The boss decided we should go to our local Asda for a change. Wasn't too busy and everyone (apart from a few staff) were wearing masks.
However, when trying to find a checkout, they all had queues six or seven people long. I prefer going to the manned (womaned?) checkouts, and it seems that everybody in Asda today agreed with me, because, I'm guessing there are about 20 self checkout stations, and not one was being used.
It seems to me the these self checkout stations are a money saving convenience for Supermarkets, but not neccessarily for their customers!
Edit, please feel free to have a moan about anything here.👍
I always use self service unless I've got a massive trolley of shopping.
I have never used a self service till and never will until there is a discount for doing so as basically they want me to become a temporary, unpaid member of staff to operate the till for them for their own benefit. I love the bemused faces of staff when they suggest it would be quicker to use the self service till when I point out that if we all did they wouldn't have a job.
It's also amusing watching when I'm queuing as pretty much without fail a member of staff will have to come to the aid of every temporary employee as something always seems to go wrong.
The local Morrisons has just taken out 10 proper tills and added more self service ones leaving 5 actual tills. For heavens sake, most people have a trolley load so how is a small self service till supposed to make things easier? It doesn't, it just creates long queues.
It gets even more complex tha than that our local Asda has self service tills, self service belts ,self scan pay points as well as normal tills and a till with access , (not a disabled till as technically they are half the self service tills as they always are waiting repair.) Apparantly since the introduction of the self service tills the amount of carrots sold has sold has massively increased but the mor expensive weighed produce has gone down.
We always use self check out if possible, as I don't see the point in queuing unnecessarily. Over here in France they are starting to get them, but the oldies still queue up with their one baguette and expect you to let them go to the front of the queue rather than try out the new tills. They've always got staff on the self checkout as you have to scan a barcode on your reciept before you can get out of the store. Mind you, we move back to the UK next month so I'm sure we will get back into the British swing of things pretty quickly!
Dave
Quote from: Southerngooner on September 22, 2020, 03:09:25 PM
Mind you, we move back to the UK next month so I'm sure we will get back into the British swing of things pretty quickly!
But maybe not in the first fortnight :D
Maybe not! Still, more time for model making........
Dave
I do not like to use self-service tills. As mentioned by @TrevL (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=5583) and @thebrighton (https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=943) I feel that they are just a way of supermarkets to save a bit of money - if they gave me a couple of Euro on my way out, well that would be different ;). I remember one occasion, before lock down when us 'oldies' got our own hour, I had done the shopping, probably 25 - 30 items and I went to the tills, this was about 8.50am. There was a bloke , (I think he is the Manager), talking to a member of staff and when I asked which till was open, he told me that there was not one until 9am and would I use a self-service till please? So I went to the self service tills and asked a member of staff to help me - she ended up putting my shopping through the till for me. :)
I personally favour Tescos way of having a gun thingy to scan items as you get them from the shelf. You can then put everything in your bags in the trolley. and go through a separate checkout which only takes a few secs.
So what if self service tills do save the shop a little money? Some of that helps to keep overheads (and hence prices) down. Sorry but I really don't understand this attitude of "I won't use them unless I get a discount".
If we have a large trolley full of stuff it's easier to pile it all out onto the conveyor belt at a manned checkout, sort it onto similar stuff for each shopping bag etc. as it goes through. For just a bag or two it's quick and easy to use self-service. Whatever route gets us finished and on the way home quicker (A priority when I'm dragged to Lidl in the evening in the hour before Star Trek is on telly :D )
Quoteprobably 25 - 30 items and I went to the tills, this was about 8.50am. There was a bloke , (I think he is the Manager), talking to a member of staff and when I asked which till was open, he told me that there was not one until 9am and would I use a self-service till please
Id have told him best to stop chatting and get restocking these item in my basket ,bye.
QuoteSo what if self service tills do save the shop a little money
dont worry the 5 checkout staff per store didnt want there jobs
Quote from: ntpntpntp on September 22, 2020, 03:55:21 PM
So what if self service tills do save the shop a little money? Some of that helps to keep overheads (and hence prices) down.
Sorry Nick, I am too cynical to believe that the big stores pass on any savings to the customer. I believe the price that most shops charge is dictated by what a competitor is charging.
Quote from: themadhippy on September 22, 2020, 03:56:52 PM
Id have told him best to stop chatting and get restocking these item in my basket ,bye.
I seriously considered it, but I would then have had to explain to Louisa why I had not got any cat or dog food! :worried: . I enjoy living too much. ;)
Quote from: dannyboy on September 22, 2020, 03:59:47 PM
Quote from: ntpntpntp on September 22, 2020, 03:55:21 PM
So what if self service tills do save the shop a little money? Some of that helps to keep overheads (and hence prices) down.
Sorry Nick, I am too cynical to believe that the big stores pass on any savings to the customer. I believe the price that most shops charge is dictated by what a competitor is charging.
Which ultimately is still constrained by other costs and overheads of running the stores. The cheap supermarkets manage to minimise overheads by running with less staff (amongst other things), our local Lidl only ever seems to have maybe 3 staff in the entire store.
Quote from: themadhippy on September 22, 2020, 03:56:52 PM
dont worry the 5 checkout staff per store didnt want there jobs
Why not increase the prices 10 fold, can support extra staff then? The list of roles which have been made redundant by technology is massive; it's just another example.
Like Nick I don't get the mentality. I don't believe any savings are directly passed on to the customers, but a reduction in overheads will help to avoid price rises because margins will be bigger. Even if they price at the same price as rivals their overheads will be a massive driver in that.
I'll use the most convenient method, if I'm in a supermarket it's nearly always for a handful of items (big orders are nearly always done online), and for that self service is nearly always quicker IME.
A couple of years ago I nearly had a meltdown at Singapore's Changi Airport because I had to go through their new terminal which is all automatic and for some reason the machine wouldn't weigh my luggage properly no matter what I did. Fortunately I managed to work out what I was "doing wrong", as working out what is going wrong with "machines" (more precisely thinking through permutations of parameters and decision paths embodied therein by the people who made the programs powering said machines) is sort of the day job, but I am really really sick and tired of having to think through this stuff when I'm not on the clock.
Fortunately I live in Japan, which people seem to think is run by robots, but things like self-checkouts are very rare.
Quote from: njee20 on September 22, 2020, 04:14:20 PM
Quote from: themadhippy on September 22, 2020, 03:56:52 PM
dont worry the 5 checkout staff per store didnt want there jobs
Why not increase the prices 10 fold, can support extra staff then? The list of roles which have been made redundant by technology is massive; it's just another example.
Yep, that's progress for you. Harsh but the shop is there to run a business, it doesn't owe people jobs.
I bet people use a self-service fuel pump when you fill up? I don't think I've seen an attended pump in all the decades I've been on the road, although there are probably some still out there somewhere. Do you expect a discount for serving yourself? Or for paying at pump rather than in the kiosk?
QuoteThe cheap supermarkets manage to minimise overheads by
screwing there suppliers for the lowest possible price,otherwise we wont stock any of your products.
Local company was after the contract to provide one of the large chains with there "own brand" product range,to get the contract they had to provide the elcheapo version at less than a penny ,in store it sells for around 30p,the poncy supper dupper expensive that goes for around a quid ,8p per item.if the supermarket decides to do an in store offer they'll pass that reduction onto there supplier.The company involved make more profit from selling there waste products for pig food than from the supermarket.If they decide to end the contract said supermarket would also remove the companys own products from the shelfs.
I always go for a staffed check-out rather than a scan-it-yourself unless the queues are long. Even for a few items it's always quicker as you're not having to wait for the machine to weight each item before scanning the next one and there's never the problem of having an "unexpected item in the bagging area".
There's also usually only one member of staff looking after the self-service tills. This isn't normally a problem in a small shop where there's three or four of them, but in a large store where there can be a dozen you end up spending ages waiting for someone to accept your unexpected item, authorise an alcohol purchase or otherwise tell the system what it should be doing.
Steven B.
Sorry, I prefer the self-service checkout at my local Carrefour.
It works well there's less queue and the checkouts are more than 1 metre apart.
Always use the self service checkouts ["Elf service" at Christmas :D ] The only drawback is waiting for a human to authorise my case of Estrella ::)
In France alcoholic beverages are considered to be food items :)
You can buy beer/wine in bakeries or butchers' shops.
Quote from: ntpntpntp on September 22, 2020, 03:55:21 PM
So what if self service tills do save the shop a little money? Some of that helps to keep overheads (and hence prices) down. Sorry but I really don't understand this attitude of "I won't use them unless I get a discount".
My wife works in retail and a couple of months ago the 8 tills in her shop were cut to 2 with 5 self service followed by 4 members of staff being made redundant. They are there purely for profit but if you are happy to become a temporary unpaid employee whilst people are made redundant that's up to you.
Strange, I've never seen beer or wine for sale in any bakeries or butchers around here...unless I've been distracted by the cakes!
Dave
Horses for courses, really. I enjoy chatting to the checkers at my local market while they scan my stuff, but if I'm in a hurry and I don't have a lot of items I'll use self-checkout. The annoying bit is that if I have alcohol I have to be "age-verified" so I can't use self-service. I use a club card; how hard is it to add "age verified" to my club profile so when I swipe my card I'm good to go at self-check?
QuoteThe annoying bit is that if I have alcohol I have to be "age-verified" so I can't use self-service. I use a club card; how hard is it to add "age verified" to
once they've a camera,finger print reader and iris scanner fitted to prove its you and not some 12 year old whos " borrowed " your card.
Quote from: themadhippy on September 22, 2020, 08:04:05 PM
QuoteThe annoying bit is that if I have alcohol I have to be "age-verified" so I can't use self-service. I use a club card; how hard is it to add "age verified" to
once they've a camera,finger print reader and iris scanner fitted to prove its you and not some 12 year old whos " borrowed " your card.
Or they can just have someone look at me and press the thumbs-up button, pretty much exactly how the checker does it.
Quote from: thebrighton on September 22, 2020, 05:26:12 PM
Quote from: ntpntpntp on September 22, 2020, 03:55:21 PM
So what if self service tills do save the shop a little money? Some of that helps to keep overheads (and hence prices) down. Sorry but I really don't understand this attitude of "I won't use them unless I get a discount".
My wife works in retail and a couple of months ago the 8 tills in her shop were cut to 2 with 5 self service followed by 4 members of staff being made redundant. They are there purely for profit but if you are happy to become a temporary unpaid employee whilst people are made redundant that's up to you.
Sorry, I am. Just like Nick's example I'm also happy putting petrol in my own car, making phone calls without the operator helping, and producing my own documents at work without calling on the typing pool.
Quote from: njee20 on September 22, 2020, 09:54:04 PM
Sorry, I am. Just like Nick's example I'm also happy putting petrol in my own car, making phone calls without the operator helping, and producing my own documents at work without calling on the typing pool.
Absolutely nothing personal other than replying to your particular post but I'm sure many are of the same opinion and some modernising certainly make things quicker and easier but I wonder how many would have the same opinion if it was their boss that decided their customers could do their job just as well and for free and subsequently make them redundant.
How far are you prepared to go with doing things yourself? Let's use petrol as an extreme example as it has been cited twice.
You're happy to pay at the pump as well as filling your car yourself, fine, but lets take it a step further.
The petrol company sees these economies are working so thinks to themselves how else can they save money. People want petrol and are prepared to do things themselves and it costs us millions every year transporting the petrol from our refinery so how about stopping that so the public have to come to the refinery themselves to fill up. People need petrol so they would have no choice.
We spend millions refining our petrol so lets stop. The public can do it themselves.
We spend millions shipping the oil from overseas. The public can do it themselves.
Yes, I know it's extreme as I mentioned but where will things end? Where is the line when people will say enough is enough?
Going back to supermarkets all I see are long queues at the few remaining tills as people have full trolleys whilst the self service ones remain underused as they are not practical for trolleys and those that are using them are constantly seeking assistance to solve problems.
A few years ago a family member was in hospital and we were visiting every day as she was dying from cancer we stayed untill late every night ,
We were running out of everything so on the way home we called in at a large `Tesco 24 hour supermarket we did a very large shop with frozen food and every thing when we got to the till there were three members of staff chatting with each other ,we waited patiently and they knew we were there ,then two walked away and the one on the till then said you will have to use the self service till `im closing down now .
We went to the self service till and as we had never used one before we asked the young guy if hebcould help js as wd had a full trolley including frozen goods ,HE JUST LAUGHED AND SAID HE WAS FINISHED FOR THE NIGHT .
I was so angry and tired that I turned round and said you WONT laught when you have to put this lot back on the shelves and I gave the trolley a big shove and sent it carering down the isle it crashed into a cage full of stuff waiting to be out on the shelf and everything fell out and rolled all over the place .
We walked out in disgust and have never been back in that store again .
We went up to Asdas and did the same amount of shopping again this time a very helpfull young man on the till asked us if we needed help packing and called another member of staff who helped us they chatted with us and asked why we were doing our big shop at half past ten at night when we told them they even pushed the trolly up the hill to the car and unloaded it for us WHAT A DIFERENCE and so friendly and they couldnt have done more to help us .
Bob Tidbury
Quote from: Southerngooner on September 22, 2020, 06:02:10 PM
Strange, I've never seen beer or wine for sale in any bakeries or butchers around here...unless I've been distracted by the cakes!
Dave
You should visit Paris now and again.
The shops don't close at lunchtime here either.
Quote from: thebrighton on September 23, 2020, 10:08:38 AM
Quote from: njee20 on September 22, 2020, 09:54:04 PM
Sorry, I am. Just like Nick's example I'm also happy putting petrol in my own car, making phone calls without the operator helping, and producing my own documents at work without calling on the typing pool.
Absolutely nothing personal other than replying to your particular post but I'm sure many are of the same opinion and some modernising certainly make things quicker and easier but I wonder how many would have the same opinion if it was their boss that decided their customers could do their job just as well and for free and subsequently make them redundant.
How far are you prepared to go with doing things yourself? Let's use petrol as an extreme example as it has been cited twice.
You're happy to pay at the pump as well as filling your car yourself, fine, but lets take it a step further.
The petrol company sees these economies are working so thinks to themselves how else can they save money. People want petrol and are prepared to do things themselves and it costs us millions every year transporting the petrol from our refinery so how about stopping that so the public have to come to the refinery themselves to fill up. People need petrol so they would have no choice.
We spend millions refining our petrol so lets stop. The public can do it themselves.
We spend millions shipping the oil from overseas. The public can do it themselves.
Yes, I know it's extreme as I mentioned but where will things end? Where is the line when people will say enough is enough?
Going back to supermarkets all I see are long queues at the few remaining tills as people have full trolleys whilst the self service ones remain underused as they are not practical for trolleys and those that are using them are constantly seeking assistance to solve problems.
I think the key thing is that it's about convenience. I get that there's a cost saving, and that's the underlying driver, but I use self service checkouts because I find them more convenient for the handful of items I'm nearly always buying; when I'm buying a sandwich at M&S it's quicker than going to a manned till. There's no obligation. I fill my own car with petrol because I find it more convenient. Slightly bizarrely the Shell garage on the A3 at Liphook still had attendents to fill your car a year or so ago (and presumably still do), but by the time they've walked over, asked which fuel you want, and started pumping I prefer to do it myself. It's not like I can do anything else with that time, so you just stand there slightly awkwardly while they do it for you.
Making you go to the refinery (or refining the petrol) isn't convenience, and I get it's a daft strawman for effect, but it's not a realistic evolution IMO.
I'd like to hope that I'd see it coming if my boss decided my job could be done by the public, but it seems futile to resist it in the interests of nostalgia and personal motivation. I have been made redundant several times (not replaced by the public attmitedly), and I've moved on, got a new job, and got on with it. There are a load of roles that I'd be concerned about right now; no point pretending it's going to stop. I don't mean that to sound callous, I totally get why it's an emotive topic, and evidently I don't actively want people to lose their jobs!
I work in IT for a holiday company, so you can imagine the predicament we're in :worried:
We'd just had a round of company-wide restructuring/simplification redundancies just before Covid kicked in, then had to furlough loads of bods as well. I've lost several good friends/colleagues and tbh the company has lost a lot of valuable experience in the job roles which the remaining staff will take a while to gain back. The core of us still actively working are pretty much all working from home, and the company see this as the way forward anyway.
I used to work in IT for a major travel company until exactly a year ago when Thomas Cook went bust. Being the wrong side of fifty, I've found it really hard to find more work since but am currently on a contract performing IT support for a retail chain.
We've been working from home since late March and it is great. We have a shared Citrix environment, so we can do everything from home we could in the office, but the loss of face to face interaction is a shame. Looks like this will be ongoing for at least another six months. Thank god for Railcam :)
A bit late to the party on this one. I have been out doing the shopping. Shop and scan using the handheld terminal. Picked up and scanned 66 items, and packed them in my bags so they could be conveniently unpacked when I got home. So all the chilled items together. Salad items together. etc. Checking out took a minute, and I did not have to handle the stuff onto the belt and then pack it in the bags as the tide of items came towards me. Extra side benefit is picking up frozen items last and putting them into a freezer bag so they are out of the freezer environment for the minimum amount of time.
I cannot think of a good reason to do it another way. My time has a value to me, and queuing, loading a conveyor belt, and loading shopping bags haphazardly at the other end of the belt, is not an enhancing experience. The store has increased staff numbers almost every year, whilst introducing self checkout, and shop and scan, so I do not think I am having an adverse effect on people's jobs.
I recall back in the 1960s and 1970s when you joined a queue to be served at Sainsbury's counter. The assistant took my list and gradually put together what I wanted. If it had been 66 items, I cannot imagine how long it would have taken. Today's shop took 60 minutes from the moment I left the house to when I returned, including the 6 mile round trip in the car.
People have been losing their jobs and finding new ones since forever. I was made redundant 7 times in my first 20 years at work - though not once in the last 18 years. I would prefer not to waste my time hanging around in a supermarket in case scanning myself will one day lead to someone having to change their job. Maybe someone will suggest that I should drop litter in the street to keep the street cleaners in a job. But then maybe not.
the difference in diy petrol and self scanning in a supermarket is most petrol stations are run as a small independent company,even if they sell the same flavor of fuel ,not a countrywide chain whos only intention is to wipe out the competition and decimate local independent traders.
I always use self scan, as apart from anything else, it allows me to check that the price on the item is actually the same as the price on the shelf, certainly on our local Tescos I've found a few differences.
the other advantage is that I can check that promotions come off when they should, again not a forgone conclusion.
Quote from: woodbury22uk on September 23, 2020, 04:45:16 PM
A bit late to the party on this one. I have been out doing the shopping. Shop and scan using the handheld terminal. Picked up and scanned 66 items, and packed them in my bags so they could be conveniently unpacked when I got home. So all the chilled items together. Salad items together. etc. Checking out took a minute, and I did not have to handle the stuff onto the belt and then pack it in the bags as the tide of items came towards me. Extra side benefit is picking up frozen items last and putting them into a freezer bag so they are out of the freezer environment for the minimum amount of time.
I cannot think of a good reason to do it another way. My time has a value to me, and queuing, loading a conveyor belt, and loading shopping bags haphazardly at the other end of the belt, is not an enhancing experience. The store has increased staff numbers almost every year, whilst introducing self checkout, and shop and scan, so I do not think I am having an adverse effect on people's jobs.
I recall back in the 1960s and 1970s when you joined a queue to be served at Sainsbury's counter. The assistant took my list and gradually put together what I wanted. If it had been 66 items, I cannot imagine how long it would have taken. Today's shop took 60 minutes from the moment I left the house to when I returned, including the 6 mile round trip in the car
People have been losing their jobs and finding new ones since forever. I was made redundant 7 times in my first 20 years at work - though not once in the last 18 years. I would prefer not to waste my time hanging around in a supermarket in case scanning myself will one day lead to someone having to change their job. Maybe someone will suggest that I should drop litter in the street to keep the street cleaners in a job. But then maybe not.
I'm totally with you on this, or at least would be if I were not isolating and doing my shop on line because of covid. Am thinking, perhaps will not go back to physically going to the shops even after this is over. Perhaps this will save me time and give someone a job doing my shopping for me.