Self-checkout backlash grows as shoppers rebel at tills

My kids, or those I teach, don’t agree, and I have been labelled a ‘boomer’ (I’m not, I’m Gen X, thanking you kindly) for my vocal opinion.

Now, finally, belatedly, us Brits seem to have woken up to what, on the face of it, is a first world problem, but which, using the butterfly effect, has sinister knock-ons.

Now, you are lucky to find a manned till, and if you do, then the likelihood is the customers are standing six or seven deep which forces folk to self serve.

The supermarkets then laud the ‘success’ of the initiative when in reality, there is no other choice if you are in any semi semblance of a rush.

Brett Ellis doesn't agree with doing a job he has paid someone to do (Image: Brett Ellis)

But recently, a quiet, unspoken movement of like-minded folk were spotted in an Asda refusing to use the self-service checkouts and instead waited patiently in line for over 15 minutes to be served by that old fashioned beast: a real live human being.

I hate self checkouts. With a passion.

I don’t work for you, so don’t force me to do what I pay for.

I don’t care about your bottom line or increasing shareholder dividend payments as you swipe the goods over the machines, which invariably do not work, and then feel as if you are asking the earth by calling the sole staff member over.

Want a carrier bag? Then you have to beg for it.

We should be employing more staff; God knows there’s people out there who need jobs.

Oh, but we have tight margins the big boy’s shout!

This is despite Tesco making 2.215bn and Sainsburys £1.036bn pre tax profit last year, more than enough to satisfy shareholders, employ more staff and bring back those who refuse to succumb to the self checkout fallacy.

Preferable to being self-employed at the checkout, is another implementation I can’t stand, but will abide in lieu of not working solos, and that is the upsell.

WH Smiths were masters at it: If you purchase a newspaper from the chain, you will always be asked ‘can I interest you in a chocolate bar?’ which they never can, as I would have thought of that as I chose my purchases.

The strangest one, which left me perplexed, happened yesterday in an Esso petrol station in St Albans.

After filling the car up (on my own…grrr) I went to pay. The chap behind the till, amiable as he was, asked can I interest you in some eggs to which he displayed some half price half a dozen free range, on the turn that day.

I kindly declined and told him he was a ‘cracking’ salesman, which elicited facial tumbleweed as I wished I had self-served and paid at the pump instead…

• Brett Ellis is a teacher.