The Tesco Butlerian Jihad continues. During my last visit to
the large suburban grocers two days ago, I collected my goods, went to pay and
found all four manned tills closed, see illustration above. This has happened a
couple of times actually. When people stop paying with the cashier and all the
customers are marching obediently through the auto-tills, especially at less
busy times of the day, the cashier is redeployed to do other tasks. That makes
sense if they have nothing to do on the till. The problem is that if you want
to deal with a human being during that period you have to request specifically
for one to come and serve you. Naturally I did so. They took a while to arrange
it. At one point I got tired of waiting and took my trolley across to the
tobacco and lottery counter, but one of the staff called to me: "It's
okay; somebody is just coming." They did indeed a minute later, a pleasant
young lady with a good sense of humour. What followed was very interesting. As
soon as I was checking out my shopping another person approached from behind
me, then a second person. By the time I had paid and was ready to leave the
store, a queue of three or four people had amassed. This means that at the time
I was in the store there were probably a good few other shoppers who would have
preferred to have used the manned till as well, but only did so when they saw
it open. If I had not insisted that it be opened they would not have bothered
to wait themselves and would have resorted to the auto-tills to save time. This
means the shops can "encourage" people to use the auto-tills even if
they would not really want to by deliberately keeping them shut in the
assurance that stubborn and patient bastards like me who take the time and
effort to keep human interaction going are few and far between. That's a shame
because the staff at this Tesco were very helpful and did find me a cashier
eventually. They're actually a lot better at it than they used to be. I hope
this is because there are more people like me going there and so they're
getting used to it. Once you make that effort you don't only do it for
yourself. You will probably find others will use the manned till in your trail
who otherwise wouldn't have.
2 comments:
A nice anecdote and one which I am sure demonstrates a much broader principle. So far our local Morrisons has always had at least one conventional checkout open but now I know what to do if one day I turn up and find them all closed. I certainly won't be using the "self-scan" (their term for auto-till).
Interestingly the earlier self-scan machines would accept card or cash but the latest versions are "card only".
Thanks, MT. I've noticed that too. I suppose we should take heart from the fact that several supermarket chains have toyed with the idea of disposing with manned checkouts completely, but they have not gone ahead with them. Obviously I would never use a shop which had such a policy. Well done for making your own stand on this!
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