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25th Oct 2023

Supermarket shoppers fume over ‘stupid’ self-checkout rule

Steve Hopkins

‘I’m not interested in proving that I did your job for you’

A woman has sounded off at a string of major retail stores for using self-checkouts saying she did not choose to “participate in that nonsense”.

So enraged with the now common-place practice, the Australian woman who has not been named, simply “skipped the exit line and left” refusing to show her receipt to a staff member afterwards.

According to local media reports the woman let chain stores Kmart, Coles, Woolworths know just what she thought of the self-service option at their stores in a post on Facebook.

In her post, the woman lamented how the stores are almost “exclusively self-checkout now” and how that change had led to another annoyance, receipts being checked.

“The last time I was there the lady checking receipts at the exit was stopping everyone. I didn’t choose to participate in that nonsense, so I just skipped the exit line and left.

I heard her saying ‘Ma’am’ as I kept walking and raised the receipt above my head, leaving the store.”

The woman continued advising the businesses that they can either “trust me to do self-checkout, or you can put your cashiers back in place like it used to be.”

“I’m not interested in proving that I did your job for you. If you want me to be a cashier with no training then that’s your problem, not mine. Don’t audit me for a position you refuse to employ any longer. Signed, All of us.”

Even on Facebook, the commenters agreed that things were not as they used to be and that they must “finally accept this is normal.”

They also remembered when petrol station staff would pump gas and check the vehicle’s air pressure.

One person offered the woman some advice on how to avoid scanning her own goods, writing: “I go through the self-checkouts and tell the attendant I don’t know how to do it and they do it for me.”

Another person added: “I don’t use self-checkout ever. I feel it is taking jobs away from people. It’s just another way the large companies can save money and make more profits. A lot of the time the lines are longer than the manned checkouts also.”

A Kmart spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the company wanted to make the shopping experience both “enjoyable and convenient” for the customer and that they introduced self-checkouts for a more “efficient” service, especially in “peak trading periods.”

“We will always have a Kmart team member available to support customers putting through transactions if they would like.”

Here in the UK, supermarket chain Booths recently announced it would be removing self-checkout machines in all but two of its stores.

Booths said the decision had been made to “deliver a better customer experience.”

Related links:

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