Self-Checkouts
- Unexpected item in the bagging area
- A faceless imposition
- I have only put a few items in my shopping basket and I am ready to pay. The challenge begins - I'm in Marks & Spencer in Oswestry and there is only the one staffed checkout today with a long queue, but there are a few self-checkout machines available. Shall I stick to my principles and join the long queue, or relent on this one occasion because I'm in a hurry and can't remember when my car-parking ticket runs out? Well, just this once...
- I am helpfully directed to a self-checkout machine by a cheerful young member of staff. I am nearly 70 and I suspect he is thinking I might find the technology confusing, but he is wrong. It's just unfriendly and badly thought out. I then discover I am using a machine that takes only card payments when I want to use cash; the ones that take cash are round the other side and are now being used. So I will have to compromise my principles even further and pay by card.
- After struggling to find how to enter the price of an avocado I am met with an announcement - "unexpected item in the bagging area"; good job I am not deaf. I look for the helpful young man but he is now with an elderly person at one of the machines round the other side who indeed clearly does not understand the technology. He is very patient - but I am not. What seems like five minutes later he comes round to assist me and taps a couple of buttons, and I am now good to pay. On leaving the store I note that lady who I would have been behind in the long queue at the self-checkout is leaving ahead of me.
- Who benefits from these faceless machines with disembodied voices that thank us for shopping at [insert supermarket name of your choice]? Well, it's not me - I miss the social interaction, the face to face contact with another friendly human being. It's not the people who have lost their jobs as staffed checkout operastors, many of them young. It has to be the bottom line of the supermarkets only that benefits, and I am seriously considering boycotting stores where I do not have reasonable access to staffed checkouts. Looks like they may starve me out.
- However, my heart lifted when I read that Booths, a supermarket chain based in the north of England, has ditched the technology completely. My nearest Booths is in Kendal; I shall have to move.
- Our comment
- The Pensioner Vote is contacting the major UK supermarkets with a view to persuading them to guarantee a minimum ratio of staffed checkouts to self-checkouts at all times.
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