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 had someone abandon a full trolley on my conveyor belt when I worked at a supermarket back in the ‘80s. I’d but it through the till and they expected me to take a bunch of coupons that weren’t valid. They stormed off and I had to get the manager over to void the sale then put everything back. Manager told the other people queuing in my lane to go to other tills and the one at the front swore and flounced out leaving their trolley, too!. So I had to put that back too.

I’ve abandoned baskets quite a few times at self-checkout. Especially when self-checkout was new and the bloody things were so prone to mistakes. I left a trolley once when a check out operator closed there till just as I got to the point where I’d be putting groceries on after a really long wait. Reminded me of the woman who’d abandoned her trolly at my till a few decades before!

Theres many reasons..i dont know if invisible disability has been added, but standing in a queue for a very long time makes my legs scream in agony (POTS and other illnesses) and can make me poorly for days...ive left shopping at the till, near the till. Think , i will go when its quieter. Shopping online is expensive delivery and i dont want large amount..theres a minimum food cost for order delivery £25 etc. We arent all dicks for walking away..

If it became clear that customers were pissed off with consistently long queues and were abandoning trolleys regularly, leading to a significant loss in money then the supermarkets would increase staffing levels because it would make economic sense.

As I said in my post, I'm not advocating this as a campaign tactic. But anyone who has worked in retail knows that you are regularly left without enough staff because head office won't give you the hours.

But it's unusual for there to be consistently long queues since most supermarkets are now open 24 hrs, this usually happens when you get peak times mixed with staff absence so it's just adds to the problem at a busy time. When trolleys are left the staff just put the stuff back their not informing managers or head office they just get on with it.

Surely it would’ve been quicker to queue than have to redo the whole shop

Sainsbury's yesterday. Two huge self checkout bays and only two or three conveyor belt ones.

I went to the self checkout and , inevitably, something wouldn't scan. So I waited.
Eventually loads of us were waiting. All of us looking around for a staff member and not one in sight.

Madness.

No never. I find it odd that anyone would go shopping at a time that is close to an appointment or school pick up… I tend to shop in the evenings now and there aren’t any cashiers working at all in our local store, just the self service ones.
Dumping a trolley seems like a waste of time to me as you then need to traipse around another shop finding it all again… what’s the point?! Not the best use of time.
its a bit like the people who walk into A&E then strop out because the wait is too long…. You either need it or you don’t.

Less of the Karen nonsense please. I work in retail, it's hell on earth sometimes. I sometimes lose my temper with the people who will not be told, or who expect you to do their thinking for them, but when that happens I get a manager to deal with them. (Drives me up the wall when they'll listen to my manager tell them the exact same thing I just have! 🤦🏻‍♀️ But it's their time they're wasting, I'm getting paid regardless.)

I usually ask the staff to open another till and they send someone from the shop floor.
if it was a busy time such as Christmas I would wait.

I did it in Asda fairly recently. It's a 24 hour Asda, but it's apparently self-scan only after 10pm. I was working long hours at the time, and did a week's shopping, and got to the till to find this out. They used to have a policy that they'd open a till if you asked for it, but I just got a 'we don't do that any more'. So, I just left the trolley and walked out. I couldn't face scanning it all. They followed me, going, 'you need to put this back!' I didn't; and won't be going for any more than 1/2 a dozen things when it's self-scan only in the future. I knew it would be a nightmare to do a full trolley. I feel for the staff, but unless people vote with their feet, things won't change.

Im judging people who did it because they were kept waiting/ didn’t have money- an employee who already had too much to do would have to put it back! I’ve put back everything when I realised I didn’t have the money and wouldn’t get back. I’ve worked in shops where having to put a load of products back would put you under serious pressure to get your work done!

Yes. I had done self scan and a fairly large shop already packed into my own bags to walk straight home. I was flagged for a random spot check for theft prevention, (which is not normally a problem as usually they just check 10 items at the self scan till and you pay and go), but this time it wanted me to scan the entire shop again, involving having to go to a regular till, unload all my stuff, wait to be served and then pack it all up again. I simply didn't have time for it as I needed to get back with the shopping then go collect my son from preschool, but as I had it all bagged in my bags I had no choice but to tell the staff member that I couldn't do the full check and unload everything on to the floor of the self scan tills area and have her let me through the gate and leave, I was practically in tears, I didn't need the stress, I then had to try squeeze the whole shop in again between collecting my son, feeding him and starting dinner that day.

I've probably abandoned smaller amounts before when the queue has simply been too long and I've been in a hurry, can't remember specifically though.

To clarify by self scanning I meant the hand held scanners where you scan as you go, so I was scanning and packing my bags as I went around the shop to save time.

Full re scans are done when items haven't been scanned. It's very common for people to make excuses to suddenly leave in this situation as they have been caught shop lifting

Same here, I've done that a few times. I've never dumped a trolley or basket but will put things back if I can't be bothered to wait once I see the length of the queues.

Yep... because i can be a proper arse at times. I sometimes think if they want me to buy then man the tills.

Hope you complained about their sexist patronising behaviour as well. How outrageous.

That's what I was going to say, nor do Aldi. You can do Click & Collect with Aldi, but sadly that service isn't available at my local store, so you have to go much further afield. Neither of them do home delivery.

No I’ve never done this.
I have walked out if I’m only buying a couple of things but I always put them back.
What people seem not to understand is this:
by dumping a full trolley you will create longer queues. The staff who do the put backs are the same staff who man the tills! There are no magic fairies who float down from above to do the put backs. I know this because a relative of mine works for a major supermarket. You are also risking the health of others because all the products go back on sale.
So well done, let’s hope it’s you who picks up the milk which has been left out and you feed it to your child.

I don't consider myself to be a stormer-outer as a rule, but I did ditch a trolley full of stuff and walk out in Sainsburys a few years ago. One till open, a queue down the aisle and four or five staff having a rowdy laugh and a jolly good time at the customer service desk, with no awareness of what was going on.

I was uncharacteristically cross.

I went in for nappies and the queues were massive so I put them back then walked out. My baby was crying and needed fed and people were starting to look. It was so embarrassing as I had to squeeze past the people at the check out as there's no way out otherwise. Luckily my local spar sells nappies but they are 3 times the price.

By that arguement we should all be dumping our trollies after 20 min or so rather than risk feeding our own family perished goods

And its not that we don't understand, it's that we are so angry at how we are being treated that we don't, in the moment, care. Timely service is something that weexpectwhen we shop. I'm sure that if it becomes a big problem for shops then they'll improve their customer service.

Why exactly?

22 years ago, heavily pregnant, walked up to the counter in Boots with a full basket. Two young shop assistants chatting away. I stood with a hopeful smile on my face, expecting they'd notice me soon. They didn't. So I said, 'Hello' cheerfully, only to receive a death stare & eye-roll from one of the girls for having the temerity to interrupt their conversation. So I plonked the basket on the counter & walked out.