To be really sick of supermarkets treating paying customers like scum

[OptimismvsRealism]

Sainsbury's traps you in the self service pen of shame until you scan your receipt like a good little girl

Tesco won't take the security tags off your wine until you've not only paid but they've examined your receipt in detail to make sure your wine is paid for - sort of a performance so you remember your place

Waitrose makes a bit song and dance about doing the rescan of self scanning shops (I don't do self scanning because why would I sign up for this extra work?)

Just in Lidl and my wine set off the security alarm even though I've had the tags taken off and the security guard chased me out the door to try to get me to show him inside my bags (er no fuck off pal)

Aldi staff try to look in your shopping bags as you queue

Does anywhere NOT get a kick out of treating their profit drivers like filth any more?

I will probably just have to live off UHPs from the local Greggs at this rate

So a security tag setting off an alarm that then results in things being checked doesn’t prevent theft? Someone checking what has been self scanned doesn’t prevent theft? Of course they do.

You seem excessively worked up about this 😂

@S0livagant that surprises me. Way back before even 20 years ago supermarkets had cameras, security, plain clothes security and those large one way mirrors that was the management watching over the store from their office.
Even 30 years ago we had walkie talkie radios that linked stores to each other, to the council CCTV office and to police.

It was less visible to the customer. Though self-service is likely to blame. Make the customer do the job of a checkout person, but then stand there and watch them do it?They need more actual staff on checkouts rather than watching customers and attending to the machines that constantly go wrong. I used to scan and pack and the customers were happy.

So your issue is with security measures being obvious? What a strange thing to take offence over.

Why is it strange to not want to do the job of a checkout person then be treated like a criminal. There used to be a thing called customer service.

Train and tube stations have ticket barriers. Nobody complains they're being treated like a criminal.

Not true nobody complains. Some of us complained when our local station (or rather the private company that stole it from us with government connivance) wanted to treat us like criminals in this way by installing ticket barriers.

We campaigned successfully and managed to defeat the proposal using planning laws. We still are thus treated in a civilised manner when we arrive home on a train, rather than being dealt with as though we are all fare-dodgers or criminals and forced into interminable queues like in many other less-civilised localities.

Supermarkets could learn from this. They won't, of course, driven as they are exclusively by profit rather than any inkling of public service. Oh for the days of my youth before local shops were forced out of business by criminal gangs of tescos, lidls, sainsburieds and other supermarket mafias!

My local Sainsbury's doesn't trap you in a pen. That would piss me off to be honest.

I did used to use the self scan but got annoyed with it. One time I had the 'random check' so staff member came over to scan 3 items of my shopping. Before I could say anything he'd grabbed an item of clothing right from the bottom of my bag and it came up as 'not scanned'. So he had to scan all my shopping again! I wouldn't have minded but the I'd bought the item of clothing from a different shop!! And he'd just scanned it without looking!

After that, I was obviously on the black list and got a 'random check' every single time! So after about 4 times I gave up with it. The point of doing it is so you can be quick - no point if you have to hang around for staff doing checks!

I'm not sure they'd get many customers if they started charging £10 for a crappy supermarket loaf! You'd be able to get a nicer loaf for vastly cheaper from the bakery.

I wish I could do this more and completely for go the supermarket.

I use the bakery and the greengrocer. But can't really afford corner shop prices for everything else - and they don't have everything I want either.

If you are going to preach about respect, it might be an idea to try treating people on here with a bit of respect, @OptimismvsRealism. Your attitude towards anyone who does not agree with you is the polar opposite of respect. If you display this sort of attitude in real,life, it would not surprise me that others don’t treat you with the respect you think you deserve.

Exactly. People blaming thieves when we all know these things are about using self checkouts! Less staff for them to pay = more hassle for customers.

I think the point is the real thieves aren't going to be using self checkout - they've legged it before that point!

@Needmorelego · Yesterday 14:38
Well unfortunately so much is stolen from supermarkets they either have to do this or they will have to put up their prices.
Want to pay £10 for a loaf of bread? I doubt it.
You would not believe how much retailers lose in theft.

@Sunshineandpool · Today 22:43
I'm not sure they'd get many customers if they started charging £10 for a crappy supermarket loaf! You'd be able to get a nicer loaf for vastly cheaper from the bakery.

That's true. And of course the bakery doesn't have self-service tills; they have a counter and a person to pass the bread over it to you the customer. And their bread is real bread. This is a win-win-win situation.

And, contrary to what @Needmorelegoclaimed, supermarkets don't have to put their prices up to cover theft: they could reduce dividends to shareholders instead and thereby save much more than they would by charging more to customers. (Check it out: do the calculations.) They won't, of course. --Why not? (Answer left as an exercise ...)

We have barriers at my local station but when it's busy they just have them open to get people through quickly.

I hate it in London when you're trying to get to the family gate with your DC in a massive crowd.

Exactly.

I doubt it. They don't make money on deliveries do they?

I use the local butcher and the greengrocer at the market. I have my milk delivered in milk bottles. I use the local co op, Lidl and Waitrose.
I always go to a till that has a human.
Nice chit chat. Never come across a member of staff that is rude.
Treat people as you want to be treated.

@Sunshineandpool what do you mean by supermarkets don't make money on deliveries?
I order £50 of food from Iceland to be delivered that's the same £50 as if I had paid in store.
(I have to pay a bit more to cover the picking, bags and delivery but the £50 on food is £50 regardless of how I purchase it)
I actually buy more by doing home delivery because the reason I do it is because I can't physically carry £50 worth of shopping home.
If I go in store I buy a lot less because I can only buy what I can carry.

@Sunshineandpool many average medium sized towns don't have anything as fancy as an actual bakery to buy a nicer loaf of bread from.
It's the supermarket or convenience/corner shops as the only options.
Although Morrisons do some really nice fresh bread.

I call bull shit on this

you managed to stop ticket barriers being installed

entirely reasonable and widespread measure for ensuring tickets have been purchased… across the world.

Bull. Shit @yoteyak

You should not blame the supermarkets.

You should blame the thieves, and the previous government for decriminalising shop theft in all but name.

Our Tesco installed these gates recently,now we have to cut through the pretend you work here checkouts if we haven't bought anything.

I had no idea what scanning a receipt in the pen of shame even was till reading this thread. In our Sainsbury's you use the zapper as you go round, or scan at the end, then you pay, and you leave. If Sainsburys has paid for some weird extra measures to be installed in a particular store, it means that that store has higher than usual issue with theft. I quite like it if the beeper goes off when I'm leaving, it usually means there's a tag left on something and it can be removed straight away, rather than discovering it at home and having to make an extra journey back to have it removed. Its perfectly obvious why they would ask to see a receipt for that, so it doesn't bother me at all.

Ours has no barriers and I've been to plenty of others without them too.