self-service checkouts

i’ve always had a problem with these ever since they were introduced about 12 30 years ago i remember my first encounter was in islington right at the back of king’s cross station at tesco’s at the southern end of the caledonian road

um they basically tried to force people to use those like um a mini express checkout system at the kiosk as you walk through the door and then they installed half dozen self-service checkout and i’m an old trade unionist at heart you know when i was in the united revenue i was trading in rap and health and safety raff and all sorts so i’m quite hardcore when it comes to stuff that takes people’s humanity away and life’s done i would have been one of those sabo’s throwing the clogs into the work machines about 300 years ago except i would be too scared of throwing your clogs in i’d sort of like support someone else writing their clothes in anyway the problem i’ve got self-service check

out isn’t that they’re taking jobs away because hey these things will happen you will i mean it always has it’s the fact that you’re doing what the company that put the self-service checkouts in would normally pay someone to do

so therefore if you’re scanning your own items at a rough estimate most companies seven percent of overheads is for salaries so since you’re doing the job of an employee then if you use the self-service checkout you should get a seven percent discount because they’re not paying someone to scan those things in and that’s the issue i’ve got because it isn’t the fact that taking jobs obeying it’s a wheeze for the company that uses self-service checkouts because they’re still selling you the goods but they’re not paying someone to take the money off yet you’re giving the money yourself and that’s the big con and that’s the one that i think is wrong so personally i’d like to say also service checkout’s gone

because most of the time they’re no quicker they’ve been tests on this and most of the time yeah in an ideal world they are quicker if you could if you’ve used them before you can be quite proficient but then you get goods that need proof of id glue and knives and you know gas and things like that and then it flags up an alarm yeah you can scan it in but then you can be waiting two three minutes for someone to come over and swipe their barcode across the screen i mean if they’re gonna give you self-service checkouts there should be big sort of like restrictions about no knives no glue no restricted products just so the ex they are an express system rather than you standing there looking like an idiot

i mean alcohol for instance you take that through you’re waiting for someone to come over and sweat their you know authorize it so self-service checkouts for the company sound like a good idea but i reckon that even companies are getting a bit knocked with the fact that you know they have to employ someone to manage the checkout they thought originally when they put self-service checkouts in but it would be a way of yeah they don’t they never say they have lost jobs they’ve redeployed people in the beginning yes when they first go in yes but after a while due to natural wastage of stuff as people come and go as they always do on you know supermarkets people don’t live there for years on the majority of occasions some do but the majority of um staff are short-term and so what self-service checkouts do by the back door is as people go they don’t need to recruit so many people so yeah you won’t see the figures in anyone’s end-of-year reports because due to natural wastage they just don’t take the same number of stuff off i mean you look at your local supermarket with self-service checkouts you can have 10-15 teals managed centrally by one member of staff that would have been 15 members of staff before

and that’s down to one so you do the math okay that’s it for now um don’t support you express check out don’t support the self-service checkout queue up and if someone comes up and says oh we’ve got the express system and you know even on occasions i’ve had people come up to me say oh we’ve got self-service do you want to use that and i said no i don’t believe in self-service i’ll scan them in for you so what’s the point in self-service if you get member of staff saying oh i’ll scan them in for you just employ another member of staff it’s simple anyway that’s the end of this one thank you for watching speak to you next time

you