A recent trip to our local Co-op has led me to believe some of the staff there see us as a ‘hassle’ they have to deal with.

The store is not very big but it does have a few checkouts in a row, even though I’ve only ever seen 1 of them in use. Most people go to the tobacco kiosk as that’s the only place they seem to have a permanent member of staff.

As I walked in with Dearest Son, he noticed they now have 3 self-service checkouts which I want to state here and now, are an abomination to the whole shopping experience. The three in the co-op all have ‘Card Only’ on them and Dearest Son asked why. I gave him a short answer about the big plan being to do away with cash altogether (which I’m not a fan of).

I would like to point out here that I was talking to my son. Only my son. However, as we approached the kiosk (I wanted to pay with cash), the staff member piped up, “Actually they are to save us hassle”.

This comment made me wonder about a few things:

1. You work in a shop
2. Customers come into the shop
3. Customers want to buy things
4. You are there to sell them the things
5. If this is too much hassle for you – why do you work in a shop?

I’ll confess I was annoyed and left the shop feeling as welcome as a farty bee stuck inside someone’s spacesuit.

Am I the only one? Is it because I’m old and an eavesdropping smug 20 something is a thing I can no longer tolerate?

Or do all stores now actually see their customers as hassle? The bigger supermarket in the town also has this attitude. You go in after 6pm and good luck finding a checkout with a human sat there, ready to beep your stuff through and smile while they tell you the extortionate total. No, you have to use one of the self-service tills, some of which do take cash, not that it makes any difference because you need a member of staff to come over every minute to clear something off the screen. Plus the space they have for you to put your shopping on after you’ve beeped it, is so low down, you walk out with back-ache you didn’t walk in with.

Please tell me there are others out there who feel this way about the modern shopping experience. It’s no wonder I do so much shopping online, at least the delivery person is usually friendly!