Marcus Berkman, writing his article, We are supposed to feel grateful to our newsagents and banks for compromising their standards of service for The Independent, has a massive whinge about WH Smith and their use of self-checkout.
For instance, I occasionally go into WH Smith in one of the mainline railway stations to buy a newspaper or a competitively priced bag of Revels. They used to have four or five tills and a queueing system, which meant you were usually in and out of the shop in a couple of minutes. Sometime last year they ripped all this out and replaced it with eight self-service machines and one till, which is the only place from which you can buy cigarettes. This means there is always a queue of half a dozen people for the one till, some of whom are buying gaspers with bags of change or out-of-date credit cards, and all of whom will miss their train.
The things is, Marcus, your bitch is with WH Smith and not newsagents, not the real newsagents, the family run businesses that provide personal service, usually from the proprietor or a family member.
For the record, this newsagent does not like self-checkout terminals as the dehumanise the retail process.
One of the more interesting benefits from ceasing Tobacco sales was the immediate loss of Credit Card Purchases being declined before 0600 in the morning (sometimes up to 3 a day). The description of cards bouncing because they are out of date was never the problem here which was insufficient funds.
This consumer LURVES self-serve checkouts at the supermarket. (I find it a wonderful example of corporate double-speak that the machine at the Coles self-serve welcomes me to Coles’ ‘assisted checkouts’. Ah, um – no: assisted checkouts would be the ones with the staff to assist me, wouldn’t they?? LOL) Anyhoo, I think it’s quite fun to scan the groceries and I like (i) being able to pack the items myself so that I can choose how many bags to use and which products are suitable to be included in the same and (ii) not having to go through the fake friendliness of ‘How are you today?’ blah blah blah. I would, however, like the supermarkets to treat me as though I were a serious customer and give me more room so that when I have a lot of items, I’m not struggling to accommodate them all in the squishy space allowed for each person in the self-serve area.
Id like a 5% discount for using self-serve, I’m saving wages for them – they should share the savings
I hate self serve but tell almost every single check out person ” Pack my bread separately. I don’t want to get it home half it sized wrapped around a can of soup” On the other hand little kids get a real kick when I let them scan their own book or lolly.
Marcus who?