Self service tills.

Yes like that.

That sounds familiar.

Imagine what will happen if there are food shortages?

It became too dog-eat-dog in Modern Cities. Life became a War, rather than a Journey.

I like to have a nosey on the conveyor belt at what people in front of me are buying when at the manned tills. And I think there's a scene from the Fast Show on similar lines. 

Edit m.youtube.com/watch fast show

The self service tills in aldi are the worst for noise and telling you what to do. Completely unnecessary.

I think Lidl is the only large shop I've been in in recent times that has yet to introduce the self-service option. In a way it's good that that forces me to exercise my sociability muscle with a stranger. However, with most supermarkets I confess that I scurry to the self-service whenever possible. It's not even so much a sense of 'I don't want to people right now' as 'I don't have to inflict my awfulness on anyone this way' (I feel much less monstrous than I used to though, so it's no longer a traumatising thought, just reflexive habit I need to keep in check) and 'I don't have to put anyone to any trouble' (which is silly I know, as it's customers who keep the till staff in gainful employment, and I'm as interchangable with anyone else in that regard - not intrinsically less worthy).

One other reason I quite like the self-service (in supermarkets at least, less so in petrol stations for some reason): my little collection of items and its component ratios isn't subjected to the scrutiny of at least two people - one at the till and one over my shoulder in the queue. That sense of discomfort so well summed up by Richard Herring one time when he talked about the 'oh, *someone* likes yoghurt...' factor. There are worse things too (toilet roll - shock horror!) that I just prefer to surreptitiously get scanned observed by me and me alone. Total irrational madness of course, as what cuold be more of a great leveller than that? And yet maybe that's it. The awfulness of the universality of 'functions', and the unspoken shame of it all that passes between two people - customer and worker- in a wordless understanding about our baser nature. Self-service at least feels like it puts one fewer such moment into the collective cringe that probably only a minority experiences... for good or ill. 

I love them because I can buy food even when I'm feeling socially burned out. I remember 15-20 years ago when I'd go without food because I couldn't face an interaction.

Me at Tesco 2 days ago with a Self Service till which had no 'cancel' or 'go back' button.

Waiting on Live attendant for bringing my own shopping bag

Waiting on Live attendant for item which isn't working 

Waiting on Live attendant for unknown change in weight

Waiting on Live attendant to find other Live attendant for bananas which ONLY checkout by weight and aren't weighing today. Still waiting. Minutes pass and since I started maybe 30+ individuals have swept through the live attendant queues and out the door. Abandon bananas at self service and leave. 

During the pandemic they were the less risky option and that's when I started using them more. I used to hate them and they certainly seem to hate me. I can rarely get through a transaction without needing human assistance to override at some point.

Having said that they do have some advantages and I'm increasingly opting to use them even when I have the option of a manned till. Once I get used to how each stores systems work I find them more predictable than a human.

I tend to buy a lot of stuff with yellow stickers and I like that I can go at my own pace and check that each item has scanned at the correct reduced price. On a manned till they scan so fast that I cannot keep up with checking the prices whilst simultaneously trying to pack and fend off any attempted small talk. I hate having to check the receipt and then queue at the customer service desk afterwards if something has scanned at the wrong price

I suspect that the reason stores are ripping them out is more to do with security and abuse than customer preference.

I’ve started to use my phone to scan items in the supermarket, I put the items straight into a carrier bag and when finished aim my phone at a QR code on a screen, I don’t have to take the items back out of my bag and the self scan area is normally less busy. 
I do understand that it’s losing people jobs but as a ‘time and motion’ study it makes sense not to take items back out of a bag,  scan items or put them on a conveyor belt to only repack them again. The use of a phone scan also offers extra discounts as a ‘carrot’, to use the system. I get to be in the building for the least time possible.

What I don't understand is that in some supermarkets they require you to scan the paper receipt to exit.  What does that achieve?  What's the logic?

What if one haven't bought anything, how do you get out?

What happened to the promise of a computerized paperless society?

Now there's an idea. In addition to wearing such a T-shirt, I might even perch myself on the bagging area so that I can be the "unexpected item". 

We should perhaps get that phrase printed onto t-shirts and have one day a year when ALL autistic people wear them?

Good morning Mart,

Most of us here have our own personalised  "challenges and limitations" (aka inabilities and inadequacies).   My own set of these cause me constant frustration, irritation and embarrassment.....but also regularly generate very visceral and real-world harm too.

I really like your phrase above "it's not a preference for me.......it's the only way I can". because hat makes me feel better.....because that IS our collective truth.

Thank you.

Number

"Unexpected item in bagging area" That's the worst but as it feels like there's a large arrow pointing at me.

Not intentionally. I think there was possibly one occasion though when I was rushing and realised after I had got home that there was something I had forgotten to scan and pay for. Thankfully, it wasn't anything expensive.

I seldom carry cash, so tend to pay with my contactless debit card and was doing it long before Covid. The drawback is if the cost of my shopping requires me to enter my card's PIN, resulting in me frantically trying to remember what it is. 

While I have a preference for using self-service tills, I consider it a good thing for stores to cater to everyone by giving their customers a choice and having manned tills as well.

I don't know if it still happens in the stores that have manned tills, but at busy times the cashier (or other member of staff) would help to pack customers' shopping bags, to free up space for the next customer waiting in the queue. Whilst I could understand the need for that if the queue of customers was obstructing the aisles, having someone else assist me in packing my shopping used to drive me potty.

Another gripe of mine regarding manned tills is when the customer who is first in the queue is known to the cashier, and they strike up a conversation. I'm not referring to a simple exchange of pleasantries (small talk), but an in-depth conversation that lasts for several minutes.

Because I do not drive, if I have more than one bag of shopping, I like to distribute the weight of my shopping. If I find myself struggling and physically unable to carry a bag of shopping because it contains too many heavy items, then it means I have to faff around reorganising the contents in my shopping bags. This is not a problem when using self-service tills.

However, the drawback to self-service tills is when one requires an assistant to verify the customer is old enough to be purchasing paracetamol, or to deal with an "unexpected item in bagging area" issue. As a customer, it can also be mildly frustrating if I have an item of clothing that I am unable to pack until an assistant has removed the security tag. 

Self service tills are in my experience a nightmare and manned tills are way better - connecting and interacting with another human being is so vitally important for our mental health and well-being as we have become way too dependent on modern technology in our times - our grandparents generation when I was a teenager in the 1980’s (I’m 53 now) were totally opposed to computers, internet and mobile phones and even though I embraced these at the start, our grandparents made a lot of warnings and predictions before they passed of what it would all lead to and over the years since their passing, they have consistently been proven accurate and correct in our times, as we have discovered for ourselves 

Yes, there should be a choice - personally, I hate self service tills and prefer the human interaction - my last store had 13 self service tills and I was made redundant in 2019 after 17 years - I’ve been working in supermarkets for 30 years at age 53 and now, the hotel I now work for installed self service for guests checking in and out, but there are no end of problems with these machines - and yes, despite what is claimed otherwise, they are taking peoples jobs 

Write to their head office...

re4ading this thread, there is obviously a golden ratio yet to be found between manned checkouts and automatic checkouts, that will make the most number of people happy.