Lucy Denyer

The tyranny of the self-service check out

Why should I have to pack my own bags?

  • From Spectator Life
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The other week I popped into my big Morrisons after the school drop-off. It was a biggish shop, including things like socks, olive oil and washing powder, hence going to a proper supermarket rather than just whizzing into my local Tesco Express.

Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on the touch screen scores highly in the irritation stakes

But lo and behold, when I came to check out my shopping, not a single manned till was open. ‘There’s nobody on them until 10 a.m. love,’ explained the apologetic cashier who inevitably had to help me with an unexpected item in the bagging area (a packet of toothbrush heads that were too light to register on the pathetic shelf they give you at a self-service till). A week later, the same thing happened to me at Sainsbury’s, this time in the afternoon – not a single cashier to be had – apparently the lone checkout assistant normally working at that time (5 p.m.; hardly an odd time to be buying groceries) was off sick. Once again I was left piling my not insubstantial shop onto an area the size of a coffee table book, cursing as things rolled off it left, right and centre.

Honestly, supermarkets are taking the Michael. Not only are we now having to pay through the nose for our groceries – Morrisons has recently leaped from being the cheapest supermarket to the second most expensive – we’re now expected to act as supermarket workers to boot. But I’m not a supermarket worker, I am a journalist, and I’m frankly rubbish at rattling 50-odd items through a till in five minutes, all while having a nice chat about the weather. Self-checkout may be fine if all you’re doing is picking up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, but not to have any cashiers available at all? Will we next be required to clean the floors before we’re allowed to leave with our shopping?

I’m not the only one finding this move towards making customers do all the work irritating. A quick Google finds multi-page threads detailing the excruciating nature of beeping your own groceries through the till (‘they are obsessed with bags’; ‘the technology isn’t fit for purpose’; ‘I hate being barked at by a machine’), while a request for rants among my friends had them pouring in. One eco-conscious pal is driven potty by the fact that the self-checkout bagging areas refuse to recognise the cloth bag she puts on it in anticipation of her groceries, thereby forcing her to then decant the precarious pile post-payment rather than being able to put it straight into the bag. Another points to the fact that issues always arise when you’re in a rush, at which point it’s completely impossible to catch the eye of an assistant.

Not being able to find the correct type of fruit or vegetable on the touch screen scores highly in the irritation stakes (is it any wonder that frustrated shoppers are driven to pretending an avocado is a carrot?), as is the barcode on an item not reading properly or, heaven forbid, having no barcode at all if you erroneously happened to have picked up a loose item that came out of a multipack (happened to me last week). ‘No, that’s not an “unexpected item”, that’s a small child touching things because that’s what small children do,’ says one frustrated self-bagging parent. If you’re old or disabled, forget it.

Even the classier supermarkets are not immune – one editor at this publication finds it immensely irritating when he’s trying to buy, for example, a bottle of rum in his local Waitrose – the assistant will come over to authorise the purchase but refuses to take the security tag off the bottle until he’s paid for it. ‘I go in there three times a week and they recognise me, so I’m unlikely to do a runner,’ he complains. ‘It means I have to call them back once I’ve paid and wait again for someone to turn up. Infuriating.’

How to escape this scourge of modern life? There seem only to be two available options. One is to return to the old-fashioned method of buying your bread from a bakery, your greens from a greengrocer and your meat from a butcher – if you happen to be lucky enough to live near those sorts of shops and have a full day to commit to shopping. The other is to switch entirely to online delivery. Except oops, then you’ll be subject to the dreaded substitution, and end up with mushrooms instead of tampons, or beer instead of washing powder. I’m seriously considering boycotting supermarkets entirely from henceforth. Either that, or retraining as a checkout girl.

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