To think this is why the high street is failing?

[MiamiWindMachine]

I’m off on holiday in a couple of days, so thought I’d go up to the big shopping centre for a couple of last minute things.

In the massive H&M, all the tills bar one had been converted to self-service. The ones on the floor I was on were ALL closed. I went down to the lower floor and there was a huge queue, because no one could work out the machines. There was a step to remove security tags, and people couldn’t work out whether this was only for those plastic tags or if there was some flag on the barcodes for lower value items. Someone else was trying to process a return via these tills. When a member of staff eventually appeared, she confirmed returns could only be processed at a manned till. The customer pointed out that there were no manned tills. The staff member had no idea who to ask about it, then disappeared to find someone, so the queue was getting even longer.

I was on the way out about 15 minutes before closing time and went past M&S. I thought “I wonder if the Bureau de Change is still open” and went to check. The woman saw me approach and had a pained look on her face, saying “Arrgghh, I’ve just cashed uuuppp!” I was a bit taken aback, but said “Oh well, never mind. What time do you close, for future reference?” She then reluctantly admitted that she was supposed to be open until 8, but said “But I do start cashing up at around 7.30”. I was about to ask why when she started saying, “It’s fine; I’ll do it, I’ll do it”, like she was doing me a massive favour. I tried to pay on Revolut and she said “We can’t take those cards!”, as if it was somehow obvious. I asked about Apple Pay and she said, “No, it has to be a proper bank card or credit card”. I therefore went to pay with my credit card and she said, “You do know we have to charge a fee for these, don’t you?” I said I didn’t have a choice given she’d rejected two other payment methods.

I then went down to foods to grab a ready meal and some wine. I went to a manned till as I had alcohol and the girl said, “Oh, could you go to the self-service? It’s just that I’m closing this one”. I asked about the alcohol and she said, “I can approve that from here; it’s just that it’s easier for me”.

I feel like we’re constantly told in the media “Use it or lose it” re: the high street; how sad it would be if we lost the personal touch. From what I could see yesterday, one store has done everything possible to eliminate personal interaction, while in the other, the staff are more bothered about their convenience than the customers’. Is it any wonder that people would rather click a couple of buttons to get something delivered?

I agree that exorbitant rents in town centres are a huge part of the problem. A modest shop in ours can be upwards of 50,000 pa to lease before you've even turned the lights on, never mind factoring in stock costs and staff. But this is the problem of the property market in general.

Alot of our town centre is owned by big London companies and overseas investors who snapped it up when prices were lower. The properties are assets and part of a portfolio. They attract tax breaks, and it's immaterial to the owners whether they're occupied or not - there is no incentive to lower rents, and no obligation to consider the impact of boarded up premises on the landscape nor the community. Councils are pretty limited and often toothless, and trying to mop up the fallout from loss of revenue while often apparently reporting imminent bankruptcy themselves.

I dunno what the answer is for bigger town centres, but it's good to hear about the village high street mentioned above.

Perhaps it's all the result of excessive central urbanisation? I dunno, it's just so sad to see my once beautiful town decaying before my eyes, with stabbings, rapes and other incidents reported daily in the local rag, which is putting people off going at all.....

Nadeed i think ive been checked once in 4 years. I prefer self scan and choose to use it even when there are plenty of manned checkouts.

Glad to hear it. There are people all over the internet saying they get checked every 3 or 4 times they scan.

Dunno, I went to our city centre the other day and it was heaving, admittedly it's summer holidays, but trying to park after 10am is almost impossible and shops were jam packed. I couldn't wait to escape!
But having recently had some problems with online orders, I wanted actual physical shops.
Services in this country are all a bit shit at the moment. I think covid really did speed up the downward trajectory!

Our local suburbia high street si doing fine. But rents are not that high so we have independents. It is still busy. The City Centre has gone to shit.

See if there wasn't a minimum £amount for online shopping, I'd probably do two a week rather than one. I pop into the little M&S down the road midweek to pick up bread, milk and maybe some of their nice chicken for an easy dinner. Might get a pack of biscuits while I'm there.

I nip to the Morrisons cos my DD has bad reactions to Pampers nappies/pants so I use their own brand but I don't like Morrisons for a big shop so don't do theirs online.

But if I could just set up a weekly "replenishment" shop, without high delivery fees etc, for a few bits, I would.

Absolutely this! I already work 45 hours a week. I don't then want to go and do a Big Shop and have to scan it all myself on a self service till - that's what the supermarket staff are there to do. Obviously it's not the fault of the staff on the floor that they are understaffed - but it's certainly not mine.

Yes, exactly. And sorry, to be clear, when I said "mini waitrose" I'm talking about anything from the very small one at a service station to the smallish ones you sometimes see in shopping centres or on smaller town high streets - so have all the stuff, but the actual store is much smaller than the big ones. The old style independent corner shops are, frankly, not that popular because no one really wanted to buy fresh meat and veg from them and that's what you're doing now - you want high quality produce at a convenient location.

But this is my point - in the town centre, you don't need a massive store with everything. People in town doing phusical food shopping are probably picking up specific things - fresh items they want to check themselves or fancy items for a dinner party or last minute bits because they ran out of bread and milk and dinner for the toddler.

I used the scan and shop thing once, and got checked. Had to unpack everything that I'd so carefully packed along the way. It put me off doing it again.

I agree the old style independent corner shops are not as good as branded corner shops, they could not compete.
We had a city centre supermarket that was a decent size that closed as the owners of the leased land wanted to sell it to make more money. Lots of people bemoaned the closure because we have a lot of people living in apartments that want a wider choice than the smaller shops can offer.

there's a lot of AI and profiling involved here. I was NOT surprised to be stopped and rescanned (well, 10 items or whatever) after I'd spent 30 minutes wandering around with my very obviously disabled neice being given responsibility for the scan-as-you-go. I know she's more than capable, but I suspect the cameras/AI noticed her and we were profiled as being high risk. I have no idea what other things flag for the scanners - from contents of the trolley to personas - but I suspect it's a lot. Over time, this profiling will hopefully become better and more effective and therefore everyone would genuinely only be scanned randomly once in a blue moon.

@IdLikeToBeAFraser That is interesting. It explains why some people are checked all the time and others rarely.

A long time ago, when I was living in a part of London that was still in the process of slowly being "gentrified" we had a bunch of small independnet shops - corner shop type places mostly, a few restaurants/pizza etc. What was fascinating is that when one of those Sainsbury Locals opened up, the small shops were totally polarised in how they felt about it. The corner shop type places were obviously very upset - they were losing business hand over fist. But the little deli, the piza place etc, were THRILLED because they actually got MORE business - people would come from further afield to use the Sainsbury to get their bread and milk, but then would pop in for a takeaway or to pick up some deli items - things hey wouldn't get at the sainsburys. Last time I drove past the area, it was all very buzzy and thriving.

@IdLikeToBeAFraser I wonder if they racially profile?

Yes - it happens in "real life" too. Stores like Boots are a good place to watch it happening. Check out the security guards in the areas where the cosmetics are... they will often profile/target specific people who they think look "dodgy" and follow them around because shop lifting of small items is so prevalent (teenagers are particularly concerning for them). The bigger stores like Waitrose or Asda or Sainsbury are moving to doing this with technology but the basic premise of profiling to understand who is supposedly riskier, remains. I have no idea HOW sophisticated it is so far, but I imagine it will get more and more sophisticated very quickly.

Sorry, hadn't seen this when I answered originally. To answer your question, I don't know. From a technology perspective, I am sure they have loads of data on what kind of people are higher risk and more likely to be stealing. So, theoretically, using technology and good datasets would get a profile that is far more accurate than some kind of slightly dodgy instinctive "black teenagers are the worst" that we sadly so often see.

I mean, I'm assuming that to use my Boots example, teenage girls of any race are the highest risk for petty thieving. I have no idea in a supermarket. I do know that around here, many of our smaller stores now keep the more expensive high ticket items like meat away from the main shelves as they found the theft is so high. I'd like to think that it's people who are desperate vs a particular age/race/gender but I have no idea. It would be very interesting to see data on this.

And in the days when retailers treated their staff like human beings, she’d probably have been only too happy to wait until after closing to start cashing up, in addition to coming in 15 minutes early each day to sort all the cash out ready to start serving at opening time. But in the days where staff are expected to do twice as much work for half the pay, are given zero support from their managers and are generally treated like shit, why would she choose to give them an extra 45 minutes each day, free of charge? I can’t say I blame her.

@ComeOnThenFanny

Exactly

Its another inconvenience

@Nadeed I just did a very quick google research and I see that cameras, whether used by people or AI, are supposed to look for behaviours, mannerisms etc vs profiling although I wonder if some profiling, based on actual data (vs vague impressions people have), might be overlaid as well? It's interesting, I don't know. Also that some even use face recognition technology (not sure how that would work).

I love shopping of all kinds.

I like browsing online and ordering several items and then keeping what fits. Over time, I have learned what shapes and sizes suit me.

I loved the older ‘real’ shops too. Does anyone remember the chaos of Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, or the Hyper Hyper shop in Kensington?

In regards to modern high street shopping, I will never not be excited and amazed by the Uniqlo tills. Forgive me!

Yup. You get to a certain stage where you simply cannot cope with new tech.

I think people possibly only realise that when they've experienced it themselves or have seen a family member or friend struggling.

I can cope with a certain amount of tech, but some things are now just too much. My late husband was older than me. He used a debit card, but didn't trust credit cards. I got one at a point when certain hotels would only accept a credit card and not a debit card for some reason. (That was more than 20 years ago.)

I live in a terraced block of three houses. I'm in my 60s, but the youngest homeowner here. During lockdown all three women in this block became widows. (No Covid deaths.)

One woman had her daughter able to organise everything for her. My neighbour and her sons are dyslexic and couldn't cope with doing everything online. Fortunately, lockdown had just ended, so I was allowed to take her down to the funeral parlour.

My husband died at the point where we were only allowed 20 to a funeral. Everything had to be done via phone, email or online. (The one exception was signing the form to say that I'd pay for the funeral - funnily enough, I had to do that in person at the funeral parlour and then had to pay upfront.)

It took me all my time, in spite of the fact that I had previous experience of organising funerals. It sounds stupid, but having to access an online catalogue for coffins was dreadful. It's bad enough when you're sitting at the undertaker's looking through a catalogue, but at least you can ask a human being questions then. When you're in a state like that, coping with an online catalogue really isn't so easy.

I know it's not your problem, but if cashing up takes her 15 -20 mins then she's obviously going to be annoyed if she can only start doing that 8pm.

Some retailers do pay staff for opening and closing though, knowing realistically each takes about 15 minutes .

I'd have thought M&S would be one of these to be honest.

I was just racking my brain trying to remember the name of that gorgeous pudding they did. Strawberry scrunch!
I used to work as a beauty therapist at the Sanctuary! Another lost gem (I’d long gone by then, but think the rent became astronomical)

There's similar here. There's a village a dozen miles away that has a Co-op supermarket, a cafe, a butcher's and a greengrocer's side by side. People drive there to use the cafe, the butcher's and the greengrocer's and the Co-op benefits from the footfall.

I don't think you what ignorant means. I'm not remotely ignorant. I'm very clever and carry a huge amount of data of all sorts in my brain. I am well read and an expert in my field. Can't be arsed to use the self-scanner though.
Pig-headed, maybe?