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Why do people who have no idea what they're doing use these things??? Go and get in a normal queue you hooligan!!
I always get the broken one.... 👿
Why is it you always get the one item that won't scan and you have to wait for an assistant?
saw an (actually quite tragic) full blown skag head use one in the city centre the other day.
was mindblowing to watch the mix of opiates and modern technology at work.
naturally it did not go smoothly.
i HATE self service !
By using one youre doing a real person out of a real job,thus increasing unemployment, and pandering to a low wage ecconomy as the pool of jobs are reduced.
Also when things dont scan properley and the red light comes on, does everyone as if programed, by the light decide to tut tut tuting, stamp theuir eet, or start panting etc.
It's true they're job-stealing and remove more social interaction...
But being an impatient bastard, I love 'em!
Only ones I've had problems with were at Morrison's.
i refuse to use them and love to argue with the stoopid shop assistants who stand around telling people to use them
muppets
Did you manage to type that in yourself or do you employ a secretary to do it for you?project - Member
By using one youre doing a real person out of a real job,thus increasing unemployment, and pandering to a low wage ecconomy as the pool of jobs are reduced.
I refuse to use them - they never work properly with my courier bag...
nearly as annoying as everyone in london not carrying cash
Hardly self service are they, the number of authorisations, tag removals and general resets they need when they get in a tizzy because there's a foreign item in the bagging area (usually my 3 year old leaning on it) makes them a pretty grim expereince.
project - Member
By using one youre doing a real person out of a real job,thus increasing unemployment, and pandering to a low wage ecconomy as the pool of jobs are reduced.
Did you manage to type that in yourself or do you employ a secretary to do it for you?
I dictated it to my typist, who then typed it out, before passing the words to my data input clerk, who then ,passed it to the authorisation manager after i had checked it.
I like to use them. It cuts down on unnecessary social interaction and the uncomfortable feeling of being judged upon your grocery purchases...
🙂
Were lucky there only in diy shop over here.
Hate the ****in things
Ten empty tills and ten supervisors supervising self serve tills
Pure p1sh
They will be asking you to fit your own tyres at the garage next......
Plus doent forget the dudes watching the overhead cameras (just in case you forget to scan something)
erm hows that cost effective
"Self service"?
You mean the "Buy One, Get One Free" tills? 😉
You've not seen the digital displays above the tills ?the uncomfortable feeling of being judged upon your grocery purchases...
"early heart attack on till 3" etc
(they're only good for small quantities - try a trolley full and you just gat a massive pile-up of stuff at the far end, or you have to stop part way through and bag up some stuff before restarting)
I find them confusing.
I'm sure I accidentally scanned a £1.20 500g pot of yoghurt, then placed a 25p 500g bag of pasta on the scales once.
Or was it the other way round ?
and why do they shout at you
'PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA '
stfu
I like them and would use them in preference, but for a couple of issues.
First, as someone else said, there's little point in using them as an 'express' checkout when you've got to wait for some PFY to come and remove tags and approve purchases every ten seconds.
Second, they're the second most patronising thing in the store after the voice on the moving walkway. Do this, do that, unexpected item in bagging area, scan Clubcard, wah wah wah. I can read, thanks, especially as everything's printed in a foot-high font; can I have a Mute button please?
Yeah, they don't really save shopper time but shop costs. Same as the self-service cheque deposit at the bank. Last time I did one three people were served in the queue during the time it took me to wait, fill the form in and deposit it. Hence it was the last time I'll do that.
Hate the things.
Had a bust up with the new manager at the Tesco Express in the village not long after they came in.
"Would you like to use the self service till sir?"
"No thanks, I don't like to use them"
"It would be quicker, sir"
"It might be, but I prefer to use a normal till and keep your staff in a job"
"The self service tills are here to help the customer when our other tills are busy."
"I really don't want to use them"
"But sir...."
"Either I use the normal till or I put my basket of shopping down here and I walk out and buy it elsewhere."
"Ah, OK, sir"
Cue applause from the old dear behind me in the cue.
Said manager doesn't seem to be around much now.
Love them, great invention
By using one youre doing a real person out of a real job,thus increasing unemployment, and pandering to a low wage ecconomy as the pool of jobs are reduced.
Smash the looms!
yea they are pretty useful but one thing that just really pisses me off is the bags!! it takes me 20 secs to scan and pay for my shopping and then 2 minutes to untangle and separate the bags!!!
is it just me that scans first and then bags 2nd?
also the staff, i mean theres always one hanging round just in case of a bag incident, but how many times have i had to cough shout wave as they stare into oblivion not noticing my big red flashing light 🙂
the voice of the ones in Sainsburys is the woman who does the narration on Masterchef.
that's why I always leave Sainsurys with a semi.
nnnnnggggggg, boom goes the dynamite.
my local B&Q has them and it allows round .356 seconds from the bip of the scan to telling you (in a very stern voice) to put the item in the weighing area....
its very speedy and scary at the same time.
At least the self service tills don't ask if you need a hand with your packing or do you want saving stamps 👿 YET!
Never used one and never will. tesco make enough money already and i would hate to do any of the nice ladies wjo work there out of a job.
Never used one and never will. tesco make enough money already +1
If you have one sandwich a newspaper a drink and only have 5 mins for lunch then great, but anything more than one carrier bag full is a ball ache! Cue "please return the item to the bagging area" to then be repeated 20 times whilst as above you look directly at the "helper" who gazes into space!!
Quite often use them when I'm in a hurry, but I invariably forget that there's booze in my basket and have to wait for the PFY to come over and approve me, thus wiping out any time saving/interaction avoidance benefits.
At least the self service tills don't ask if you need a hand with your packing
I can understand this if your old, disabled or have a baby with you but like to day in Morrisons I brought two items and the woman asked if I need help packing, I declined the help and said no need to bother with a bag she just smiled and put the two items into a bag 😐
So am I the only one who turns the volume right down on them when I start?
"Unidentified object in bagging area.........."
Arrrgggh!
I had a small trolley half full of stuff today, decided to use self service, forgot my bags so scanned a couple of "bags for life", scanned the two bags which was ok till i put my shopping in!! Every item i put in the bags kept telling me unexplained item in bagging area, which carried on till i started using the free bags!! Grrrrr
try buying 2 lemons at Asda, apparently this exedes the maximum amount you can buy
"Self service"?You mean the "Buy One, Get One Free" tills?
You are Antony Worral Thompson and I claim my £5!
They are a pain though. I go to t'supermarket early on Saturday (7:30) and a few times I have had to scan the lot myself as there are no tills open. I now demand staff or I will leave.
Only thing they are good for is stocking up on Tesco generic paracetamol and ibuprofen. Of course you need to pay cash and multiple times. 😈
Think i will drop a bag of pennies and 5ps in the slot and see what happens next time.
There's a volume control 😯 .... where is it
At the bottom of the screen on all the ones I've ever used.
A handful of items at the most, no booze, no dvds, turn the sound off, don't fanny about with your own bags - sorted!
Recently experienced the joy - used my own bag (a satchel) in the correct position in the bagging area - put all the shopping in then took my wallet out of said bag to pay so it all went wrong as the scales decided that the weight of the shopping didn't match to the scanned items' expected weight.
They didn't work with your own bags very well but now they do - they have a button to press if you have brought your own bags, on the main screen.
Although that could just be in Wales with the 5p bag thing.
They are good I reckon, esp now as they've speeded up a lot - first generation were awfully slow. Except the ones in B&Q. They've almost entirely given up on normal tills in favour of these.
Of course, many items in B&Q are far too large, unwieldy and/or heavy to put on the scales, so it tells you to leave them in the trolley. Except the threshold is a bit high, so some things it asks you to put on the scales are still pretty awkward. Got told to unpack the 8ft 2x2 from the bottom of my pile of stuff and put it on the scales today. Fortunately PFY over-rode that one.
The ones in my local B&q are friendlier than the till operator's, although it was a bit of a struggle trying to get 2 10 metre rolls of roofing felt on the scales!
project - MemberBy using one youre doing a real person out of a real job
I'm taking away low-paid till operator jobs and creating self-service-checkout-machine design and manufacturing jobs 😉
TBH if you're in a shop that has self-service, then you're probably in a big supermarket, and therefore taking away jobs from small local shops. I don't go to Tesco to create jobs.
I'd love to know where you lie with the law when using them. And not in the AWT sense but more of a 'confused', pressed the wrong button, 'was miles away' sense. See MTQGs confusion in a previous post.
The last time I was in a shop buying food, the owner was asking me what I'd like to see on their shelves. Having made a few suggestions I'll be back to see if they've been acted on.
Not much point to that really, other than it beats the shit out of interacting with a machine.
If there were only self-service tills we wouldn't have this wonderful poem from Mr Tim Key!
Only thing they are good for is stocking up on Tesco generic paracetamol and ibuprofen. Of course you need to pay cash and multiple times
like that - i once wasted my breathe telling a checkout person at ASDA that their employer was very selective on which laws they chose to respect - I wanted to buy ibuprofen before going on hol - at the time ASDA was ignoring the net book pricing act
... a recent rant was on being asked to leave a queue for checkout with an operative i pointed out i had loose vegetables and wine - experience would suggest that this would require me to pace up and down and wave until a queue built up and then wait until someone could summon a colleague and guess an item code with a vaguely similar price and then walk off before authorising the alcohol - my arms are still tired from waving and i've 2mm of ASDA floor ground into my shoes from pacing.
PS for Tesco the answer is always cheese crusty if you want to pay for loose bakery goods
edit real shops are rarely open all hours
What a bunch of middle class twaddle.
They don't cost jobs, they cut queues that form at peak times and avoid people having to wait behind a weekly shop to pay for a few items. It's like having a 6 lane motorway instead of 2 single track roads.
And they are bloomin simple to operate, if you can't work it out then...
But if you are trying to use one for a trolley full you deserve everything you get.
It cuts down on unnecessary social interaction and the uncomfortable feeling of being judged upon your grocery purchases...
I was in the supermarket the other day buying a frey bentos pie, a half pint of milk, a one-third size tin of beans (remember them?) a single serving box of micro chips, and an individual canned steamed pudding. Oh and a copy of Zoo magazine.
The girl at the checkout asked me coyly "Would I be right to assume you are single sir?"
"Yes I am as it happens, thats very perceptive of you. How can you tell?"
she replied "Because you're ugly and you stink"
After reading this thread I'm off to find a threshing machine to destroy!
I like them
Any old money off coupon seems to work - whether or not you've actually bought that item 🙂
I always have to wait for a member of staff to 'verify my bag'. Apart from that they're no problem and are much quicker than waiting in a queue behind someone who has just bought enough shopping to last the next six months.
Kev
What a bunch of middle class twaddle.They don't cost jobs, they cut queues that form at peak times and avoid people having to wait behind a weekly shop to pay for a few items.
Well if they don't cost jobs then they must have proved to have been an expensive waste of money for the supermarkets. They can't possibly be quicker as there is no way Joe Public can scan quicker than supermarket checkout staff. Supermarkets are perfectly capable of providing manned "6 items or less" checkouts if that is the issue.
[url= http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7957800/Self-service-checkouts-have-not-cut-supermarket-queues.html ]Self-service checkouts 'have not cut supermarket queues'[/url]
[i]"Figures compiled by The Grocer magazine show that average queuing times for staffed tills at Tesco and Sainsbury's, the retailers with the most self-service checkouts, have increased over the past two years.
At Tesco, which has 6,000 self-service checkouts in its 1,200 stores, the average wait for a staffed till lengthened from 5min 15sec in 2008 to 5min 42sec this year. Sainsbury’s saw a smaller rise, from 5min 30sec to 5min 35sec. "[/i]
If queues haven't reduced since their introduction then it looks suspiciously like the supermarkets haven't used the 'freed up' staff to serve other customers, and that despite their protestations to the contrary, have simply reduced their staffing levels. To put it in my best middle-class twaddle.
In the Sainsburys where I shop it's definitely quicker to use a machine than it is to wait for an available cashier. The cahiers queues are always full by someone with a trolley full piling stuff on to the conveyor which will inevitalbly take at least 10mins before they have packed, paid and left. Using the machine takes less than 5mins. If it took longer I wouldn't use it would I, I'd wait for a cashier instead.
Kev
They are all part of the sexist agenda. Men are incapable of opening supermarket bags and this is the latest feminist weapon designed to make men feel insignificant as they wrestle with the inseparable sides of the bags while woman quickly pass them by. It's an outrage.
They can't possibly be quicker as there is no way Joe Public can scan quicker than supermarket checkout staff.
Throughput innit?
Joe Public may be slow at scanning, but the supermarket can fit 6 self-service machines in the space for 2 manned tills.
So unless Joe Public is 3 times slower than the staff then throughput is increased at peak times. 😀
(even if individual checkout times are longer)
Anyways, I like em. Way faster than dealing with till staff when I just want to grab a couple of things for lunch.
ernie_lynch - True because there are absolutely no other variables that affect the length of queues at supermarkets. Well done!
They can't possibly be quicker as there is no way Joe Public can scan quicker than supermarket checkout staff.
You have obviously missed the point though. The actually time stood at the till scanning may be longer but the queue [b]may[/b] be less because you can spread the load across the 6 lanes, not 1.
Its not rocket science.
Its just additional choice. If its quiet or you have troublesome items that are hard to scan use the regular till. Busy a lots of old dears waiting for the checkout then nip thought the self service and save yourself some time.
And the fact that seemingly intelligent people are getting so wound up by a machine that can be operated by children is quite telling.
ernie_lynch - True because there are absolutely no other variables that affect the length of queues at supermarkets. Well done!
Thanks 8)
Although credit should really go to the Daily Telegraph for publishing the article which reports the detailed research into the matter.
my girlfriend insists on using them every time. however she mostly buys knives, paracetamol & wine -yeah i know 😯 - so always needs an assistant. drives me mental.
And the fact that seemingly intelligent people are getting so wound up by a machine that can be operated by children is quite telling.
I think there actually is little yellow kids inside the self service tills operating them, keeps them off the streets of Shanghai
.
And WHY must the till use the same patronising tone reserved for three year olds? or that irritating liquid beep? I refuse to use them.
Was queued for a self service till in an Asda on Sunday.
Assistant asked 'would you like me to put that through for you', so I agreed.
Chatted to my wife & amused the baby whilst the assistant scanned our items.
Came to pay, and realised she'd scanned everyting but not put it in bags.
Really helpful.
So we then had to spend exactly the same time & effort bagging everything up that we'd have had to had she not offered to 'help'.
Pointless.
Dope.
Hardly ever had a problem with using them in Tesco or Sainsbury's.
They are incredibly simple and just need to be used by their own rules i.e. do things in the order they want, be careful not to jiggle the bag about, etc.
Easy.
Having a member of staff doing what you pay them to do is even easier. Self-service is no service.
Reading some of the nonsense posted on this thread confirms my belief in Joe Public. Yes I work in a store with these tills.
People who can't/won't use them are the same people who.......
Have to use a pump at the petrol station that is on the same side as the fuel filler cap
Drive everywhere at 40mph
Hog the middle lane
Carry mobile phones (if they have dared embrace such technology) in a pouch attached to their belt
Someone needs to tell Tesco that a 500g bag of ciabatta breadmaker mix doesn't weigh the "expected weight" of 0.080kg reported on the screen. It's tough being in the squeezed middle, and that's one of the worst things about it.
I guess it's all first generation problems, they have got noticeably better in the short(ish) time they've been around.
Has the average waiting time on both served AND self service tills gone down?
Most people will use both at sometime?
If not, then the only one who benefits is the shop. The public get shafted along with the staff.
Massive queues in Todmorden btw.
Evolution is not uniform.
Wrong on all counts Houns, but stop trying to be clever and think for a minute about why they are there and who is really gaining from them.
"That's not a carrot sir, that's a leek"
-"...Oh is it? I never can tell..."
Carry mobile phones ... in a pouch attached to their belt
These people are trained members of T.W.A.T
People who walk around with one of those stupid little Bluetooth earpieces, even when they're not actually on a call, are also members.
last time Mrs R and I went to a large Swedish furniture store there were queues at the few opened manned checkouts but the automated ones were taped off. When she asked why they told her they didn't have enough staff to man the automated ones as they needed watching closely because of the amount of "wastage". Does make you wonder where the savings are and whether the whole thing's been thought through.
What happened to the 'coming revolution' of RFID tags?
Debit card goes in the device on the trolley, the trolley knows what you put in or take out and the system charges it automatically.
They were supposed to be cheap enough to put on anything and would do away with all the barcode scanning etc?
I've seen some pieces on TV with them but they don't seem to be getting rolled out
Although credit should really go to the Daily Telegraph for publishing the article which reports the detailed research into the matter.
Not really. The telegraph did a very common media trick of jumping to a conclusion based on research data.
Data: Queues are marginally longer now than [i]a while ago[/i].
?
Interpretation: Self service tills didn't exist [i]a while ago[/i]
?
Conclusion: Self service tills must have made queues longer
Correlation ? causation