I hate self-service check-outs in supermarkets

[chrisholty]

I'm gutted that our Sainburys local in Streatham Hill, which had the most friendly staff you have ever met, has just been converted to self-service check-outs. After several very stressful experiences in other self-serve stores, including twice abandoning shopping baskets and going home, and once inadvertently shoplifting two packs of knickers, I am never going to shop in them again. Will anyone else join me in boycotting these supermarkets until they take note that mums want people, not machines?

there's a weight limit on your own bags. i cycle so want to put my stuff in my rucksack but when i put it on and hit 'using my own bags' it always needs a member of staff to overrule the weight limit.

if i've only a cople of things i put them in a supermarket carrier bag as i go then lift them out again after i've paid.. stupid waste of time really

The one in my local M & S gives you loads of small change I don't think they are stocked with 50ps!

Yes they are cost cutting
But as someone who works in retail we're made to show people how to use them and get poor performance if not enough people use them

Yeah, one of them once shouted at me about 'wrong weight'. I told it it was being very personal and rude.

Just don't ever use the self-service tills at W H Smith at Heathrow Terminal 3. Apart from being the usual kind of useless, once you're all the way through they insist on you scanning your boarding pass (which, of course, you will have put away somewhere in order to put your stuff through the self-service till)... the staff helper said that it was actually more time consuming and stressful for him than the regular till!

I use them reluctantly. They are a cost cutting measure and as such I think customers should receive a discount for using them.

Tbh I don't always want to serve myself. I want someone to bloody well serve me (being paid a decent, living wage for doing so.)

I love them, except there is never anywhere "safe" to put my handbag. It's my only gripe with them. I can't put it down because some toe rag might swipe it, it won't stay on my shoulder while I'm scanning and packing.

It's the only drawback as far as I'm concerned. Especially in M&S where the old dears can't get their head around anything so the self service tills move at lightening speed.

I don't mind them now I've got used to them. I don't suffer so many cases of double-scanning if I've done it myself, and it's easier to check prices are right/what you expected as you go along. I just have to make sure ds isn't touching the bagging area though, as that upsets things. And they never like my Guardian vouchers so the staff need to override those. But all-in-all they are OK.

I have weighed my purse in with my veg in the early days though .

Loathe them.

I don't mind them. They can be much quicker, particularly if I'm just buying a sandwich or something whilst everybody else has a basket full. However, any age-restricted items or fiddly barcodes means I go to a til. Although, I have recently learned how to delete an item from self-scanning machines which is helpful as I always end up scanning the original barcode not the new one when buying reduced things which is half my shopping

What does annoy me though, is the lady voice. The main things are: the tone that Sainsbury lady says "Have you swiped your nectar card?" which for some reason makes me respond, a la pavlovian response, "no I haven't swiped my nectar card", using exactly the same inflection. I am actually physically incapable of not saying it. Both Tesco and Sainsbury lady are very annoying at the end of the shop, as often they go "please take your item" in a really passive aggressive way, as if I am a terrible person for taking more than two seconds to get the receipt, put any change away, and often repack my shopping as I shove my shopping into the bag really quickly to prevent the 'bagging area' comments.

My main issue though, which I appreciate makes me unreasonably annoyed, is the local staff in my Tesco Express, where there is 4 tills (never more than 2 in use though) and 1 self-checkout. Every time someone has finished with the self-service, each member of the staff yells SELF-SERVICE! even when everyone in the queue has eyes and has seen that the self-service is empty. If noone darts forward we then get ANYBODY FOR SELF-SERVICE! just in case someone's ears happened to be the other side of London first time round so they didn't hear the shouting. Then you get served by someone with a massive grump on as you are daring to ask them to do the job you do.

daring to ask them to do the job they are paid to do I meant. Typo'd in my anger

I had a whole trolleyfull in Tesco one night(supposedly open til midnight but all tills with human being closed) it was a nightmare. Tesco - huge profits less labour costs. Yuck!

Hate them. Incredibly frustrating to use (haven't found a way of persuading the ones in my local Sainsbury's that yes, I am using my own bags so sod off, even if you do press the 'own bag' button) and costing check-out operators their jobs.

ds likes them though, and the ruddy management have taken out half the real tills to make room for the buggers so sometimes I have to struggle with the sods. It is always infuriating.

Public service announcement - you can turn the annoying voice off

At the bottom of the touchscreen there is a volume control. Keep poking it and it will go to mute. Happy days!

They are abysmal! Why do I have to do it myself?! Scan it myself and pack it all myself?! I do enough at home from the break of dawn to the setting of the sun, for everyone and the cat, so please please please Scan my shopping to give a poor woman 10 minutes of standing and doing simply nothing! Thank you!

I hate the arsing fuckers.

I like the Sainsburys ones, it's the ones in Morrisons that fuck me off. When you open the carrier bags to put your shopping in, before you've even scanned anything, it registers movement, assumes that movement equals weight, and starts shouting about wrong weights and unexpected items. There are always more staff standing around to help people with self service tills than there are operating the manned ones.

I don't mind them for doing a handful of items, but I really don't understand the giant ones in Sainsbury's with a whole conveyor belt which seems to be designed to handle a big family shop. I can barely keep up with a basketload, trying to unload, scan, bag and pack a whole trolleyful on my own with DCs seems so insane I can't believe that Sainsbury's really want me to try. Perhaps I've misunderstood.

I am in love with the waitrose pay and go; you get to pack as you get it off the shelf no trying to keep up with check out operators or feel the pressure of the person behind you. Also the kids are kept occupied the whole way round! (they just fight over whose turn it is to scan)