WIBU To ask for a different lady to scan my shopping?

[goodoldsussexbythesea]

I do my big shop in Tesco once a week. I usually have around 100 items. I do scan as you shop and I seem to get picked a lot for a random basket check. Fine.
There's one lady who always seems to be working on the self-scan when I go in. She's an older lady and she is incredibly slow. It's so frustrating as I usually don't have a lot of time.
I don't just mean a little bit slow either. I mean about 10 seconds or so between scanning each item. With lots of sighing and breaks and stopping. I think last time she could see the frustration on my face because she said "it's stressful, isn't it?" and I'm like yes... because you are being so slow (didn't say this out loud). I almost asked if she'd like to give me the scanner and let me do it for her but I didn't want to be rude.
Last time, the scanner was telling her she needed to scan over 80 items so it took absolutely forever.
And she puts it all back into the bags wrong too.

So anyway, today I went to tesco, got selected for random bag check and saw this lady was on. My heart sank. I needed to rush home and put it all way and then go on the school run. I didn't need another 20 minutes adding on. She started making her way very slowly towards me and I said, in the politest voice I could muster "do you mind if your colleauge does it?" She looked really taken back so I said "it's just I'm in a bit of a rush, sorry" I tried to look as apologetic as I could but she looked really confused and a bit upset.

The colleague heard the conversation, came over and started scanning. I was out of there and in my care in under 5 minutes.

I feel so bad though. I don't like upsetting people and I keep thinking of her face. I just couldn't do it though, it's so bloody painful.

I don't want to be mean enough to say anything to her supervisor but I really don't think she should be on that section. She should be sitting down on one of the tills, where she's not on her feet and customers haven't chosen a quicker option.

WIBU?

Of course I'm not proposing that she have to leave the store. I'm just not convinced that she is in the best place - especially as, with scan and shop, you don't usually get a choice of assistants who come over to deal with a rescan.

Might it be possible to filter it out so that she's only called over for rescans when it's half a dozen items or fewer, and one of her much speedier colleagues is called for massive/full rescans (or could she just refer the big ones to other colleagues herself)? Could she possibly work in partnership with another colleague, so they each scan some of the items - albeit she scans 5 and they scan 75?

Maybe she could work on one of the traditional checkouts (assuming they have at least two). There would probably be a lot of people who are in no hurry and would appreciate a slow-paced service along with a nice chat - some people don't have hugely busy schedules and see going to the shops as a social event, or at least an enjoyable, significant part of their day. She could also then sit down, which would likely be more comfortable than being on her feet all day for an older person.

So there are two traditional tills operational: one which is clearly moving faster with less of a queue, which many people will automatically opt for; and then Sheila's till, where the people who are happy to take their time, and maybe appreciate not feeling rushed Aldi-style to pack their shopping at lightning speed, and who know that Sheila is friendly and 'methodical' and thus will gladly queue up and wait for her till.

I think it's great that she is employed, valued and included; but any considerable slack must be supported and mitigated by the employer and not the customer. It can't be nice for her at present, as I bet a load of people complain about her slowness and there will always be some who will verbally lay into her personally. 20 extra minutes is a completely unacceptable time to make people wait to pay, after they've already taken the time to scan their own shopping.

There isn't the staff levels to do anything you mentioned

Incidentally, make of this what you will, but I have a personal theory that one way to lessen your chances of being called for a rescan is to scan one or more new bags for life (scan them as ordinary items, rather than waiting to add them in the screen that comes after the barcode or the recall instruction.

Obviously this rather depends on whether you actually need any new bags; but considering that their algorithms will be trying to identify people who accidentally or deliberately leave items unscanned, with my layperson's hat on, I would guess that actually remembering and being honest enough to scan your new bags to pay for them would go heavily in your favour, and increase the likelihood that you have indeed scanned all of your other purchases too!

Plus, essentially blocking someone from taking overtime marked as ss would reduce her earning ability. Tesco is not a full-time contract; you are at the mercy of picking up overtime.

What's changed, then, as there always used to be loads of traditional checkouts, each staffed full-time by a worker - rather than one or two people overseeing a dozen or more where customers are doing most of the work themselves? It's not like the prices have come down to take the reduced staff costs into account!

I guess it's up to the shops - the usually enormous businesses that routinely get hardworking staff making them lots of money by paying them less than a living wage which the taxpayer than has to top up via UC - whether they want to support disabled staff whilst also enabling their customers to shop in a satisfactory timescale; or otherwise risk customers abandoning them for a rival if shopping there no longer works for them.

Actually, I should have thought of it before, but why couldn't this lady work on the self-service tills, rather than the scan and shop? That way, she would never be in a position of having to scan scores of items, but would just be pressing a button now and then to confirm alcohol/other restricted purchases or to override it when people tell it that they're using their own bags and then it complains because there's something the weight of a bag on there.

I went to Tesco today, you can actually go in the trolley manual checkout area and still use the scanner - my store has a trolley self checkout, where you can use the scanner if you wish to, as well as a basket self checkout, and then a dedicated scanner checkout. So you could use a different area if your store is the same.
But yeah, doing it online does not mean that the money will get taken out of your account before Thursday. But if its so important, why not use a Tesco credit card so you can pay regardless of whether its pay day or not?

If you are front end of a supermarket you do it all self scan, scan and go checkouts,csd, kiosk, amazon, evri, put backs, baskets, handsets, cleaning, security. Most jobs there is half the staff there where 10 years ago people leave retire they don't get replaced. This is how companies make profit by getting everyone to do the job of 3 people.

I didn’t miss that update the update was sent after the person asked the question

That's if you can get a credit card, of course.

Even if they can, maybe more privileged people just don't understand the fear that many poor people have of getting into unpayable debt and/or falling foul of the rules and having to pay a lot of interest or other penalty charges. If you have very little money to work with, it's much, much better for your peace of mind to be able to know that what you've just bought is now completely paid for and you don't owe anybody anything for it at a later stage.

Yes, many people do manage credit card accounts very successfully and never pay a penny in interest or charges for them; but those people aren't the driving force for banks offering credit cards in the first place, are they? Like with the gambling companies who protest too much keep insisting that they genuinely don't want to make millions and millions of pounds from problem gamblers.

OK... then I don't know what the solution is if they choose to ignore reasonable adjustments for disabled and otherwise lower-capability staff - and are happy to have them shouted at and sworn at by irritated customers.

But OP didn't shout at her and OP didn’t swear at her.

The solution is to lower retirement age and make disability benefit easier to get but people on here would hate that

You did the right thing OP. You don't need to martyr yourself by being late because of someone else's incompetence. She might not have been aware she was so much slower than everyone else. She might actually try speed up a bit now!

Obviously OP didn't do that - you can tell from her posts on this thread (and actually starting it) that she is kind and considerate and didn't want to upset the woman. Many of us would be the same.

But surely you must know that lots of people are not like that, and have no patience with elderly or disabled people's needs at all and would react very differently?

No disagreement from me on either of those.

Scan-as-you-shop is absolutely designed for people with a large number of items - in fact, that's exactly who it's aimed at, because it's massive trolleys of stuff that take the most time at an ordinary checkout or a self-checkout. It's designed to save time when you're doing a big shop.

Scan-as-you-shop isn't the same thing as just using a self-checkout. At a self-checkout you scan everything at the end of your shop and then pack it. Scan-as-you-shop is when you scan and pack everything as you walk round and then all you do when you check out is pay.

I always find it faster. It’s never ‘bombed’and I get a check about 2x per year.

I honestly think online shopping would be a game changer for you. Can you buy 50% of your usual shop in person so you get through quicker and have the items your daughter expects and enough to get you through a few days. Then order the rest to be delivered on an evening you will be in, so you know you will have the funds for this in your account. Hopefully then you will be able to order in future as this is also helpful if you are ever poorly or can’t get out due to poorly child.

Well they do a % of your trolley in my local Tesco so it can easily be 80 items.

It's OK to ask for a different staff member. That's not "taking it out on retail workers"!

Nail on the head there.

Just go to a checkout. It’s that simple. They will take your scanner and put it on their till. Job done.

It wouldn’t have bothered me in the least to ask for someone else. If she’s frustratingly slow then she’s in the wrong job.
My time is precious and I really can’t be bothered with inefficiency.

So two separate lots of shopping to organise instead of just one, as well as a payment for the half that's delivered and having to be in and available for the slot... rather than getting it all in one go, which suits her just fine, but for the extreme slowness of one staff member?

Maybe the sales assistants can't be arsed with entitled customers like yourself either.