I went to Sainsburys today. As I got to the self-checkouts, I could see there was a much bigger queue than usual. I soon found out why: they have just updated all of the self-checkouts, and the new software is glitchy. About half the people there checking out were requiring assistance from the staff, and the three staff members could barely keep up.
For a while now all of the self checkouts have had screens above them that record, or at least watch you while you scan. You can see yourself in the screen, I assume it’s to deter theft. I started scanning my items, and immediately I found out what the new software is. On the first item, the screen snapped an image of my face, and kept the image on screen above me, while the screen in front of me that shows the scanned items got a big warning flashing up on it, declaring that I had bagged an item that I hadn’t scanned.
Both screens froze like this, my face on the screen above with a message in huge letters on the screen below declaring to the entire shop I had bagged something without scanning. Declaring me a thief to the entire shop, even though I hadn’t done anything. Because the staff were so busy with all the glitches I had to wait there like this for about 10 minutes until someone would deal with it.
As I waited I watched the other checkouts and saw that this glitchy new tech was doing the same thing to other people. It seems ridiculous, it’s made the process longer, caused a bigger queue, and is wrongly accusing everyone of stealing. It seems counter-intuitive, they want more people to use self checkouts but this is going to put me off using them in future.
I dread to think what they’ll come up with next. Maybe they’ll eventually get rid of all cashiers and when the machine accuses you of stealing there will be no one to check your items and see that you haven’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have robot police waiting to arrest you for supposedly unscanned items soon.
And let’s not forget this is to stop starving, poverty-stricken people from accessing food in the only way some people have.
There’s a union grocery store near me that used to be a smaller independent brand, and it’s RIGHT across the street from a massive nursing home. They always had lots of checkers and of course the store is full of elderly folks doing their daily shopping so everything was always slow but it moved well and everything was fine. It was pleasant.
They got bought by a mega chain recently.
The first thing the mega chain did was close half the registers. For months lines were literally down entire aisles. I waited 45 minutes in line once. There’s only so much a young person getting paid minimum wage can do with 20 retirees in line. Everything just moves slower, takes longer. It’s not anyone’s fault it’s just hard to move around when you’re older and the kids at the registers can’t do much to speed it up.
The next thing they did was install self checkouts. Okay, sure I guess.
And then they closed all the lines but one.
So now you have 2 people, one on each side of the store to manage the self checkouts, who run a and help extremely confused seniors do their self checkouts with the machines yelling at them for everything under the sun, and a third person manning the only full service checkout whose line goes down an entire aisle and around a corner. The machines are hard to use when you’re younger and able bodied I can’t imagine how frustrating they must be when you’re not.
I had to stop going to the store, it was literally impossible to get through and honestly I felt like I was just in the way. This store is a lifeline to the folks in the home across the street and the megacorp took it from a place they could do some comfy shopping and have some much needed human interaction made it a living hell not just for them but for everyone.
Said megacorp is now trying to buy the other smaller chain in my city so I can’t wait for it to become impossible for anyone to buy groceries.
Side note I’m actually pretty convinced these megacorps buy these stores and purposely ruin them so they can close them. In the US a lot of grocery stores are union and I think these girls are buying them and purposely ruining the so they can sell them and re open non union stores down the street.
Anyway fuck capitalism forever. Taking something that should be full of human interaction and care like groceries and ruining it is something only capitalism could achieve