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

i bet everyone passing just thought… what a weirdo. Holding her newborn and shouting at the guard for not wanting to show her receipt

So I should meekly comply with a random man's demands so I don't make a scene

@Comedycook yes but an extra 10 seconds in your life really wouldn't have mattered would it.
Staff turnover in retail is huge and as a result staff training can be poor.
Can you not see why? Because many customers are arsy, rude and unhelpful.

Their staff training situation is absolutely sod all to do with me

Random man - security guard
Demand - to simply identify colleague to remind to remove tag to AVOID him having to hassle customers as they leave

@Comedycook i would have passed you but, holding your newborn and shouting at this security guard that you won’t show him your receipt and i would have thought “poor sod” about the security guard. and “poor baby” for your newborn

@Comedycook not "random man" but an employee of the business you decided to go to.
All the staff are "random" people by that theory.
Which ones are you happy to interact with?
Man on the meat counter? The cleaner who says "careful the floor it's wet"? The assistant who serves you on the till?
All "random" people??

Well more fool you. And there's massive difference between raising your voice and actual shouting. I firmly told him to let me leave. Anyway this was a very long time ago...said newborn is a teenager now 😂

It wasn't a random man 🙄 and it was a perfectly reasonable request in the circumstances.
You sound incredibly militant about things which have such little meaning, really.
Your blood pressure must be permanently sky high.

@Comedycook mistakes happen by staff sometimes. Yes it's not your 'job' to teach them - but sometimes it's just helpful and nice.

and has the same view of security guards as you do? ie not to be disrupted and disposable odious human beings

Figures.

That's like saying speed limits don't prevent road accidents because crashes still happen.

Definitely!

I got a very large voucher, flowers and chocolates when some spotty kid in tescos tried to say I hadn’t paid for a T-shirt they’d left the tag on. I got very loud rather quickly. He was made to apologise but I didn’t like his tone.

We’ll employ people n tills again then and stop being so greedy is what it arguably the response to that! Was shoplifting as bad when supermarkets had more tills open.

Sainsburys hardly has anyone on self service tills- I was at one in my lunch break and gave up as the customer service person was scanning a customers elf scanning stuff for her, ignoring everyone else as obviously she can’t be in-two places at once but I haven’t got time for the faffing!

Ha ha this made me laugh

Bang on.

Sorry terrible grammar and spelling throughout this.

I think theft has gone up so much because of the self scan and automated tills. There's so many staff monitoring these things that it takes more off the shop floor.

I always use the normal tills anyway in the supermarket but when I was last in ALDI I saw a man with a backpack loading it up with meats and cheese without a care in the world in front of everyone. No member of staff anywhere near the isles so went to the till to let them know, he was long gone by the time the security guard came out from the back.

Now if I had used a self check out/self scan and been stopped that day and inspected I reckon I'd have been pissed off.

I get they have to do it, but most thieves aren't buying and scanning their weekly shop, they're in and out with holdalls and backpacks within a minute.

@Goldenbear I started working in retail in the 90s.
No self service tills.
Yes shoplifting was bad even back then.
It's been bad since the Romans had market stalls.

I get they have to do it, but most thieves aren't buying and scanning their weekly shop, they're in and out with holdalls and backpacks within a minute

I think there is a lot of people opportunistic thieving. Scanning most of their shopping, slipping through an few items. Claiming it was a scanning error when caught. And that’s why they do random checks, as they know people are doing it. The random checks designed to be a detterant rather than they think they will catch everyone.

Shops are obliged to obey rules in relation to how they treat customers. Shops aren't "private property" - they're businesses open to the public and thus required to treat people in certain ways.

Yes sadly the only way to get around it at the moment is to vote with your feet and make sure you don't contribute a penny to the salaries of the managers who think these policies are genius but for some reason shoplifting keeps going up and up almost like they're not genius at all 🤷

But it is loads worse in the current age, even on our local news it had an article on this today and it is up 50%! I worked in retail in the mid 90s both supermarkets and fashion shops and I don’t remember it being as bad as this and the end of the day it is down to greed as it about the bottom line and more money for the share holders - good customer service used to be a thing but now it is taken for granted that customers will do the work for them. Of course people are going to exploit that weakness with self service if they are that way inclined, the supermarkets want the best of both worlds, the customers doing the work but having the same profits - of course that is going to be problematic!

bit that kind of rationale is not good customer service as the default is everyone is guilty! This is what people are objecting to, the premise that you are guilty of shoplifting despite never having shop lifted

I don’t understand the objection. We all know people are stealing; I’m more than happy to have a random check, as I don’t steal and people stealing adds costs to all of us. So as far as I’m concerned they can crack on.

if it was my business you can be damn sure I’d be checking and not letting people rob me blind.