Self Service Checkouts Yay or Nay!

Love them. Hate waiting in line longer than necessary. Times change. No sense in fighting it.

You would not believe the abuse we get at our Supermarket when we do not have any manned checkouts open before a certain time. What I don't understand is it is the same people each week complaining, so they know what time the checkouts open. We are just mere staff that work the self service tills. We cannot just go along and open a checkout as that is the GM choice.

Believe me the worst ones are older people.

Oh but it is ok for people to come in the supermarket at 3.50 (when we close at 4.00pm on Sundays) and do a BIG shop and they think that is ok.

Hence we never get out before 4.15pm.On a Sunday.

I would believe the abuse you get bikergran. I don’t suppose it’s changed much from when my DD did a holiday job, in the pre self service days. Especially your mention if the huge shop 5-10 minutes before closing!

Fleurpepper:
“ Nay- I am not employed or paid by the supermarket, so why should I do their work for them?”

Maybe you aren’t old enough to remember when buying groceries meant asking the shopkeeper for everything you wanted? You seem (like the rest of us) to be happy enough to do that job, by using a self-service shop aka supermarket (as I think all grocery shops are now, aren’t they?)

Hate them! Refuse to use one

Gizzy48 That made me laugh. An American friend talks about her personal shopper, who does brings her whatever she asks for just like shopkeepers of old. Of course she pays for the privilege.
I’d rather choose my own stuff thanks.

It’s massively quicker to use a handset or app to scan your own shopping as you go round the store, packing it straight into your bag(s). To load a trolley, unload it onto the belt, and then pack it into bags means handling it three times, which makes no sense at all.

I worked on tills in Waitrose for a few years before retiring and you are not doing anyone out of a job by self-scanning. All staff are multi skilled and whilst all have different strengths and preferences, everyone in store is trained on tills and on stock replenishment (shelf filling). If there’s no queue at tills they’d often leave only one of 14 checkouts open and deploy the other cashiers around the shop floor or warehouse until a call went out for more hands at tills. The only person with unnecessary work to do is the customer handling their groceries three times (and dumping them on a belt that’s a lot dirtier than your bags, even if that particular cashier is one who takes pride in cleaning theirs).

I wish all stores had scan-as-you-shop. Around here it’s only Waitrose and Tesco that have handsets, released by scanning the loyalty card, my local Aldi doesn’t even have a self-service checkout - I agree they’re only really suitable for a small basket shop though.

I remembered this thread as we queued for nearly 40 minutes in a French supermarket,( not a hypermarket).
There was 1 priority till for the disabled/pregnant women or other classification that I’m not sure about, and a small group of tills for self scanned items and a bank of about 20 tills.
The queues for every till except the group of self scan and one other went so far down the aisles that it was difficult to get to the items on the shelves.

I had a good time practising my French as we waited though.
The people around us in the queues were quite resigned and happy to chat. “It’s always like this unless you come at rope drop or near the end of the day,” said one. “Come at the end of the day and there’s nothing left,” said another.
“ It’s worse in the school holidays when I have to bring the children,” added another as her little girl appeared with yet another think and a plaintive, “Maman?”
I wish I’d investigated the self scan, though it would probably mean registering in some way and I really wished I’d had more euros because the only queue that was very short was the cash only till.

I couldn’t wait to get back to self scan in the UK.

I like the traditional checkouts. I enjoy the chatter with the servers and any problems I have I can get sorted pretty fast with them!
There'll be no need for people soon, the way everything is going, just lonely robots helping each other!!