MODERN ART, ABSTRACT ART and
LARGE CANVAS PAINTINGS FOR SALE

I’ve been a life-long hater of checkout queues. Even two or three people is enough to send me into a head shaking frenzy of disgust, often accompanied by a “..for God’s sake”, muttered loudly enough for people to turn round and stare. So it was with initial joy and happiness that I came upon that saviour of all mankind – the self-service checkout. I marvelled at her shiny stainless steel weighing scale, the excitement of her touch screen LCD, the  sultry way she invited me to “place my items on the scale”. It seemed as if the queue haters dreams had come true… or so it seemed.

The problems didn’t appear to be significant at first. Although wary but excited it was a while before I was brave enough to allow myself  to be seduced by the woman inside the machine, beckoning me to begin scanning. As a stalwart queue junkie and serial complainer I stuck to my guns and continued to moan and whine like an abandoned dog. And then it happened, I could repel the attraction no more, I had to take a leap into the unknown. I used the self-serve checkout.

In an effort to keep this balanced I must point out that there are very good reasons why large retailers install these machines – they claim they ease checkout congestion, and reduce overheads yet it would appear, right from the start, that there is, in fact, no good reason for installing these at all. Allow me to explain.

At any store I go to where there are self-serve checkouts there is a self-serve checkout operator who’s job it is to look after the people who are using them, ready to attend to their un-scannable barcodes, idiots (like me) who cannot read plain English and those of us who can’t feed our banknotes into the feeder without it being regurgitated every time. Often he or she is accompanied by another operator who has been dragged (against their will) from another part of the store to help out the main operator because there are too many people with problems. I wonder why? And tell me this: if there are TWO people looking after the needs of, maybe, eight people  isn’t that the same as having two normal checkouts open with four people at each? Then there’s the people in front of you. These ‘express’ checkouts are only as fast as the moron in front, who usually turns out to be technologically retarded or as slow as a three-toed sloth on tranquillizers.

Which brings me to the most frightening thing of all. As if it’s not enough that we, as valued customers, are now being asked to serve ourselves we are also responsible for making the payment, scanning and bagging. I don’t see these cost savings being passed on? I almost feel like the heads of these faceless conglomerates are putting their middle finger up to ALL their customers and proclaiming  “If you want to shop here go serve yourself because we don’t care!” In many ways, I suspect, they don’t. So, the most frightening thing? Oh yes, I miss being ignored and grunted at by a 17-year old pre-pubescent boy who spends more money on hair products than I do on groceries. I miss that interaction of him idly chatting to another colleague about how crap his shifts are for that week whilst he man-handles my leeks across the scanner. I miss the way he asks me if I would like help with my packing in that sincere and caring way he so effortlessly conveys. I miss not being able to moan and gesture pathetically about having to wait for two minutes whilst a pensioner counts out all her loose change.

Damn you self service checkout. You may look wonderful, you may try to save time and money (which you do not), you may attempt to offer speed and convenience to your customers (which you do not either) but all you do is turn an already morose and depressing experience in to an ever-more faceless and impersonal one. Then again, I could shop online couldn’t I?… but that’s a whole new story for another day…