Tesco’s pushed ahead with a totally self-service shop. So is it just a matter of time before retailers dispense with people altogether?
My mum tells me there was a time when there was a man behind the counter at most shops, who fetched you what you wanted, put it in a bag for you, and asked how young Frank was getting on in his apprenticeship at the garage.
But since the 1970s and ’80s, most retailers have moved on to self-select and pay-at-the-till models. This solitary shopping model is so ingrained that now, when an assistant approaches me in a store and asks if they can help, the reply “No, I’m fine thanks… just looking” is usually out of my mouth before I can even stop it.
So is Tesco’s opening of a completely self-serve store a complete surprise? Or is it inevitable — even overdue? In response, an Asda spokesman said: “Hell would probably freeze over before we had a store with no customer interaction on the checkouts…You get to have a bit of a chat with some human interaction and that’s very important for a lot of people.”
But stand at the check-out area of most supermarkets, and you’ll see the paucity of interaction for yourself. In fact the main reason shoppers don’t use the self-service tills is that they’re rubbish, not because they crave conversation with a 17-year-old called Richard.
For a small number of items — fuel, or a few items at B&Q (great self-serve tills) –I’m perfectly happy to do my own scanning and bagging. But self-service tills at big grocers don’t give me much confidence. They don’t like me buying alcohol, don’t recognise which type of vegetable I’ve put on the scale, and they don’t listen, even when you shout “I have put it in the bloody bagging area!”
So until the technology gets much better, self-scanning tills are of limited use. RFID, which uses electronic tagging put in at manufacturing stage, was hailed as shopping’s future some years back.
I’d hoped by now that my bin would update my shopping list and my fridge would collaborate with my cupboard on inventive recipes.
If all I had to do was push my trolley through something that looks like a metal detector, I’d be delighted to do without the checkout chat at a supermarket. Wouldn’t you?
(Photo:paulswansen, CC2.0)
