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.

Well that’s not true 😂😂

@LittleWeed2 of course it does when there's not enough staff!

If you use Ikea self service you need to scan your receipt at the gate to exit, I guess they'll introduce that to stop theft? Or a security guard to check receipts at a gate, minimum wage and only one needed.

🤣🤣🤣 nobody cares if the staff complain. Trust me. A customer complaint has a 100% better chance of change than multiple staff complaints.

I've never worked in a supermarket but assume that they close the tills earlier than closing time so they can cash out and reconcile the tills. It's not just a case that one or two staff who happen to be chatting can just hop on a till as there might be no change left in it, or they might not have the staff to cash up and witness it again and put the money in the safe (or whatever it is that happens). I assume this all happens in advance of the shop closing so the staff don't have to stay late for free. Maybe it's for security reasons too in the evening as they have a lot more cameras on the self checkouts.

They will still have to cash up the self checkouts when the shop is closed. Anyway I couldn't get worked up about using a self checkout occasionally, or have the time of inclination to go to another shop to make a point.

Yanbu. I'm starting to avoid shops that don't keep some staffed checkout tills open (Local Boots and Morrisons, I'm looking at you).

Self service is fine for a couple of items or when I've got loads of change to shovel in there. Mostly I prefer a human being to scan it so I can pack and pay.

lol you clearly don’t use them

This is nothing new. It's always been the same. I worked in a supermarket in the 1970s and again in the 1990s. Management (and I was eventually one of them) always rostered in the minimum possible amount of staff to run a shift because profit is everything. If there is no profit the store will close.

You did the right thing in abandoning your shopping. It's a tangible loss to the shop and a very clear message that staffing levels are not right. IME it's the only thing that made us bring in more staff.

Our local Asda staff are going on strike this weekend - Good Friday and Saturday to protest about pay and conditions as well as management bullying, ongoing issues and cuts to hours.

Part of this is, I am sure, driven by the increase in self service at the store. They and Morrisons have hours where the main tills are not staffed so the idea of self service being quicker and to avoid queues just doesn't happen for the customer. Plus due to being an area of deprivation,
Many people still budget with cash so have to queue to for 2-3 cash and card machines. The change Has also resulted in a pay cut for staff as they don't need to roster as many till trained staff on.

For elderly and disabled, the 1 person manning self service and scan as you shop tends to put the persons shopping through on scan as you shop after the person has struggled to do it themselves. Meanwhile anyone with a problem at their self serve till has to wait until they're free.

I appreciate the convenience as an independent person but it does annoy me when I have a problem and, as we all knew, there's only one person to oversee maybe 10 tills.

Perhaps customers need to simply refuse to use self service. If that means abandoning trolleys full of shopping, I appreciate it's more work for the floor staff. But eventually that cost impact of wasted produce will hit the shareholders where it matters to them.

Asda and Morrisons came out worse in the Which supermarket reviews this year for in store shopping, why am I not surprised.

They lose the impulse buys, which is quite a lot if profit.

If it's not the staffs fault, who decided not to open the till, then whose fault is it?

I actually think it's a good thing you left the trolley. Perhaps the shop, be it managers or staff will think about it. Customer service is failing massively at the minute because of excuses like "not enough staff". They're making record profits so... Hire. More. Staff!

I personally would have warned them I was going to abandon the trolley to reduce any extra work for them but it is a joke.

I should imagine it's higher management deciding on tills opening!

I really don't get the leaving the trolley thing, it's the OP inconvenienced more than anyone else!

@Noyesnoyes possibly but I imagine they have the ability to open a till. Assuming they have the passwords and log ins and know how to operate so they could.

I find on self service the staff just chat and go into their own world. They seem to have blocked out the beeps the machine makes when it needs attention and you have to get their attention - which many of them also appear to have blocked out.

But who is most inconvenienced by dumping the trolley and stripping off?

OP.......

Has to start the whole process again and with the humo!!

I work in a large supermarket and the only thing achieved by abandoning a full trolley is the food waste (which I hate when people are struggling with cost of living)

It makes NO difference to the staff having to put it all back and won't be a reason to make stores open more manned tills unfortunatly

Dumping a trolley because of poor service is surely better than giving them your hard earned money. Outweighs the inconvenience and surely OP will choose another supermarket in future

Why is the food wasted?

Better get it back on those shelves quickly then so you don't waste it

@Noyesnoyes the definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. 😂 sometimes we just do it.

At my local Aldi they only have four of the self checkout tills in operation at one time, they close down the others because they only have one member of staff assisting.

My smart shop at sainsburys is not too bad, but most of my personalised offers are hardly ever in stock and their app never works in their stores! The random checks are annoying depending on the staff member, I had one empty out all off my shopping so he could check 15 items to ensure I’d scanned them, of course I then had to repack everything - annoying when it’s supposed to save time. And don’t get me started on the huge camera’s attached to the tills filming me! The first time I used smart shop I ended up leaving the whole trolly of food, I’d finished scanning all of my items and was just about to checkout when all the handhelds suddenly went down, shoppers were therefore advised to queue at a checkout and get the food scanned through by a cashier. I had finished my shopping at this point and just didn’t have the time or energy for it. Staff were fine about it (to my face anyway)😆

@TesticularHeft because as everyone is rightly observing THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH STAFF TO PUT IT BACK! So keep up.

@InterestedinEfteling

nope. Do you go to a Restaurant and cook your own meal while the chef watches on & when the gas keeps cutting out?

Waitrose has still got proper checkouts which are always open, ours has anyway, they opened a new one for me last time as there was a queue. I would probably still get a trolley full in there if I had to.