Does anyone else think that the self-serve checkouts at supermarkets are a con? I am sure Coles would tell you that they enable a greater number of people to be served at once, and that they make it much faster for people to pay and leave when they only have a few items. This may be so but all the supermarkets in our area that have them seem to think it's an excuse to only have one, at best two, regular checkouts operating at the same time. Naturally this means anyone with more than a few items queues up for the normal checkout because let's face it, why would you want to scan your own groceries when someone else could do it for you, at twice the speed? Without having to fetch someone else to scan their card everytime you tried to do something like not use a bag, scan items at something approaching an efficient speed or swap the full bag for an empty one?
In case you haven't gathered, it drives me nuts. It especially drove me nuts this morning, when I had made the effort to get Little E and myself there as close to opening time as possible, and there were still stupidly large queues for the two normal checkouts (one of which was 12-items-or-less) so we (with about 20 items) opted for the self-serve ones. They were as annoying a I remembered, despite a few improvements (there is an "I don't want to bag this item" button and a "new bag" button).
But still. It didn't like our 6-pack of sultana boxes because Little E had eaten half of one and poured the other half on the floor, so it weighed the wrong amount. It didn't like how fast I scanned the six identical tins of cat food. I didn't like that I had to scan and pack everything myself, leaving me with less ability to stop Little E trying to launch herself from the trolley seat. She didn't like how long the whole process took, so in addition to trying to launch herself from the trolley she took off her shoes and threw them on the ground, smushed banana in her hair, and tried to grab handfuls of watermelon through the plastic.
I suspect that the Coles lady didn't like us much either by the end of it (in addition to the problems with sultanas and cat food I, distractedly, scanned the washing powder twice, again necessitating her assistance). We had our first delivery from Aussie Farmers Direct yesterday, and today's palava definitely put a vote in the "regular delivery" column.
Has anyone else had good experiences with home delivery options? Which one(s)?
5 comments:
I'm a big fan of supermarket home delivery- I prefer Woolworths as Coles often forget the petrol discount vouchers. I replaced the time we spend at the supermarket with a trip to a market for fruit, veg, deli&meat.
Self-serve checkouts aren't child-friendly, I agree! Here they are very popular so I don't have to use them much. The boys are now well briefed to NOT TOUCH ANYTHING!
I love self serve because I live in a small town and it's the only place I can disreetly buy things like pregnancy tests without the entire town knowing about it!
I agree it's almost impossible to use self serve with 'little helpers' present.
Agreed! Those self-serve checkouts are a disaster with children! I too suspect they are all part of penny pinching by the big chain supermarkets. Grrrr....
Those self service checkouts are great if you only have a couple of items, if you are on your own, and if you know how to use them.
I get annoyed when people waiting to use the self serve checkouts stand too close behind me while they wait. I feel pairs of eyes watching me stuff up the scanning and dropping the items on the ground. BACK OFF! I feel like yelling at them.
hmmmmm is there such a things as checkout rage?
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