A quick dash into Sainsbury or Tesco these days for a few forgotten items often ends up making me just a bit cross. Why?
Automated self-service tills. That’s why. Whatever happened to service with a smile?
After a few completely muddled attempts to use the blasted things, I now refuse. I will stand in the shortest queue, even if it is quite long, and often end up discussing this with like minded folk who are also refusing to use the self-service.
Who ever is working on the ‘basket only’ till (usually singular, note: only one now, where there used to be three) must get completely fed up with customers bending his or her ear over their intense dislike of the automated tills, and how the machines can’t cope with customers who wish to bring their own bags, causing ‘unaccustomed item in the baggage area‘ type alarms, halting the system, and how nasty it is to be served by a machine, and why can’t we pay less if we are serving ourselves?
Of course this won’t stop the march forward of ‘progress’ – after all you don’t find many thee days who refuse to use the cash-point outside the bank instead of queuing for a bank cashier, or who insist that someone else fills up the car with fuel.
But I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I’m like you, Pseu, I do not like them. I have always seen an assistant standing by these “self-service” tills to help and advise. Why does the supermarket not simply use this employee to open an extra checkout, I wonder.
I was cross this morning! I had forgotten the chicken for Sunday supper, and had to queue. My own fault, I suppose.
I agree, I won’t use them; I tried it once and never again.
They have a weird sort of DIY system in Waitrose which I also refuse to use.
I confess that I used to use a garage where they filled my car up with petrol, but I used to work around the corner from one. Well that’s my excuse anyway.
Self service tills !!!
How do you pay? Am I correct to assume it has to be a bank card of sorts? (I never carry one!)
How many tills like this in the UK, thousands? I assume that’s thousands of people out of work.
No thanks, I’ll stick with my petrol pump jockeys, cashiers, refuse removed every Wednesday before 7am and the satisfaction that people are in gainful employment.
Oh, by the way, I haven’t used an autoteller in over 20 years now 🙂
I’ve been away long enough not to have seen these self-service checkouts…
I feel most folk would rather they were banned.
I tend to avoid supermarkets these days. One has either to use a self-service checkout or join the grammatically incorrect ‘five items or less’ queue. Both options are demeaning and therefore unacceptable.
Cash points and multibancos, on the other hand, are great fun. I have never lost yet when playing this game and have been known to win as much as 100 Euros from the hole in the wall machine just by entering my personal code and answering a few simple questions.
OZ
Oh! Dear I must be odd – I don’t have a problem with self-service tills – when they work! They are a great deal faster than standing in a queue while people ahead of me discuss the weather or what they had for dinner last Sunday fortnight. And the machine does not ask me whether I’ve had a “Good Day”, am having a “Good Day” or telling me to have a “Good Day”!
Shopping is a chore that I want to get done as swiftly as possible and I’m delighted that most people don’t like the self-service check-outs – no queues. I wish they’d put some in our local supermarket…
No, Soutie – one doesn’t have to have a credit card – the machines take cash.
I predict in the next year or two the check out as you know it disappear, along with the check out operators. Each item you pick off the shelves will have a label imbedded with the price that will show on a small screen on your trolley, you will then simply walk through a reader and pay the total with a card machine before packing your goods and exiting. Any day soon.
Neither spousal unit or myself will ever use any of these contraptions. They put people out of work!
They make quite enough profits in grocery stores as it is.
I go even further, I just stand there and wait for them to bag it too and carry it to the car. Its amazing that if you just stand there, even in Tescos, someone will appear and do the job, just don’t pay until it is done. Works a charm especially if you have £150.00 worth of groceries!!! The most difficult to get the job done was in Sainsburys in Brum, I think they thought I was mad, but nowhere near as mad as they were going to be if they had to put all the stuff back on the shelf! I made it quite clear I was not going to pay until it was bagged. End of story.
Here of course they bag automatically at the till and don’t expect you to do it yourself.
They have those auto tills here but very few will use them.
I suspect the difference being that most of the groceries in the UK are Jewish and in the USA mostly gentile, it produces a very different attitude to service. The UKs idea of service being found in the nearest bull pen!
I haven’t seen a full service garage in years though.
Well done pseu, keep it up.