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.

I would have insisted that they open a till. I am not a confrontational person normally, but I have done so before. I have said 'either you open a till, or I am leaving this shopping'. It always works. Don't be fobbed off. It annoys me no end as well because theft from self service tills is really quite high, my local supermarket has had to put all kinds of measures in to prevent it.

@DemBonesDemBones So they should hire them. Understand that a till opening would have solved this and open it. Or prioritise the putting back of food so it isn't wasted and incurring a cost. There are many answers to this that are not OPs fault and need to be changed.

This could have been prevented.

@TesticularHeft and none of them by the overstretched staff on the floor, who are humans and not robots and certainly not beneath you as your tone implies.

You said that. Not me.

I always go to the old Lidl, as the new one is self checkout and they refuse to open a till. But they can also be arsey about you taking a trolley through the self checkout so what exactly do they want you do to?!

DS2 works the evening shifts at a major supermarket. Staffing levels after 7pm are appalling with frequently only two till trained staff on that shift. Often they have to close the tills early and occasionally the customer service desk. They are fed up and exhausted by the end of a shift and have usually had to deal with a couple of abusive customers as well.

Leaving the trolley is a statement but not the most effective one. Better to ask someone to call a duty manager for you. That has the effect of putting the issue right in front of the people that actually decide on staffing levels for each shift.

The duty manager won't be in charge of the wage budget. That will be set by head office. Where I work we have 3 members of staff leaving in the next 2 weeks. Not a single hour has been authorised to cover those shifts. Either through overtime or employing another staff member. It's not my duty managers fault. Or even my managers. It's the head office budgets that are the problem,and the fact that managers are no longer allowed to make decisions at a store level, but are still blamed when it all goes tits up. If you want to complain do it in writing (letter or email) to head office

Yanbu it's ridiculous that they make you work as an unpaid checout operative with a big trolley - I don't mind with a basket if I am not buying stuff that's likely to trigger the myriad of errors the self scan machines have all the time, but with a trolley you need them to scan so you can pack or it takes double the time even with no errors. But going and doing your shopping again at Aldi would have taken longer. Going online and ordering it for home delivery (not from asda) would be better.

User error is generally caused by a system that is poorly designed in the first place. Three Mile Island, Herald of Free Enterprise, pretty much every plane crash blamed on human error, were all ultimately caused by poor design which resulted in a human error that should not have been possible to make.

If you want people to use a system, particularly without training, it needs to be designed so that it drastically minimises the possibility of human error. That also needs to be balanced with efficiency as eliminating error can often result in a reduction of efficiency, which is not an option for something like a self checkout.

I got caught behind a non payer recently. This guy walked off, I went to start scanning and saw he looked as if he had tapped his card but clearly had not. I had to get a member of staff to void the transaction. I guess that's why more and more I see cameras on each self service checkout.

I completely agree, I think of people who are lonely and when I’ve worked in retail before, they will tell you that you’re the only person they’ve spoke to all week.

I think it would be better if everyone channeled their energy to complaining to head office.

The staff in the store have very little control of staffing levels and I don’t think it’s fair they get the brunt of customer dissatifaction for something out of their control.

@sparkellie I agree that managers and duty managers aren’t in charge of the wage budget but it’s been noticeable that when they’ve been called to checkouts they’ve managed to shuffle shifts a bit for a short while afterwards. I think we’re agreed that the store staff aren’t at fault though

DS2s store manager tends to see checkouts as a minor irritation and expects them to close checkouts and help on shop floor constantly. He’s unusual though - they had a store swap for a month recently and nobody wanted him back.

@BobnLen @TesticularHeft

Fresh and frozen food can't be put back unless we are sure it's not been out the fridges and freezers for a certain amount of time, there is a 20/30 min rule for those items hence most gets wasted.

I know, right! I put my bags on it the other day and it started flashing. I had pushed the button to tell the till that I was using my own bags but apparently it still wanted a member of staff to authorise it.

I use them all the time and the fricking things flash. I prefer Tesco, always seems to be someone on the till and they are nice.

Wow! I'd have just taken the trolley out of the store full of stuff.

I order from Ocado, they're brilliant. You should look into online shopping.

I always say as an ex grower it will only be when people start to go hungry will they value the food we have

Do you mean you'd have stolen the shopping?

Loosen your clutch on your pearls, there are families being slaughtered in Gaza right now.

Not true.
Very light items e.g. Birthday cards sometimes don't scan, reduced items can be hard to scan if the bar code is a mess, Sainsbury's don't have pick and mix in their 'look up' function.

Gaza threads are over there ➡️

Good to know that atrocities happening in other parts of the world mean we can just ignore the laws in our own countries.

Where do you draw the line? Obviously you have no issue with shoplifting/theft. What about burglary? Drink/drug driving? Embezzlement? Fraud?

God I love this website. Posts like this are why I will never leave.

This happened to me in Asda when I was hobbling around in a moonboot. Had been in hospital a few days getting my broken ankle operated on, got home to a pretty empty fridge and couldn't get a delivery slot for a couple of days. They said I didn't have enough stuff to open a checkout for. I said I can't really balance and scan and pack it into my backpack. Answer was a shrug. I left the trolley and ordered a takeaway!

Yes, I agree. It's interesting to get the perspective of all types of people, including the "criminal class". I don't tend to come across people who are happy to justify their willingness to shoplift in my daily life.