The latest survey by the retail industry claims we
love the convenience of them – supposedly they’re quicker and we avoid long
queues.
The industry would have you believe these dreadful machines
are so popular we’ll all want to use them.
Apparently 95 per cent of us have negotiated our
way round self-service machines and endured the “unexpected item in the bagging
area” nonsense, suggesting the end is nigh for the checkout girls of Britain.
But look at the small print and you discover – even
in a survey for The Grocer magazine – 55 per cent of shoppers still prefer
dealing with people not machines.
Will our preference for people make any difference?
Of course it won’t.
The industry thinks that, as more and more shops
leave their tills unmanned and force customers to go self-service, we’ll grow
ever-more delighted with the triumph of machine over man.
The giant retailers – Sainsbury’s, Tesco, B&Q
and the rest of them – are profit-making enterprises which will do all they can
to reduce costs and boost profits.
D-I-Y checkouts mean fewer staff. One employee can
supervise four machines.
In theory, that means retailers could axe three-quarters
of their checkout staff and still push through as many customers per day as
they do now.
I pity the staff at these stores. They have no
choice but to help impose checkout machines on their customers.
They have to explain why the scanner won’t work,
they have to authorise the sale of alcohol, they have to help when the card
machine refuses to accept payment and the computer whines about unexpected
items.
They could do all this for us if they were sitting
at a till. Instead, they have to brainwash us into thinking this system is
somehow a desirable improvement.
And all the time they know the more successful they
are in conning us into believing self-service checkouts represent the future of
retailing, the more likely it is they will soon be out of work.
The stores and even Usdaw, the shop-workers’ union,
claim this is not a cost-cutting exercise. We shall see.
Stephen
Robertson, director general of the British Retail Consortium, says: “I love
self-service checkouts in the same way I love ATMs, ‘pay at the pump’ and
airlines’ on-line check-ins.
“To me they mean
efficiency and speed and, as designers continue to make the technologies
friendlier, the balance is tipping ever-more firmly in their favour.”
In the immortal
words of Mandy Rice-Davies: “Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Admittedly I am a
Luddite. It’s not so much that I mistrust technology, it’s more that I mistrust
the people who try to force it on me.
You know for
certain that, whatever the drivel the industry pours over its self-serving
self-service checkout initiative, it’s all about cutting costs.
For years after
the banks introduced hole-in-the-wall cash machines, I made a point of walking
into the branch with a plain, old-fashioned cheque book and requesting my money
in the traditional way, from a girl behind the counter.
This went on
until the day when staff at my local Barclays, less than 100 yards from home,
demanded two forms of identification before they would let me have any cash.
I was stunned. A
simple cheque guarantee card wasn’t enough any longer. And they knew me anyway
– I lived just down the road.
I pointed out
that their approach was professional suicide – the more they forced customers
to use machines, the fewer bank clerks Barclays would need to employ.
But that, of
course, was the point. The staff at my local Barclays were not to blame. The
company had clearly adopted a policy of alienating Luddites and forcing us into
line.
Since then, I
have been forced to use a cash-point machine like everyone else. And I admit
they are convenient, quick and generally safe.
But I still
resent being made to participate in the banks’ conspiracy to cut costs – especially
when they could employ dozens of staff for the price of one crooked
speculator’s massive bonus.
The same pattern
is now being followed by big shops. The more D-I-Y checkouts they install, the
more difficult and time-wasting it becomes to queue up to deal with a human
being.
That forces us to
use the machines whether we want to or not. Now 95 per cent of us have used the
infernal things – I’m in the remaining five per cent – it’s only a short step
to getting rid of checkout staff completely.
And if they are so wonderful, why does John Hannett, General Secretary of Usdaw, point out that
“self-service checkouts have become another flashpoint that can lead to shop-workers
being abused, threatened and even physically assaulted”?
He says: “Frustrated
shoppers experiencing a problem using them can often take out their anger and
frustration on the nearest shop-worker and this is both unfair and
unacceptable.”
I decided some time
ago to boycott shops with self-service checkouts. But if it carries on like
this, I could be starved into submission.
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