Hmm... I won't even use one of those self scan tills if I can possibly avoid it, I object to being complicit in putting more money into some fat cats pocket at the expense of someone's job. Our local Asda and Sainsburys have now almost done away with manned tills FFS. They might have been low paid jobs but they did provide some support to some people.
I used to say that, but in all good conscience I can't really claim to any more. I used to queue for the tills on the basis it kept people in work. In the case of people like the Lovely Linda who works on the tills in our 'local'* Sainsburys and has a very mild form of Down's syndrome it might be the difference between a reasonable job and a shit job or even none. Sadly I've been seduced by the ease and calmness of using one of the store's portable scanners, packing my shopping calmly in the right place in the right bag as I go, and when I've finished walking around the store I simply pay and walk out.
I've had a battle with myself about it and resisted for a long time. On the one hand there's the Lindas, and on the other hand there's the Sharons and Darrens who throw my goods at me as they scan them, destroy any order in which I've put them on the conveyer belt mixing frozen food with biscuits, and hard tins with fragile crisps and generally make using a full service checkout something to avoid. So when out of curiosity I finally once tried the scanners you carry around the store with you I was converted. I realised that I could skip the last and most unpleasant 20 minutes of the supermarket experience and haven't looked back. I'm afraid that on this occasion minor selfishness, in the form of an abhorrence of Sharons and Darrens mucking up my carefully organised shopping, has won out over social responsibility.
* local meaning nearly three miles away
Maybe the Sharon's and Darren's of this world are more London based, I don't get any of those issues, I do however have a Linda in our Asda. I have, on the odd occasion when I had very limited time, used the self-service till, but that is rare. Having experienced, having no job and no government subsidies or benefits of any kind, I can fully understand how people struggle on low incomes. It is not always easy to get another job, or even as a politician recently stated on national media "get a better paid job". Plus also, where is the incentive in doing either the self scan or self-service tills, there is no reduction in the final bill, despite the shop / company not having to pay for a worker each till. Anyway, sometimes the self-service tills actually take longer as they frequently cannot detect item in bagging area, come across items with no bar code and have no system to enable multiple items of the same, to be scanned and multiply the value which requires a staff member to come and process. These members of staff are usually looking after about 12 tills, so they can take a fair time to attend to your problems.
I agree the governments need to up their game when it comes to education, so people can find better employment etc, but that takes time and there is no quick fix, so as long as I possibly can, I shall continue to shop with social responsibility, for me there is no giving in, like I said before I have been there before, not knowing where the next meal was coming from before, or when I would find a job. I'm not a scrounger by nature, so I had zero knowledge of how to go about getting any assistance, and the job centres were less than helpful with coming forward with information, even though they were aware that I had a young family to support, live sucks when you're not one of the elite.
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