In news that will gladden the hearts of everyone who loves to queue forever in a supermarket queue, the northern version of Waitrose, Booths, has announced it is reinstating its staffed tills and getting rid of self-service tills in all but two of its outlets. “Our customers have told us this over time, that the self-scan machines that we’ve got in our stores they can be slow, they can be unreliable, they’re obviously impersonal,” toots Booths managing director Nigel Murray. “We stock quite a lot of loose items – fruit and veg and bakery – and as soon as you go to a self-scan with those you’ve got to get a visual verification on them, and some customers don’t know one different apple versus another for example.” Well, good for them. They’ve listened to their customers and they’re marching headlong into the past. It’s yesterday once more. Speaking personally, if upmarket Booths had stores around here, I’d stop using them.
My first thought when reading the story was that perhaps Booths should have invested in some efficient self-scan machines that weren’t “slow (and) unreliable” because the ones I use in local supermarkets are anything but slow and unreliable and you’d have thought that given the prices Booths charge for their products they could have afforded them. But this is all bullshit. There is only one reason why Booths are putting staff back on tills: they think they will make more money.
The BBC quoted a woman called “Sue from Leyland” who said, “I think shopping is a boring, mundane thing to do and I think if staff are there chatting to you, it just makes it better.” I kind of agree with the first bit which is why we have our Big Shop delivered at home and if I need to do “top up” shops, I don’t not want to spend my time queuing people who simply want to have a chat with the till assistant. If a long queue builds up at a till, have you considered the pressure that builds up on the till operator, especially in those supermarkets where staff have to meet targets when scanning items? And trust me, a hundred or so years ago I worked on a till and it is the most boring, soul-destroying job in the world and if a bar code doesn’t work on a self-serve till, it doesn’t work on a staffed till either. (Not that were bar codes back in the day. Things had actual price labels on.)
I certainly believe in people having the choice between self-service and queuing at a till and if enough people want to spend a considerable amount of time shopping, then I would be the last person to deny them that “pleasure“. But if I can’t get in and out of a store as quickly as possible, I’ll go somewhere else, thank you very much.
It’s the same thing with cash. The shadowy right-wing conspiracy wingnut Facebook group “Keep Cash: Worldwide” points out what it believes is the existence of a sinister worldwide cabal which wants to control us by way of the means by which we pay for stuff. But again, if enough people want to use cash for things, the Bank of England has said there will always be cash. If people stop using cash – and I have pretty well stopped using cash because it’s a pain in the arse – then the slow death of cash will carry on. And while those right-wing barmpots whinge away at the actions of controlling governments, let us remember that the right-wing governments they elect believe in allowing the market, and not the state, to dictate how we live our lives. Maybe the Keep Cash brigade should stop voting Tory and all the other right-wing parties fighting it out on the political fringes.
I sympathise with people who cannot tell one kind of apple from another. It must be terrible and I am sure they welcome Booths’ for recognising that. I tend to go by what the labels and packages say, but then I do take my reading glasses with me, just to make sure. Who would want to go home with a bag of Golden Delicious than my favoured Jazz apples? Do not mock. These are vital issues. Perhaps, Booths could help matters by properly labelling their apples, although if they did it might give other folk something to complain about.
Does any of this really matter and aren’t there bigger matters about which to concern ourselves? Bloody right there are. And anyway, I am merely having a laugh, or taking the piss as we say around here. The less time I spend in a supermarket the better. But if it’s your idea of fun, then good for you. Get to that cashpoint, wander up and down each aisle and then have a decent chinwag with the minimum wage operator, who will be desperate to talk about your ingrowing toenails, your haemorrhoids and, that old favourite, the weather. And if I am being honest and serious, I have come across plenty of people who just love to do that so why spoil their pleasures?
“Keep Cash: Worldwide“? Not for me thanks. But would I try to stop you? No. And neither is anyone else, despite what the conspiracists will tell you.
