Asda not opening checkout tills

[Cramlington567]

About 8pm. Had a trolley full of stuff. There was a single checkout open when I entered. Went there to pay and it is closed with a sign saying in the evening there maybe be times when checkout is closed and you should use self scan. Two staff chatting ten meters away. I ask if they can open the till. They said 'sorry, no we don't have enough staff".

I go to self service. About 4 times the machine stopped and had to wait for the same staff to come over and unlock it. I was only a quarter of the way through my trolley. Justly left it there, walked out and said to the two staff, sorry I am leaving it, it's too much hassle.

Unreasonable? Plus, everyone saw this coming 10 years ago when it was 'we will always have at least one checkout open' then ' just ask and we will open one'.

Went to Aldi in the end but I can see them going the same way.

I am healthy by the way and middle aged. Would they have opened a till if I was elderly? Or obviously disabled but then not all disabilities are visible of course.

This!

I had no idea that it was indecent to go shopping at 8pm to a supermarket that closes at 10pm. Perhaps you think the poster should be tucked up in bed with her cocoa by 7:30

You never go to ASDA, but you do?

Is it not obvious? I do not do a proper shop there. I boycott ASDA. But I travel around with work so sometimes it is the only place nearby where I cam buy a few bits. I probably spend about £50 a year in ASDA, whereas I used to do a proper shop every week.

You don't boycott Asda !

You spend your money in Asda when it's convenient for you.

I

Why should the OP put up with hassle so that other people can sit around and get paid? Putting stuff back on the shelves is hardly onerous, dangerous or stressful work.

I think what a lot of people find irritating is that there's often plenty of staff wafting around doing other things - but apparently no one that can open a till.

And then going through the self service is painful - there's often a group of staff chatting, ignoring the flashing red lights and customers waiting.

A lot of the time customers are made to feel like an inconvenience. And that's the rub.

There is a distinct difference in the service at certain supermarkets. Some of them have really helpful staff, and I feel for them trying to juggle multiple things at once. Other supermarkets the staff clearly couldn't give less of a shit, and you're lucky to get anything other than a monosyllabic response.

It's weird, it's like a corporate cultural thing. Some supermarkets seem to have staff that are all genuinely helpful and at others, there's absolutely zero fucks given by any of the staff.

Same in my local Tesco yesterday. Busy Sunday night.
Only 3 staff (checkout staff). One was closing the kiosk.
Another on a checkout, manning the self checkouts.

I had a tired child with me, and had to go back in for milk.
Took a look at the queues & said fuck this… I’ll put it back.
A nice woman then ushered me in front of her. So kind!

I was in Tesco once, fairly late at night, about 10pm. There were a few of us using the self checkouts and they all kept getting errors.

Only one staff member on who kept zooming off for ages to the back of the store so everyone was getting irritated with the long waits.

Next to me was this absolute GIANT of a man. Well-dressed. He looked like a Viking. And he had this unbelievably loud, deep, rumbly voice.

We'd been waiting for the staff member to reappear but it was taking a while.

Viking Man suddenly turned round and bellowed across the store:

"Hellooooo! Your stupid fucking wanky machines have broken again!"

He wasn't aggressive or angry and I had to suppress a giant smirk. He just really captured the frustration of the self check out experience that night.

His voice was so loud that I think it probably reached the Tescos in the next town so within seconds the staff member was scurrying back to sort everyone out.

Also worth mentioning that my local Tesco has really good staff - there's just not enough people there. It's really unfair on them because they're constantly trying to do about eight things.

ASDA self scans are shite. Never have a problem with Tescos.

So people abandon trolleys for staff to put away and that is going to magically make all the checkouts work?

I think people have also left their brain cells in the trolley

Agree it’s not fair in the staff. I approached the kiosk on the off chance she would take me. But the lady was cashing up, and trying to get away from customers. She told me about the three staff & that she was just gasping for a bottle of water.

I can definitely understand your frustration, although i don’t get why you thought it was still quicker to leave and start a new food shop somewhere else.

You may have to just threaten to leave the trolley as soon as they refuse to open a till for you. I actually threatened to leave my trolley when I’d done Scan & Go and the self service till completely froze when I scanned my shopping list. The staff member said i’d have to go and unpack it all again and queue at a normal till, so i made her open a new till just for me.

I used to work at M&S foods and there is no way we would have refused to open a till if a customer asked us to. Customer service is going downhill without acknowledgement that customers still like good service.

That in my experience, is just the way of a customer service role though. You don’t get to ‘not serve customers’ because it’s 5 mins to the end of your shift. If there are customers there, you serve them. In a call centre, i can’t just not take a call because it’s 2 mins to the end of my shift.

The service at M&S is always excellent. Even at our local M&S garage. They're so, so helpful. Same with the other M&S garage in the next town.

It's like they recruit their staff members from a different planet - they're exceptional.

Only on MN do I ever hear people whinging about self-service checkouts. Everyone I know loves them because it's faster (no mass-unloading then pressure-packing), you rarely have to wait for one, you don't have someone up your ass waiting, and you don't have to make small talk with the cashier.

My personal favourite is scan and pack though. Everything goes from the shelf straight into bags. Pay then leave. Simple.

Sounds like a Karen moment.

Just finish scanning and go home!

All this fuss and drama can be avoided by using scan as you shop, available in Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys. So much quicker and easier.

I never use self scan tills or manned ones now. The issue of staffing isn’t my problem, we live in the C 21st and job roles change - otherwise we’d still be like Arkwright behind the counter getting every item from the shelves for you lol.

M&S staff are awesome. Amazing customer service every time.

I like to scan and go. very easy

Often the calibration is wrong so the weights don't match. That's not customer error

I hate scan and go. I always get called for a trolley check meaning I'm twice as long.

I shop online or Aldi

I assume they wouldn't be allowed to

In the case of those proposing that everyone annoyed by it should abandon their trolleys to get change - the mechanism wouldn’t be that checkouts would magically open because of abandoned carts, it would be that store takings would go down and that would pressure management to consider how to entice people to actually complete the shop by, say, opening manned checkouts. Which may or may not work.

But in OP’s case, since they wouldn’t open a checkout it was simply of a matter of her not wanting the hassle of scanning it all herself. If you’ve shopped and then find they aren’t prepared to open a manned checkout and you don’t want to put it all through self-scan, then don’t bother. Go home. Make a cup of tea and order online. Or just wait till you’re next there and can be bothered. The point is, if you haven’t completed the transaction and it isn’t working for you, you don’t have to keep going. There’s no obligation.

The thing is we want our cake and eat it

we want cheap prices which are achieved but stripping costs which is why there’s no staff

love a self checkout the only time I’ve had an issue is when I’ve done something wrong never had a faulty machine yet

everyone was praising booth’s supermarket when they stopped self checkout
what they don’t realise is they charge eye watering prices to finance this

they only thing you’ve achieved is taking twice of much time for your shopping created work for staff already run off there feet not to mention waste
Asda will not change there policies or increase staff because you’ve flaunced out