Unfair? Unacceptable?

Saturday, August 21, 2010

The Telegraph reports on experiences with self-serve supermarket checkouts.

It seems that:

• “Frustrated shoppers experiencing problems using self-service checkouts can often take out their anger and frustration on the nearest shop worker, and this is both unfair and unacceptable.”

I can’t condone any kind of violence (although we aren’t told this occurs, and we are hearing from a union rep, always ready to grind the axe), but I see it this way.

The supermarket is contracting to the customer to exchange goods for money. Further the supermarket offers two checkout options – self-serve and manned.

The supermarket has an obligation to provide functioning services. A UK checkout with a manned checkout manned by a Zigurian clerk isn’t providing a service. A self-serve checkout that doubles the price of everything isn’t providing a service.

If there is a problem with the self-serve checkout, then customers ought to feel frustrated and ought to report their problems to the supermarket.

The manager being in the back room adding up the day’s receipts, the manned checkout clerk is the nearest representative of the supermarket.

And isn’t that what we (employees) are told nowadays? “No matter our position, we are ALL ambassadors and sales representatives”.

The supermarket has failed to provide functioning self-serve checkouts, and by the sound of it has failed to provide some of its staff with the training required to deal with frustrated customers.

You can be sure if the checkout clerks were empowered to hand out one hundred pounds (dollars etc.) to each unhappy customer something would soon be done about the self-serve checkouts.

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