Do it yourself

I’ve had cause, in posts passim, to moan about the appalling standard of customer service in this country before. Clearly I haven’t been listened to, so I’m going to have to do it again. Same shop though – Sainsburys.

Last time, it was because I was asked “Would you like any help packing?” when I was buying three items. They are now at the other end of the spectrum. Recently the Sainsburys in Reading town centre has had about half its checkouts removed and replaced with self service check outs. So you do your own scanning and bagging. It’s an obvious money saving rouse as the customer does what traditionally stores have had to pay people to do. I’ve used these machines before in M&S and found them satisfactory as long as there are staff about to help you. If you don’t put your goods into the bag quick enough the machines go “beep, beep, beep” and request you seek assistance. Buying wine? “beep, beep, beep.” Aspirin? “beep, beep, beep.” Bleach? “beep, beep, beep.” You get the idea.

This works in M&S as they have about one member of staff to four self service tills, but Sainsburys have about one for eight. Unsurprisingly, it was pretty busy there tonight after office hours. Or does the Reading store have a new manager with no retail experience as this flood of people seemed to have taken them totally by surprise. Is it “bring your child to work week” leading to the store being managed by 2 five year olds? (This will doubtless be the subject to a later post if any bloody children are bought in to my office, but we’ll cross that bridge at the time.) There were 7 or 8 people queuing for each bank of four tills and one harassed assistant trying to quell the beeps.

There was only one proper checkout open. It had seventeen people in the queue. I counted them. I think that’s a pretty clear vote on the popularity of self service checkouts. Will anything change? No.

This will soon be re-written and emailed to Sainsburys for their comments. I will of course share any reply. In fact, I can probably do that now…

Blah, blah, blah, disappointing shopping experience, blah, blah, blah, embracing new technology, blah, blah, blah, some difficulties in the transitional phase, blah, blah, blah, we welcome your money – sorry feedback… and so it will go on.

I went on as well. To Marks & Spencer. Their fine wines are very reasonably priced.