Fed up with supermarkets

[SelfScanHell]

Sainsbury's reduced me to tears today.

Our DC has recently finished GCSEs so we decided to move from the usual online shop to taking them to learn how to do a shop in real life. They are autistic and can struggle in busy environments.

It was challenging but we managed to do a whole week’s shop using the ‘smart scan’ (they’ve used it before and prefer it) and got to the check-out. A few hiccups but managed with headphones and music. In the past we’ve had the ‘items needs to be checked’ thing every other time we visit, and just put up with 10 items being checked, never an issue.

Today we had the message, only 1 staff member seeing to about 20 check-outs. Other staff just said ‘sorry I can’t do that’. New staff member eventually appeared and told us the WHOLE trolley needed checking - an overflowing trolley with a week’s shop for a whole family. There was nowhere to do this, nowhere to move the stuff from our trolley, no extra bags, no counter space, just the floor for space to move the shopping to. No suggestions of how this was to be done. I was left standing by the trolley piled with food, next to a confused DC with the staff member just staring at me.

My first instinct was just to abandon the trolley to them. I should have said ‘OK I’ll go for a coffee and you do it’. But I wanted to manage the situation for my DC and felt sorry for the staff member who looked clueless, standing there blankly with no way to achieve this. So off we went to join a new queue for a normal till and do it all over again. Thankfully my DC managed, I’m so proud of them.

After getting the shopping into the car, and DC settled with music, I went back to complain at this new ‘whole trolley checking’ rule without the resource in place to do it. Plus, I’m lucky as my DC managed this time, what about someone else who is standing with a mountain of goods with nowhere to put them. After being given the manager’s email to send a complaint to him, I went back to the car and just started crying. Sometimes it’s just too much. First attempt at a full Sainsbury’s shop for DC has taught them they might be expected to pile their shopping on the floor to be checked (no way that’s happening).

I am tempted to ask if all ND people should avoid Sainsbury’s, but being less antagonistic I’ll ask, AIBU to say:

• If Sainsbury’s have to start checking everything in a packed trolley they should provide the staff and space to do this (not on the floor)

Of course you’re going to judge. The op wrote a whole thread on it asking people what they think.

Why are you calling your child 'they' in the original post.
It's not 'outing' to indicate that you have a girl or a boy.
It wouldn't even have been outing if you had used their first name (unless they had a v v unusual name like Hydrogen) but it's certainly not identifying that you have a boy or girl and shop at Sainsbury's.

I'm a little confused.

I understand that OP had to do a whole trolley rescan, but I don't understand why anything had to be put on the floor?

I take a whole, fully loaded trolley up to the the self service or the manned checkouts every week, and have always managed to scan everything without having to put anything on the floor! In fact, putting things on the floor on the self scan checkouts would sound the alarm as the weight wouldn't register.

It seems like the OP had various options including:
Leave the staff member to do the rescan and come back in 5 minutes
Use the self scan checkout
Use the manned checkout
Grab another trolley/ask staff member to grab another trolley and move stuff from trolley one to trolley two upon scanning
Instead OP put her shopping on the floor?

Realistically there are security measures in place, and from time to time you will have to do a full or partial rescan. Being ND or being with a ND person doesn't stop you stealing, so it's not reasonable to expect it to exempt you from having to follow the necessary security procedures.

We do a big montly shop and then smaller top up shops - sometimes with list of ingredient for things they need to cook. There's less stuff to buy and less time taken but they still get the experience.

My DC can find supermarkets difficult - but DD1 managed at uni - she shopping weekly for one.

We'ev not used the hand held scanners - had to many people I know have problems - but we do use the self service tills.

Yeah because nothing sends a message to head office like abandoning your shopping. You do realise they don’t watch a live stream of every single store 24 hours a day in head office? The company doesn’t lose money either, they’ll put up the prices and the people who work in store will get the grief because they are having to waste too much stock and it’s just a waste of good food in general.

I'm with the OP.

I wonder how many customers walk out of Sainsbury's leaving full trolleys behind when there's no staff available who actually know what they're doing? It's also so cramped and claustrophobic in that self-scan area, where everyone's penned in and pissed off.

Asda can be a bit crap too, because only one member of staff at a time seems to be allowed a hand-held 'checker' scanner, no matter how long the queue of customers waiting to be 'quality checked' or authorised for restricted products / de-tagging.

We never use Sainsbury's now, are just about tolerating Asda, and generally prefer the big Aldi.

I did wonder why another trolley wasn't used - re-scanned from one to another.

Though TBH I'd have expected the staff member to suggest and do this - not OP the customer.

I wast a mareter on you tube - he's made the point to the supermarkets in person you make it hard for people to buy stuff they give up- his example was self service tills people try a few times think fuck this and give up.

I know quite a few people who've had similar issues with scanners - they give up using them a few change supermarkets as so fed up.

It's poor service.

You do realize there are other ways to collect data rather than stare at CCTV all all day, right?

You seem to think that these companies don't know what goes on in their stores. They know about these incidents, just like they know how many thefts they have had. All of this data is automatically recorded. They know what people scan, they know what people return and they know if things are scanned, not paid for and later put back.

No need to watch CCTV for that. The numbers will bear it out.

It does sound like a rubbish situation for all involved, but there are a lot of generalisations from posters on this thread. Quite simply all supermarkets aren't equal. Stores within the same company vary massively.

I love self scan and do feel peeved when the scanners aren't working for whatever reason. I can scan and shop at my own pace and I don't have to make polite chit chat with anyone. Perhaps I've been lucky as well in that the maximum rescan I've had has been 20 items.

It does sound unfortunately as though you had an inexperienced person who was out of their depth dealing with you. It's understandable that you would feel aggrieved in this situation.

Yes because I work in a supermarket so I know that abandoning your shopping has zero impact on anyone in head office. Please tell me how they’d possibly know what items have been scanned and put back because I work for the biggest supermarket and we don’t have that technology to possibly know that so it’s interesting to me to hear other supermarkets do.

Bottom line is they don’t care if you abandon your trolley, the CEO will still get his bonus because they will still make a profit. It’s the actual staff on the shop floor that are just trying to earn their money and have zero say in how many checkouts are open that will suffer because people like you just put more work onto them so well done 👏🏻

This, all that happens if you abandon your trolley is one less staff member on the tills/self scan and a lot of food waste.

YANBU but it would probably be best in future for him to go through the normal tills.

My local Aldi doesn't have self checkout and the fancy super market that does, I only ever visit for the items I can't get at Aldi. So, no, staff does not haven´t to worry about "people like me".

As for your store (chain?), are you sure they don't collect that data. If it's a small local store, I can understand, but it's such an easy data point to collect scanned items and to process that data with everything else. Many stores also track customers by their wifi signal through to store to get an idea of traffic patterns through the store. It's how they determine which items are placed where in the store. It's how you end up with small sweat items near the check out, for example. All of these tricks to get customers to buy more is based on data collected from customer behavior in the store itself. The data is worth a lot of money. Stores would be fools not to collect it.

Yep. Higher ups don’t give a single shit about trolleys being abandoned and items needing to be binned. At most, they blame the individual store for the waste if it’s high. Other than that, meh.

But there would be no way of telling if the customer walked out in a huff or forgot their purse we dont write it down

No idea what you’re talking about. Your questions is something or other about an ND supermarket worker. OP’s son was the customer not the person serving. Your question would be valid if it made any sense.

Well, for that they still have CCTV and the staff can tell them too.

Customers are not responsible for stupid management decisions. You can't blame customers for walking out when the demands get ridiculous. Staff being left with the mess is also management's fault.

Tell who I dont go for coffee with the ceo. I couldn't even tell you the last time I spoke to my manager.

There's no way I would have put my groceries on the floor. I would have walked out and left it there.

Sainsbury’s are awful if you do a shop later than 7pm. I had to self scan a trolley load the other week. I asked for a till to be opened but the assistant said there was only her on.
She was very apologetic and it must make her job really difficult.

Well there were some interesting assumptions raised and some curious to-and-fro’s while I was at work. A couple of points of clarification and an update.

• It was a Smart Shop, not a self scan, so no room for even a 2nd trolly, only the floor
• to those suggestion the staff member may have had communication issues due to ND, 1st they did not present as such, 2nd if they were and were masking then they had been allocated to the wrong task as it demanded significant communication which would have been an unreasonable expectation if that had been the case (but I strongly believe it was not the case)
• I never suggested my DC should be exempt from re-scans, it was another poster, so please address comments to them
• Rest assured I never signed any Ts & Cs for doing a Smart Shop so never signed up to dump my purchases on the floor, or to solving resource/process issues for a major corporation
• it is interesting to hear from so many people who have never become overwhelmed. Are you parents of kids with additional needs? If so I honestly don’t know how you manage to always stay on top of everything and never need a shoulder. Well done.
• DC (gender neutral is their choice, and I chose to respect that) has been working up to this but thank you to all with helpful suggestions.

Update.
Sainsbury’s seem to be in agreement with me that this experience was totally unacceptable. I had a long call today from a lovely Customer Experience Manager who is investigating why this happened inc why in earth a full trolly re-scan was required (she suggested that one as she said it should not have happened). They are going further than expected with additional discussions to be planned. So far I’m impressed by their response.

The lesson is, it’s always worth speaking up and highlighting failures.

A long call from customer services about this...wow you must have a lot of time on your hands OP

You absolutely did agree to the terms and conditions when you downloaded the app otherwise you wouldn't of been able to download the app

So @hannahbanana93 you seem like a ray of sunshine. I though it was good news.
Hope you feel brighter tomorrow x

Of course the customer experience manager agreed with you thats their job you could of told them you took a dump in the middle of the store and they would of agreed with you. Its a tactic they use. You've gone from being annoyed at them to now saying how impressed you are with sainsbury. One more call and you will be wearing a I heart Sainsbury's badge. Meanwhile in the back ground their saying another one whinging again haven't people got anything better to do