I was in Tesco and Morrisons tonight.

I only had a couple of items from Tesco - olive oil for the dogs and milk for us. - so decided to use the self service after this thread. Fairly 'simple' items and all went well - but I don't like the way they stand and watch you, made me feel like a criminal!

Morrisons, however, I had a fair few things so used the normal checkout (I like the way Morrisons still leave bags out for you to use and haven't yet reached the 'do you need bags?' thing yet!). Anyway, the woman in front of me getting served works there and happened to comment on the alarm system noise that's generated because of the self service tills! It annoyed the woman, but didn't appear to bother the boy who was serving!

That's my research for the night.

Interesting to hear from a member of staff that you don't like them either!

I must admit i love Waitrose because of their "Quick-check" system as you take your green bags and put them in the trolley and swipe your partnership card and then you take a scanner and scan things straight into your bag and just pay at a machine when you've finished. You get a running total and don't have to empty things out onto a conveyor belt and re-pack them. Superb idea. Why don't the other supermarkets follow suit?
I can't overspend as I know exactly how much things cost as I put them in the trolley and as I have a neck injury it is good for me not to have to re-pack everything out of the trolley but just move the bags into the boot of my car.

Hate the ruddy things, ok if you have a couple of items but to me its a good excuse for the supermarket not to employ more staff, soon they won't have staff just faceless self service blinking tills.

you must have a guilty conscience
they are standing there in case you have a problem with the machine

id rather not, but will if i have to.

what i think though as if you use them you should get a discount on that bill, as you havent used a member of staff & done the work yourself!!!!!

on normal tills
YES i would like bags, YES i do need help in packing,NO please dont talk to yourmate on the next till whilst you are serving me.........oh& the bags...please open them for me!!!!!

i hate other people packing for me

but yes, i can never open the blooy bags!

the cashiers in my asda usually spend all their time chatting to me!
which is nice

Yes, I know.

Ha ha! Lynn Truss in her book "Talk to the hand" about the decline of manners today said that when she was in a supermarket and two cashiers were talking over her about the week's tv programmes that she said "Thank you so much I shan't need to buy a TV Times now"!

I was tempted to do the same when this happened to me in M&S but chickened out. My husband doesn't see it as rude as he says they have a boring job but I think it is quite rude as you feel like you're invisible.

I agree with you. Dave and I were in tescos ages ago (pre self-service tills!), it was late in the evening and pretty quiet, most tills were unstaffed but there were 3 'youngsters' in a line on tills. We went to the one in the middle. She didn't acknowlege us and carried on her conversation with her colleagues about her holiday the following week. Now we weren't there for long, I'm quite sure that she could have waited 5 minutes to finish the conversation. The ironic thing was, as she continued gassing to her colleagues and they disagreed with her she said 'stop talking in front of the customers, it's really rude'

As we went to the exit I steered the trolley towards customer services, Dave laughed and said 'I know exactly what you're doing!'. I complained about them, I felt like a right moaning old bag but when we had said 'hello' as we got to the tills she had just ignored us and carried on talking to her friends

It is actually possible to outwit these machines! I have & I get great satisfaction from it, especially the one in our local co -op.
When paying by card, if you are quick, you can get your card in & your pin number entered before it has finished telling you to put your card in because the card reader is quicker than the voice!.. it's so funny because the voice cuts itself out & triesto then tell you to enter your pin, but you've already done that so it has to stop talking half way through the sentence and move on to the next bit
This is the point when you can say, "I've already done that you stupid machine" and it makes you feel soo good!!