if the competition will open a till then" and walk out, the staff dont care though they just want their shift to be over.

You think the shop floor staff have any control over this ? You think we can just open a till when we are told not to/would have no one else to then stock the shelves all day / we control how many staff are employed?

It's the managers but it's always directed towards the staff at the bottom. Hate this attitude

you being all sanctimonious wont stop these things happening.

You not using basic comprehension doesn't help either.

Of course all those things happen. And in emergencies, you do what you have to do. Such situations are rare though.

I commented on people who didn't want to queue, got annoyed at their own errors or decided they were late for another appointment.

They can leave, sure. They don't have to be dicks, and leave full trolleys of fresh or perishable goods, for someone else to deal with.

That's my point, which has nothing to do with smartphones & all to do with basic courtesy. There's nothing 'sanctimonious' about that.

@EarringsandLipstick haha collecting my 6 year old from school is not an appointment.

One of my neighbours did this, in Lidl, on Friday. It was packed out, one cashier, so she just walked off and left the trolley load.

I think Lidl and Aldi need to improve their cashier service.😗

I don't have a smartphone, I'm 35 and have been using cheap basic phones for years (my old Samsung brick lasted nine and a half years, current Nokia I've had for nearly two and a half years.) I like being fairly offline when I'm out. I spend enough time online when I'm at home!

After doing some research on self service tills here are my conclusions:

It's important to note that while self-service tills offer cost-saving opportunities, they also come with their own set of costs. These costs may include initial hardware and software investments, maintenance and support, security measures to prevent theft, and ongoing training for staff and customers.
Additionally, the effectiveness of self-service tills in terms of cost savings can vary depending on factors like the type of business, customer demographics, and the level of acceptance and usage by customers. Overall, self-service tills can be a cost-effective solution for many businesses, but the extent of cost savings will depend on how well they are implemented, maintained, and integrated into the overall business strategy.

with regard's to customers using them:

Some people's feelings toward self-service tills are diverse, and they depend on individual preferences and circumstances. While many appreciate the convenience and efficiency of self-service tills, others may have reservations or resentments, particularly in situations where they encounter difficulties or prefer human interaction. Retailers often strive to strike a balance by offering both self-service and manned checkout options to cater to a wide range of customer preferences.

well to save time why not see before hand how busy the tills are before doing the shopping ?