Automated tills now take up much more space than those staffed by humans. We must resist!
I’ve wailed before about the proliferation of self-checkout machines. But I will do so again, because my mood darkens every time I visit my local big supermarket. I first honoured the place with my business about 20 years ago. Back then there were about two dozen staffed checkouts, in those days of innocence before the death march of progress gathered pace. A handful of self-checkouts appeared; a handful of human ones vanished. At first we saw them as harmless novelties. They were never all in operation, and those that were rarely worked properly. The whole caper seemed to involve as many staff supervising machines as could have been operating a battery of proper tills. But we indulged the management, bless them. They’ve got to try these things, haven’t they?
Then came more of them, and ever fewer human tills. A zero-sum game. It remained the case that some machines were out of action and the remainder invariably had a glitch in store for you. Only the other day I had a torrid time with some pitiful, dried-out geraniums on a three-for-£5 offer. They just wouldn’t scan. I got them for nothing in the end, but they all died anyway.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
