It would save normal customers more time than you’d believe, and you know you’re supposed to care more about your customer’s happiness than anything else.
I didn’t expect to have much difficulty today. I had a perfectly simple list. Coffee, milk, bread, dog biscuits (more important in our house, than human food. Oscar’s been melancholy since Monday) and maybe even some fruit. I've been feeling bad about my diet recently.
I also thought maybe buying some fruit might stop His Nibs from using the fruit bowl as a door stop, or as a weight to hold the huge bag of dog food closed.
It didn’t take long to get these simple items into a basket. I needed collect the car, and collect His Nibs from work at five thirty. At ten past five I got to the checkout.
I’m not in the habit of using your self service checkouts. I’ve tried, but to be honest, I’ve never had a happy experience there.
It seems that no matter what I do, it shouts at me and refuses to be reasonable. I don’t like anything that I can’t shout back at when it shouts at me.
If I put my handbag down beside the till it assumes I have stolen something handbag weight, like, I assume, a large head of cabbage.
“Unidentified item in the bagging area” it screeches. I stand there torn, I never know whether to look mortified and ashamed, or to go for defiant and offended by the implication that I might be trying to shoplift a cabbage.
I never take the stuff off the “bagging area” fast enough, so the damn thing starts shouting at me again. Handbag on the floor, slightly panicky, rushing to get everything out of the packing area and into the bag. Now I really looked like a shoplifter, stuffing things into the bag.
Why is this awful system sold to us as being for our benefit? In my experience, the average shopper, and by that I mean me, takes far longer to put through a few bits of shopping than it does one of your staff.
So today I decided I’d go for the human touch, and queued at a till.
I chose carefully. It’s usually well worth the few seconds it takes to size up the customers, the amount of shopping they have, the assistant, whether he or she looks alive, and so forth.
I was in your shop a few days ago, and I may as well tell you, the woman who served me seemed a bit bonkers. She shouted at me to give her my Clubcard, despite my telling her that I didn't have one, and told me not to be so ridiculous when I said I didn’t need a bag. I was quite frightened, actually.
So I took the till next to hers today.
The first problem was the boys being served when I arrived at the till. Five students, from what I could see. Four of them bought a box of Budweiser each, and the fifth had a bottle of rum.
Each of them were asked for ID, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear. And each of them looked surprised to be asked, despite the repetitive nature of the request, and would fumble about in his rucksack for a couple of minutes, eventually drag out his wallet, ask his friends whether he looked less than eighteen, and then show his driving licence.
Your staff member stared at each driving licence as if he’d never seen one before. It took forever, I swear. I wanted to start grabbing the licences myself, and deciding whether they should be served. I would have refused them all.
Next in the queue was a woman with a basket full of shopping. Having so much time to look around, and being a nosey cow, I had an in depth knowledge of the contents of her basket before the assistant even turned to her. I’d seen the fresh soup, and I knew for certain that it was on special, three for two. And yet she didn’t seem to know, having taken two from the fridge. I knew that she would find this out, and would wander off to get her free soup in the middle of being served, and I was right. I swear, battles have been won and lost in less time than it took this woman to arrive back at the till. And when she did, she had chosen pea and ham soup. Eugh.
Then, in fairness, there was a man with two small items, who seemed like a patient sort. Or at least he didn’t start sighing and rolling his eyes, and eventually stamping his feet, like I did.
Obviously, there was the customer who seemed to have no idea she’d be expected to pay until she was asked for the money. Then she started arsing about, wondering whether she had cash, trying to decide which card to use, I wanted to kill her.
After an eternity, finally, I was served.
Our place of work is directly across the street from your shop. And yet I didn’t get there until after 5:45. I’ll remind you, I went to the checkout at ten past five.
Every single day, I go to collect the car and am at the door of the office a maximum of seven minutes later. I’ll let you do the maths.
I know it’s not your fault that some of your customers seem to be too thick to queue up with the rest of us without messing up the whole system. I’m just making a suggestion.
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