DEDICATING YOUR LIFE TO SELF-SERVICE

Paul Foot 9

I wanted to write about self-service checkouts, just when I thought my day couldn’t get any more adventurous (I was retweeted by Cardiff Castle just now, NO JOKE! Although I do need to make a joke today, for tax purposes) – Anyway, for those of ye who don’t know due to blindness or Ocado, these are the new-age robot workforce that are running our supermarkets (and other shops too like Boots, the healthcare giant who survived the recession by selling chocolate bars, and WHSmiths, the bookseller giant who survived the recession by selling chocolate bars, and banks who survived the recession by knowing exactly when and how they were going to cause it).

Now the first thing I want to quickly highlight about self-service checkouts is the audacity of how they appeared. Nobody asked us, and then one day they were just there (!) and we simply had to accept them and get on with things. Even though supermarkets are not short of money, and people are short of jobs.

Of course you can go to the one remaining human checkout in the corner by the cigarettes cupboard, but a bit like an “optional service charge” in a restaurant, the whole thing is set up to make you move with the desired tide.

Although, since I mentioned the jobs thing just then, it has occurred to me on some occasions that self-service checkouts require more staff than before in order to manage them! And it’s a different kind of staff too, less like dinner ladies and more like P.E. teachers.

ALL OF US NOW WORK IN SUPERMARKETS!

Let’s be clear on this. We were all told as kids that if we didn’t do well in exams then we would work in a supermarket. There’s nothing wrong with this, and some people who work in supermarkets are probably much happier than some of the high-flying businessmen. BUT, I just wish I could go back in a time machine to the classroom and shout “ALL OF US ARE GOING TO WORK IN SUPERMARKETS!!! AND WHILE I’M HERE – DON’T BOTHER LEARNING DEFINITIONS – GOOGLE IS NIGH!” and then vanish in a puff of smoke.

There was a brief teething period when supermarkets had induction staff on hand to show us the ropes, a bit like receiving a welcome drink at a concentration camp, and then that was that – all of us now work in supermarkets now until we die, or can afford slaves like Katie Middleton.

I worked out just now using my calculator on my telephone that if you spend five minutes a week using a self-service checkout, then you spend just over four hours a year working in a supermarket, which at the minimum wage is worth £26. And so since they were introduced five years ago all of us are owed about £100-£150. You’re owed more if you shop/work in Morrison’s because the self-service checkouts there are hilariously rubbish, I’m convinced that they are photocopiers from the 1980s.

But no – we actually pay for the privilege of working in supermarkets!

Incidentally, M&S have more old-school checkouts with human beings than other supermarkets. I’ve paid attention to this and think it’s because almost all of their customers drink gin, often beginning in the mornings, and so it’s easier than having to approve 90% of the items.

THE VOICE

Now I heard recently at a dinner party that the voice of the self-service checkouts is going to change soon from that cold-hearted “cash will be dispensed below the scanner” wench to a much more informal male voice who might say things like “Hey there you! Are we ready to scan some tortilla wraps for you and all your friends? Whey to go MATE!”

If there is one thing worse than faceless corporate conglomerates, it is faceless corporate conglomerates who try and act all casual. Just don’t even pretend! Unless of course they want to employ me to record the voice – “OH MY GOD BAYBAYYYY! She’s having a big one tonight! She’s gonna guzzle those meringues!” or “LOOK OVER THERE! HE HAS A MASSIVE BONER!!! Just kidding! Now get scanning BITCH!”

In Bradford on tour last year I went for a meal at Nando’s where I was amazed to discover we had to do everything ourselves, but the menu tried to make this sound fun, like “Hey – Why not rock over to our cutlery island and pick up some groovy knives and forks”

My friend who used to work in a pub said that those cardboard prisms they put on tables announcing promotions are referred to internally as “talkies” because they *talk* to the customer. Not only does that depress and terrify me at the same time, but it makes me wonder what happens when you pick up a “talkie” and dump it on another table with another “talkie” – Do they start talking to each other???

THEY ENCOURAGE THEFT – LOL

I have never stolen anything in my life, apart from little shower gels from hotels and once a piano teacher’s heart, but it’s impossible not to consider theft when standing in the face of a self-service checkout. It occured to me that if I were to rip open a packet of organic carrots and then scan them in as free-form carrots, the robot CANNOT TELL! My friend pointed out that this is possibly the most middle-class and endearing theft plot she has ever heard. Because of course if you just keep an item in your hand and never scan it in – the machine still CANNOT TELL! Even if you were to place an un-scanned item into the bagging area, causing alarm, I bet the attendant would perform the pretense of a little search inside the bag and then just waver it with their magic card because they’re keen to keep things moving. Madness!

Newspapers were writing about this years ago, but nothing has changed. I could literally go into Tesco Expressco right now, steal a packet of sushi, come home and eat it – and be left feeling disappointed because it’s not proper sushi, but, in fact, chopped cucumber and boiled rice held together by chance.

ANXIETY! THE ANXIETY!

Back in the days when you took your shopping to a person, you would queue at a specific till and wait you turn. With self-service checkouts we are often left in one queue that then sends you off to a check-out when it becomes available. I find this fills me with anxiety, because often the person in front doesn’t spot an available till or they’re not as quick as you, or you start walking to one but then realise it’s still being used, and then like rounders at school – you stump yourself out – and AAAAAAGHHHHHHHH!!! THE ANXIETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once at the machine you must do exactly what the robot wants or it will throw a tantrum, unlike the security and reassuring care of a real till attendant (who would even bag your stuff for you sometimes and solve any mishaps themselves, often by shouting “SHARON!! HOW MUCH ARE THESE???!!!) I miss those days. I don’t like the anxiety.

But…. what if we all agreed to go into a supermarket, like twenty of us, and all put unexpected items in the bagging area at the same time, and keep doing it, with completely blank expressions. Would it make the supervisor’s head explode?

SOCIAL INTERACTION

I’m not going to pretend that I used to talk to Beryl who worked in Amersham co-op. In fact, I hated her. But I did see Beryl talking with other people, elderly people who perhaps clung to that daily chat as a kind of life line. Even in Post Offices and banks, self-service machines have come into play – and what a horrible thing for an elderly person to have to cope with? It makes me wonder what sort of not-yet-invented things we will have to cope with one day? Will we feel nostalgic about the self-service checkout robot in 2030 when all-inclusive nutrition pills are fired at us from a small hatch in the kitchen wall?

Anyhow, here concludes my incoherent ramblings about self-service checkouts. But let me know what you think about them, I’ll share this post on my Facebonk and Twittarse so that ye can reply.

ALSO – do have a read of my last blog post the PAUL FOOT DOUGH NOT SAGA, which was also supermarket related. And the one before that, which was about murder.

ALSO ALSO – remember my UK tour kicks off in less than three weeks now. WHO YOU GONNA CALL? SKELETON JOHNSTON!!!! I just wanted to type that, sorry.

Goodbye

PF xxx

Join the Guild