Self-service, a death knell for employees?
by Olivia
Tesco have proudly announced the opening of their first entirely self-service shop (in Northampton, five self scan tills manned by a single member of staff). This has been described by the store as an ‘assisted service store’ designed to increase efficiency and speed up the shopping process.
This echoes the recent move in British libraries across the country from librarians to, again, self -service check-in/check- outs.
Given that Tesco is the world’s biggest food retailer, has 4,300 stores worldwide and for the past 10 years has created a new job every 20 minutes (on average) this move is surely one that we should feel uncomfortable about. Aside from the obvious impact on jobs going forward, whatever happened to human interaction while you shop/choose books ? Yes, self service may in some (certainly not all!) cases be quicker but for many people that interaction is a lifeline and this patting ourselves on the backs for technological advancement may be short lived.
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As an ex-checkout till worker (yes it’s true I’ve had as many jobs as Homer Simpson, except for a nuclear power station. I don’t think Chernobyl and Three Mile Island count) I can confidently say that selfscan is painfully slow.
John Airey said at October 22nd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I have been known to use them - however, with more experience of these machines, I have come around to the view that some colleagues have of boycotting them in favour of human checkouts.
The machines are not user friendly. There is nowhere to put your home brought bag(s) in order to avoid using their carriers. When you do, the sensitive scales under the bagging space thinks taht you’re trying to shoplift and stops the process and refuses to go any further. It then announces that there was ‘unexpected item in bagging area’ within millisecond.
Morrisons machines jump within a split second of the item being scanned - as I tested the darn thing by throwing the item bought into their bag and could never beat the start of the nagging voice.
Should you choose to buy any item at less than full price - invariably, the ink label is printed so badly that the scanner cannot read the price. You are then scolded by the supervising harridan* for not typing in the ‘code’ yourself…I contend that this is a subtle form of discrimination as they neither offer to input the code for you nor provide you with a watchmaker’s magnifying glass to read the darn thing! Test case, anyone, anyone??
[* whose previous life must have been as a tricoteuse!]
Harsh?? but true!
Nickle said at October 23rd, 2009 at 9:46 am