Self Service is No Service

Ok at long last and without making a single reference to the football I write this week on Self Service.

At my local ASDA they recently replaced 2 express tills and one low level till with 4 self service tills, a brave move I hear you say, a sad one I say.

Now the economics of self service tills are fairly easy, by losing 3 tills and replacing them with 4 self service tills they have lost two salaries at approx £5:58ph x 24hrs x 6.5 days x 2 = £1740.96 x 52 weeks = £90529.92

Ok I know that those two tills would not necessarily have been manned 24hrs 6.5 days a week 52 weeks a year but you can see how the savings add up.

It's two salaries by the way not three because you need a supervising cashier to keep these self service tills going, I'll explain why in a bit.

If you've never been through a self service till I'll give you a quick run through.

Ok 1st of all you don't know where to queue because there are 4 tills and no logical queuing lanes so you sort of mill about in the middle waiting for one to become free and hoping that the aggressive bloke at the back doesn't push in.

Eventually and I choose that word advisedly, you secure a free till and start processing your shopping, you pull a bag from the dispenser assuming there is one and hang it on the convenient arms which double as scales by the way to check that you aren't stealing.

You are faced with a touch screen which gives you clear instructions and also reads them out to you, press here to start etc.

You scan your goods slowly, after all you're not a cashier are you? and place each item into the bag on its scale arms. if you are lucky you won't have any mis-scans or reduced priced goods which require the intervention of the supervising cashier.

When you have finished scanning and bagging you feed either your money or your card into the machine and away you go.

Sounds simple huh?

Of course things are never that simple, a mis-scan or reduced item will require the attendance of the supervising cashier as will a mis-weigh lean on the arms and the scales will register a different weight than expected and pause your transaction.

Now these events are quite common as you can imagine with amateur cashiers trying to put their goods through and each event takes time to clear, have you spotted the problem yet?

1 supervising cashier, 4 tills, lots of problems means lots of frustrated customers waiting to get on one or waiting for a cashier to clear them.

Now I love progress me but I also love good service and this is not it.

Of course I can understand the fiscal imperative and I like low every day low prices like everyone else but the usual 15 minute wait at lunchtime has become a half hour drudge it won't take much more for me to vote with my feet and I've been shopping at ASDA for 15 years !


John Anslow
http://www.ffriar.com