Aldi self checkout- ‘I don’t work here so I’m not going to serve myself’.

[Teegan89]

Woman heard complaining in Aldi because there was a lack of manned checkouts. How do you think they keep their prices so low? I know there is a small percentage of people that struggle to use self checkouts but I think her attitude was crap.

That's poor service from m and s

I hate self checkouts. There's none in my local Lidl, possibly because it's such a deprived area they don't trust the customers. But in other shops they take for times lo ger than normal checkout. They are only ok for a few items but even then they have a fit with the bagging area. Hate them

I disagree. It can be super stressful trying to scan it yourself.

I agree, but in their defence the customer was exceptionally rude from the outset. So I was on Team M&S. but slightly shocked at the same time.

A comment to the next person in the queue, fair enough. Rudeness and/or abuse to retail staff, unacceptable, and retailers should support their staff more than they do.

I use self service tills out of consideration for those who cannot do so easily.

@mathanxiety that's not very nice and I see nothing wrong with working in retail. To be fair they earn more than the poor sods LSAing in my school for minimum wage (pro rata)

Same here. If there are more than about 6 waiting all eyes are on the other tills waiting to pounce when the green light indicates that another till is opening, and yes straight away it happens. I love Aldi and all its products too. The other supermarkets just seem so contrived and expensive by comparison. Too much choice can be a head wreck!

I loathe the self service checkouts wherever they are and would prefer to wait a bit longer to use a staffed one. I like Aldi because the checkouts are super quick, I'm slow using the self service ones and almost always have a problem. They've just introduced self service in our local Aldi but told me yesterday they would always open a till if asked, so I'll carry on shopping there for now. I get that some people prefer self service and that's fine but would like not to have it forced on me!

That's awful behaviour from a staff member.

I will go else where if I'm expected to use self scanning machines. I don't like them. 😞 I get easily confused. I get frustrated when it says there is an item in the bagging area when there is none. I normally have the patience of a Saint but after having a stroke last year I cannot be doing with all this rubbish. If I scan and pack it all, they going to pay me a wage too?

The labour market shifts. A few years ago there was no such thing as home delivery. Now armies of people work early in the morning to pick orders.
There is more need for delivery drivers.
Theres more need for the people who assemble the self service machines.

It’s in flux - we can’t stop progress.

There was delivery in the past, we had the butcher,baker, green grocer come to the door growing up.

It’s always rude to direct your anger at the usually underpaid and overburdened staff who work in these places.

Having said that, there’s going to be more and more of serve yourself. Especially when AI gets even bigger than it is.

My son took an Econ class that covered this exact topic and there are a whole lot of jobs that will go away.

I haven’t been in a bank in years, or to a travel agent, I do my own retirement investing and I scan my own shopping all the time because I don’t usually have to wait.

I would choose to go to Aldi over Tesco or Asda (only other choices) exactly because they don't have self service tills. Asda will generally have one manned checkout and Tesco none.

Sometimes our local Aldi's are closed because of all the thieving from them

Their prices were low before self checkouts.

I generally agree with her (though I'd never be rude to staff about it) and her dislike of self checkouts. There's always something which requires assistance (alcohol, or something not weighing correctly, having receipts checked after) and just in general it feels like a job where I'm being heavily scrutinised despite having zero training for the role.

I tend to only use them if I have just a few items. If I have a trolley full I'll wait for a proper till.

I don't like them either and only use one if absolutely necessary. By doing so, you are actually becoming a "free employee" of that store. It also takes work away from a person who should be receiving a paycheck from the store.

@DinaofCloud9 is it? Why?

I never use self service checkout as it’s taking jobs away from people.

At the moment businesses are barely surviving because they can't fill job vacancies. It's probably just as well that there are fewer openings at supermarkets, or all the businesses in hospitality and care would be struggling even more.

When I do my weekly shop at Asda, before 9am, there are no manned checkouts open. I actually prefer self-checkouts though. Manned checkouts send my anxiety sky high (being so close in a line and feeling trapped, having to make small talk, etc). There should be a choice though for people who struggle with self-checkout or self scan.

The whole argument of self service checkouts taking away jobs is rubbish.

I worked in Tesco for years and they employ more staff now than they did a few years ago because of the way we shop.

For a start there was no homeware department, very few toys, the clothing department is huge and now we have a whole new department created for click and collect and home delivery.

There is no way that the amount of people working in home delivery equates the checkout staff, you don't see the pickers because they are working from 3am but there's a huge number of them because people are not coming into store and using the manned checkouts that they claim to love so much.

I like self checkouts, some people don't. To some people they are not accessible, increasingly they are only accepting cards, which can also cause problems for some. Often when people are stressed about a situation, they come across badly.

Aldi more than doubled its profits last year, to £178 million and is planning a massive expansion, which will no doubt force a lot of alternative retailers out of the market.

I would like to think that Aldi would use some of this huge profit increase in supporting it's staff and ensuring that stores are accessible to all, which includes providing a decent number of traditional check outs.

It always takes longer with a self service till. I will use them if I don't have another option but I just know that when I start to put it through something will go wrong.
My local M&S has very sensitive machines. You just have to sigh and the watched thing bleats "unexpected item." I then have to wait for the poor assistant overseeing to come and sort me out. Seconds after they have walked away it will not recognise an item and we have to go through the whole rigmarole again.

It slightly amuses me when people object on the grounds that this automation is doing people out of jobs, as if this is the first innovation that as ever been adopted.

Would you willingly go back to the days before ATMs so you could only get cash by queuing up in the bank branch during their opening hours?

Or how about having to wait on the petrol station forecourt until someone was able to fill up your car for you rather than doing it yourself.

Exactly. I don't know why self scan winds people up so much. They seem to have very short memories of the days when were all had to wait in long queues to buy our supermarket shop. Or maybe I'm just old. But seriously, I remember trying to time my shopping to avoid every single till having four our five people with full trollies ahead of me.

Now I pick up a wand, scan as I go and put everything straight into my bags in the trolley. It's infinitely quicker, I don't have to queue and I don't have to unload the trolley and then pack it all again.
That's not the supermarket making me act like its employee. It's making life infinitely easier for me.

ATMs, self service petrol and scan as you go/self scan have all made these kinds of errands very much quicker than they used to be. We should be glad of that, given our busier lives.