Guy at Lidl trying to make me use self check out

[Earlynightthen]

I don’t *Have to, do I?

Shopping in Lidl with dd, 6 (very active, all over the place type child)
We had a trolley full, there was one till that seemed to be sort of open..girl on till coming on and off it to do other bits.
The shop was quiet, few other people, with baskets at the self check out.
Guy who works there came over and in a friendly way said would I like to go to the self checkout, I replied politely, no thank you as I had a lot to unpack and trying to watch dd running around etc and continued to the normal check out to put my things on the conveyer belt thing. He continues to me that it was ok, he’d do it with me/show me how to do it. Again, I said it was ok I knew how to do it but it was easier for me to just unpack my things, he carried on and on, until i had to say ‘I dont have to, right?’ He kind of laughed, but looked at me like I was weird.
I managed to gently push past and put my things on and the girl came to pass them through

Was I being weird, or him?!

I recently read some where, that in the US there are some self scanners, in some shops that ask you at the end if you would like to give an additional tip, giving you a choice of 5%, 10%, 15% or 20%. The greed is insane.

@NotAnotherCodeBlueAt3Am Exactly!

I've just been in our local M & S this morning and asked for a human to check out my stuff. I have some serious questions!

Please can someone who works in food retail please explain what this move to total self-checkouts is all about? I could understand say, half and half - but why the total changeover? That's what's happened in our local M & S.

What's in it for the staff? Is there anything, or is it just for the store to maximise profits? Can they really no longer afford the staff ? What's changed? If staff have to hang around anyway (because these bloody machines are so sensitive/faulty), how does that improve matters? As a poster on another thread said yesterday, the relationship between staff and customers will change from friendly pass-the-time-of-day chat to more unfriendly surveillance and policing. Is that what the stores want?

These are genuine questions. It's not particularly popular with customers, so is it something staff have pushed for - or has it been imposed from above?

There’s nothing in it for the staff. It’s purely for profit for the company and it’s shareholders.

My friend complained about the guy in our local Aldi. I assume they'd been told to push the new self checkouts (I personally love them, she doesn't and preferred staffed tills).
Man approaches, she says thanks but no thanks, like the OP he becomes more and more insistent and friend finally says 'I don't like self checkouts thank you' to which he apparently became quite surly and told her she'd have 'no bloody choice soon because all the tills were going'. She replied 'I do, I'll shop elsewhere'.

Friend is quite a small woman and she admitted she felt intimidated by him and his pushiness. She complained but just got the generic reply.

I think your being a bit weird, he sounds as if he was trying to be helpful

But is there an endless supply of people who actually want to do the job the public are demanding?
I mean you can demand all the human service you like, but if less and less people are willing to do the job then your demanding won't get you far.

Society doesn't think these jobs are worth much financially, worth much respect, shouldn't be done long term because they're supposed to be for students or for those who want a bit extra cash, they're not considered careers, considered unskilled - I mean if it's so unskilled a machine can do it, probably better, especially with the advancements in AI.
A culture has developed where these jobs are sneered at and looked down on, those doing them treated like they can't do any better, told to get 'proper jobs' if they want a wage they can live on and a bit of common decency shown towards them.
And now people are up in arms at the very predictable result that less and less people choose to do those jobs.
Yet those at the top are lauded for all the hard work and sacrifices they've made because they've got a bit of power and get paid more. "Work harder! Be better! That's how you are successful! And if you're not financially successful then you're worthless!"

TL;DR - society has exactly the 'service' it's cultivated with it's treatment of the people providing the services we rely on, want & need and the idolisation of those who use other people to make their money and power.

I think he should have accepted your first answer and with a lively child to manage plus a full trolley, I too would want to pay via a manned till. TBH , I would think that the amount of time and hassle would be far less for him to open another till and let you go through it with your purchases than the the time it would take to help you do it all through a self-service one, never mind wasting both your time arguing debating it.

They're just about tolerable for a few items when you've no young children to keep an eye on and even then, I always need help, so in your case, I'd say it'd have been far quicker and less stressful for all concerned had he accepted your decline in the first place and I don't know why anyone's arguing with you about it!
My son works in a big supermarket and he would say it would be discouraged to try and pressure customers like that. It'd risk putting them off shopping there again. If his manager was pressuring him too much to pressure customers into the self-service tills, I'm sorry for him but as my sons says about a few of his managers, they don't always make the most reasonable decisions, because they're under so much pressure and stress themselves.
IMO, YANBU to have declined and stuck to your guns, but he wasn't being so much weird, as showing signs of being under unreasonable pressure!

@CoffeeCantata My son works in a supermarket and he'd say it's not up to the shop assisstants, it's come from the top. It would appear to be an move to cut staff and wages and to maximise profits. They always have to have an assitant there to help customers as the self-service tills are so inconvenient and difficult to use when you either are not used to them or have a big shop and I feel sorry for them because thye're on their feet for ages and are either bored stiff or overwhelemed with customers who need help. I would say it would b easier for the assitants to sit at a till, as it's easier for customers with kids and big shops and less stress and pressure all round.
But big companies don't care about that. They care about profit. They risk driving customers away if they start pressuring them like that though. There's no way I would want to more than a few items through a self-service till and I avoid them as much as possible. If I had small kids and a big shop I would be very unhappy to be made to feel I couldn't use a manned till and it would put me off shopping in that supermarket!

They do indeed have more than enough to do, which is why it is an inexcusable waste of their time to be pressuring customers into self-service that they need the assisstants help with because they have a lot of items and a small child to keep an eye on!
It'd be far quicker and far less stressful for both parties to put the items through a normal till. It'd be far easier for shoppers with small lively children to keep them from running off and getting into mischeif or getting hurt as well. It's wouldn't be in the anyone's interests to have children running around the place unsupervised because their parent was tied up with trying to put a big shop through self-service, even WITH help. It'd be even worse if the child got hurt because of it!

Oh come on! There's no comparison between doing a big shop with a small child in tow and getting a few quid out of a cash point!

I do. And I remember the look my mum would give me when I tried to run about indoors.

I have 4 kids one with adhd and they aren't allowed to run in shops. It's dangerous and they get in people's way. Basic parenting and good manners.

Yeah, this would put me off too. ^

Luckily my Aldi still has more manned checkouts than self checkouts. Self service is OK for a couple of bits, maybe half a dozen, but not for a lot.

And as you said, (and I said before,) there is always something that doesn't register on the weighing scale, so a staff member has to come and enter a code in!

And then you have Red Bull, booze, razors, aspirins, paracetamol, Halls mentholyptys, scissors, cutlery and a whole bunch of other items that have to be 'okayed' by a staff member before you can proceed with the sale!

And then you have to wait til everything has gone through, and the bloody thing has decided to say you're OK, before you can take anything off the 'shelf' and pack it. Then as you are taking it off it starts yelling at you to PLEASE TAKE YOUR SHOPPING! Give me chance FFS!

Manned checkouts are way better for most lots of shopping.

I had this in sainsburys this week and ended up saying I dont want a job here they had one poor girl trying to man about 20/30 self service tills, I will no longer shop in sainsburys

That's horrific. That poor lass.

Were there ANY manned checkouts at all?

I'd have reacted in a similar fashion as you OP, @Earlynightthen - sod trying to self scan a trolley full with a child in tow!!

Apparently in the UK retail losses are up 33% across all categories compared to pre covid levels; some have loss rates that are more than double the national average and, so it seems, more retailers have struggled with rooting out shoplifters using self check outs. (This is in no way aimed at you @Earlynightthen ).

Sainsbury's have recently been slammed after reducing the number of employees on human being operating checkouts to just one in some stores, and Tesco's and Morrisons are no better.

All this automation is failing to take account of the infirm, elderly or parent (usually the mum..😁) of multiple children trying to do a big shop and use a self check out. Not enough eyes or hands for that problem, and no staff available to help anyone pack.

What about the hundreds of Christmas jobs lost to this automation.

Sometimes the blasted machines don't scan properly and no staff to assist.....(I've got to get a grip or I'll be here all day raging against the machines..... 🙃)

Sainsbury's were always crap at manning checkouts before they had self-service checkouts. If it was a long term strategy for making us love self-checkouts then it worked. Many a time I used to go when the store was quiet just to buy a few items but there was a long queue at the only till open. So frustrating.

I always refuse. I tell them that I don't work there and a member of staff must scan my shopping and they will have to open a till. Never had a problem.

I don't think anyone really truly LOVES self checkouts. Well maybe Gen Z and young millennials so they don't have to talk to anyone! 😁 But most people surely want - and need manned checkouts at least half the time. As we have already established, trying to take a huge trolleyload of shopping through a self checkout is farcical.

Well actually @LikeWhoUsesTypewritersAnyway it's me. I don't much like talking to people and I get a bit befuddled at the checkouts, so a nice machine is perfect for me. And do you know what? I regularly get staff trying to herd me to a peopled checkout! I wish they'd just leave us to decide for ourselves.

Agreed, some tremendous overreactions on this thread.

All of the comments about how using a self checkout is some gruelling challenge are odd too. Even my nine year old can manage to scan a basket full of shopping on them. It's hardly rocket science.

😆 As you say 'JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!'

Nothing wrong with preferring self service (and sometimes I do!) As I have said a couple of times, they do have their place. (My 2 millennial DC prefer them some 70% of the time!) But some people don't like them much, and don't want to be coerced and bullied into using them all the time. As the OP was.

Some people DO struggle with them, especially with a big shop/trolley full! And as a pp said, especially people with disabilities, and the elderly ... I sometimes wonder if the supermarkets want to get rid of ALL the manned checkouts and leave us all to do self checkout.

A DISASTER in the making IMHO!

!

Good for you! 👏 We pay for a service. If I am going to be bullied into scanning my own shopping, I want something off it - like 10%, for doing the checkout operator's job for them!

Btw I'm elderly...