All entries for Tuesday 18 August 2009

Unexpected item in the bagging area

I just used one of those self serve supermarket checkouts for the first time. The over all process was quicker than using one where an employee does the scanning and takes your money but only because there happened to be a shorter queue. The actual time spent scanning my stuff and paying wasn't any quicker and was on the whole rather irritating. E.g. It turns out that you can't scan a second item until you put the item you just scanned down on the bagging area, which is about a foot off the floor. So I scan my magazine, drop it on the bagging area, scan my other magazine,  drop that on the bagging area, then pay, then bend down to retrieve both magazines. All this wondering why I couldn't just keep the magazine's in my hand. Perhaps it's less irritating if you actually put your items in bag, which I didn't. From this experience I can only conclude that self service checkouts are a cost saving exercise (one employee can hover around half a dozen self serve check outs in case there's a problem so that's five fewer people need to be employed) and offer no tangible benefit to customers. It's not like you get a discount for doing the work an employee would otherwise have done.

Mike Willis : 18 Aug 2009 13:09 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem