Desert Orchid
Senior Jockey
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2005
- Messages
- 24,933
Cards on the table, I hate them with a passion.
It took me about 10 years to trust ATMs when they first appeared - I still don't like using them but counter service in banks is woeful - and maybe two or three years to start using the 'tap' facility in shops.
I don't use mobile/telephone banking because I don't trust banks to take responsibility if things go wrong but that's a rant for another day.
Now self-service checkouts have, I know, been going for at least ten years and I know some people like them but I cannot abide them.
In the last year or so my local Aldi has installed a batch of them and they are an absolute nightmare for me. No matter how much I believe I am complying with the abrupt and non-customer-friendly instructions, I never seem to do anything right and end up, to my embarrassment, having to ask for assistance. There's a couple of staff members who recognise me and kindly offer to help but that's embarrassing for me too.
We're in a small town and I overheard a couple of years back one of the staff commenting to another customer that most shoppers there use baskets rather than trolleys and it seems they now only open the tills if someone has a very large trolleyful of stuff.
Prior to the self-service checkouts, I'd say the till management in the store was probably the best of any Aldi or Lidl store I'd experienced. Now it's among the worst and I now actually dread having to do any shopping.
Being a small town, the options aren't great. There's a Sainsburys but they moved to self-service checkouts a few years earlier so I stopped going there. And there's a Co-op but it's really only a mini-market with not much in the way of proper groceries; it's more of a convenience store.
On top of this, the staff don't seem to realise that this 'innovation' has cost them jobs. I reckon there are three or four fewer members of staff there than a year ago. Perhaps they've been redeployed elsewhere but it means that three or fewer local people haven't got a job to apply for.
Meanwhile, despite all this 'economic efficiency' prices have skyrocketed and, in my opinion, supermarkets are screwing us right, left and centre, profiteering from the Ukraine situation and the pandemic. (Again, probably a rant for another day.)
But this self-service checkout stuff really does my head in.
Rant not over.
(Can you tell it's a quiet day for racing?)
It took me about 10 years to trust ATMs when they first appeared - I still don't like using them but counter service in banks is woeful - and maybe two or three years to start using the 'tap' facility in shops.
I don't use mobile/telephone banking because I don't trust banks to take responsibility if things go wrong but that's a rant for another day.
Now self-service checkouts have, I know, been going for at least ten years and I know some people like them but I cannot abide them.
In the last year or so my local Aldi has installed a batch of them and they are an absolute nightmare for me. No matter how much I believe I am complying with the abrupt and non-customer-friendly instructions, I never seem to do anything right and end up, to my embarrassment, having to ask for assistance. There's a couple of staff members who recognise me and kindly offer to help but that's embarrassing for me too.
We're in a small town and I overheard a couple of years back one of the staff commenting to another customer that most shoppers there use baskets rather than trolleys and it seems they now only open the tills if someone has a very large trolleyful of stuff.
Prior to the self-service checkouts, I'd say the till management in the store was probably the best of any Aldi or Lidl store I'd experienced. Now it's among the worst and I now actually dread having to do any shopping.
Being a small town, the options aren't great. There's a Sainsburys but they moved to self-service checkouts a few years earlier so I stopped going there. And there's a Co-op but it's really only a mini-market with not much in the way of proper groceries; it's more of a convenience store.
On top of this, the staff don't seem to realise that this 'innovation' has cost them jobs. I reckon there are three or four fewer members of staff there than a year ago. Perhaps they've been redeployed elsewhere but it means that three or fewer local people haven't got a job to apply for.
Meanwhile, despite all this 'economic efficiency' prices have skyrocketed and, in my opinion, supermarkets are screwing us right, left and centre, profiteering from the Ukraine situation and the pandemic. (Again, probably a rant for another day.)
But this self-service checkout stuff really does my head in.
Rant not over.
(Can you tell it's a quiet day for racing?)
