Booths ("the Waitrose of the north") eliminating self check and staffing tills

[SamSpade]

Booths goes back to staffed tills

[storewanderer]

It says they'll keep self checkouts in a couple stores.

I suspect similar to when Albertsons did this in the US, the self checkouts will end up coming back due to some reason or another (pandemic, customer complaints, staffing issues, better technology, etc.).

[ClownLoach]

It says they'll keep self checkouts in a couple stores.

I suspect similar to when Albertsons did this in the US, the self checkouts will end up coming back due to some reason or another (pandemic, customer complaints, staffing issues, better technology, etc.).

I suspect that the number of people complaining about these is minimal, but they're the noisiest and thus hardest to satisfy individuals. These are the folks who come into a Costco on a Saturday afternoon where 16 out of 16 checkout stands are staffed and open, and they complain about the mere existence of the 12 self checks on the end (which replaced a whopping 2 full service registers, thus giving customers 10 more places to pay AND they actually added MORE workers to staff them). I've heard these people complaining to the cashier in a full service checkout lane that they are offended by the presence of those self checkouts and that "I don't pay a membership fee to work for you guys, you need to get rid of those immediately" as if the cashier has any power to address their concern. The damned self checkout is doing nothing but helping them as the store now has a total of 28 places to pay when it used to only have 18, which is why the lines no longer stretch to the back of the store. They're not using the self checkout either, so why exactly do they feel like they're being "wronged" by their presence?

Are there bad actors out there abusing self checkout? Sure there are, the chains that obviously installed them to slash labor instead of add offsetting services like curbside pickup, bad actors like CVS, Walgreens, Michaels, the now deceased BB&B, and a few others that will try to operate with no staffed register. But the majority of stores wind up with more places to pay with shorter lines overall unless their forecasting was wrong which in this age of AI finance is not nearly as often as it was just a few years ago. If the store only has full service checklanes and normally only needs 2 cashiers on Friday afternoon until 4, but something external throws off the traffic pattern and the store gets slammed there is nothing they can do. If they have the same 2 cashiers but one is supervising 8 self checkouts then the customers have 9 places to pay instead of just 2 and everyone has a better overall experience.