SELF SERVE in Canberra

Pirate_Biggles said :

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

A very good point! I like shopping at Aldi. Yes, I pack my own groceries but you do that at almost every other place too. Costco is also incredibly quick.

LegalNut said :

Pirate_Biggles said :

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

Yes ALDI is faster but that is because their model is to make the customer do half the work. I happen to like it but I know a lot of people who hate the fact that the items at ALDI are just batted across the scanner as fast as is humanly possible. As I understand from people who work there, the target is to scan 600 to 800 items per hour at ALDI compared to about 200 in a traditional supermarket where things get bagged one by one.

I love ALDI because it reminds me of shopping in the 80s. Every supermarket i went to when i was a kid served you like this, we used to have to help mum bag the groceries ( in a roll of plastic bags they provided to you HAHA). What else i like about ALDI is that the staff don’t talk to you, i hate woolies and the way they train the kids to ask you stuff about your day – i don’t buy groceries to have a chat to strangers.

Self serve may be the greatest idea that the retail industry has ever come up with. For most of us, it’s quick, easy & involves no awkward small talk.

I sympathize with your son, Op. I suggest he hits up any of the major shopping malls around Canberra. There’s definitely no shortage of casual retail jobs. Especially heading into the Xmas period, where most stores are looking to bulk up their rosters.

As for self serve, you’re probably better off embracing it. It’s only going to grow & will eventually become common practice among major retail chains.

Pirate_Biggles said :

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

Aldi works because they scan but make people go off to pack their own bags. It always annoyed me when someone would read a magazine or stand there gormlessly instead of assisting in the process of bagging their shopping. If they tried that at Aldi they’d be picking up their groceries off the floor.

It’s one of the many reasons we shop at Aldi.

Pirate_Biggles said :

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

If I recall correctly there have been and Aldi is quite quick. All comes down to the process and the staff quality.

(According to something I once read, the German parent company was actually a late adopted of scanning items, the staff had to memorise product codes!)

Very robust check out procedures, high level of staff training and performance, and a number of measures to reduce staff fatigue. German innovation!

Pirate_Biggles said :

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

Yes ALDI is faster but that is because their model is to make the customer do half the work. I happen to like it but I know a lot of people who hate the fact that the items at ALDI are just batted across the scanner as fast as is humanly possible. As I understand from people who work there, the target is to scan 600 to 800 items per hour at ALDI compared to about 200 in a traditional supermarket where things get bagged one by one.

Reading the comments, it’s interesting to see that ALDI is not mentioned at all.
I find the checkout queues at ALDI some of the fastest around, and they are manned.
I wonder if anybody has timing data on this kind of thing?

I tell you what is even better than self serve checkouts, is self serve and pay at pump petrol. It just annoys me I can only use the woolies card to use the wooolies pay at the pump. Years ago you could use any card from memory, then it went away and came back to force you into using their card. Which they have for me….. bugger. Although I’m in and out of servos a lot quicker than those who queue for the only person inside to serve everyone.

Although, I won’t be going back to the Kambah one after hours. I put my card to the reader typed my pin in only to hear a booming voice tell me to come and pay inside. WHY? i was paying at the pump with a card, ie prepaying…. That servo must have a fair bit of free petrol go missing.

NoImRight said :

So how do those agin this get their petrol? I had the misfortune to work in a servo some years ago as it changed from full service to self serve. Quite a number of Angry of Narrabundahs proclaimed it spelt the end of the servo (it didnt) and they would take their business elsewhere. Just wondering if these are the same people?

I’ve switched to shopping at markets like Belconnen because I’ve had enough of the cost-cutting measure taken by Coles and Woolies, not to mention the fact that they have been phasing out brands I like to make room for their own brands (which often taste crap).

I don’t care that sometimes it costs me a little more (much of the time it doesn’t though). I’d rather buy from the markets where I get to served.

I’m with the OP and it has nothing to do with being old or not liking change etc.

Self serve at Supabarn and Big W in Civic is lose:lose in both cases. At Big W you will have 30 odd people in each line and have to pick whether the 1 or 2 human operators are going to be quicker than waiting for the 1 in 3 people who have some kind of problem with the machine.

Supabarn is worse – you can’t buy booze through self-serve and picking fruit and vegies is a nightmare. Terrible user interface. In both cases the computer systems are so slow, presumably to match the Canberra Centre’s parking machines…

I totally accept we’re all being trained and soon these systems will be absolutely everywhere.

So how do those agin this get their petrol? I had the misfortune to work in a servo some years ago as it changed from full service to self serve. Quite a number of Angry of Narrabundahs proclaimed it spelt the end of the servo (it didnt) and they would take their business elsewhere. Just wondering if these are the same people?

Hosinator said :

In 10 to 20 years, you may be sitting in a plane being flown by someone sitting in a control room thousands of km away. You may have one pilot on board for “safety” reasons, just to make passengers feel comfortable but they won’t be doing any of the work on board.

Now that sounds like a good job, being a token plane pilot :D.

I like self-serve for when I just wanna grab a basket load of some munchies and maybe ingredients for the evening’s dinner, but I do prefer having the work done for me on a manned register, especially if I’m buying a trolley load of groceries.

The one thing I cannot stand about self-serve is when you end up with a chorus of obnoxious robot voices jabbering on about ‘Everyday rewards cards’ at intermittent intervals.

I like how there’s always a fat chick standing there to make sure your not pinching anything when they could be doing something usefull like serving customers at a check out! Self serv eats dick

zander said :

^ Its the first thing it asks you for at coles once you start scanning. Not sure about woolies because I stopped going there when they stopped accepting Visa debit cards.

Woolies have recently started accepting Visa debit again. It appears they are gradually rolling it out to all stores.

I guess you never had to queue for an hour at Dickson Woolies in the bad, old days before self check-out then… :\

I just wish the check out folk at some of these shops would enforce the 12 items or less a bit more. I think its pretty selfish if people take a trolley load of stuff through the express lane while there are 3 people with 3 items each behind them. And of course, the poor kid at the desk doesn’t want to say anything to them.

G-Fresh said :

Self Serve doesn’t ask you for a fly buys card. Or an everyday rewards card.

Yes it does. At least at Woolies. As you’re finalising everything, it will prompt you to scan your everyday rewards card.

Henry82 said :

c_c said :

Big difference to Woolies then. Bought a pack of batteries the other day (Woolies always security tags them and has never disarmed them, nor had the ability to at checkouts). Paid, beeped on the way out, waited for a minute, no one came over and the staff member near by didn’t even look.

The alarm going off doesn’t qualify as a reason to detain someone for theft.

i don’t believe that was the issue – the thing is, if there had been theft, the staff, who are provide with an alert mechanism to monitor for it, disregard this device and allow free access to such criminal behaviour. in short, the staff should at least have responded to the alarm – the purchaser could then have presented their authority to continue on their way (their receipt) and life languishes back to it doldrums once more…

RAARR
^ See what I did there? It’s a Dinosaur.

Seriously give it 10 years and your local Wollies is going to be stocked by robots and all items will have RFID chips with no checkout person in the end.

some people are just can’t manage change.

I save $$ every time I use the self-scanners. If the item dosen’t scan on the second swipe, it goes straight in the bag. I’m not a trained checkout operator… how do I know?

Brianna said :

I know how to use them and when they first appeared, I did use them. I’m just a tad stubborn in the fact that I would like a person to serve me.

Good lord, i was starting to think the OP and I were the only ones…

Duffbowl said :

I’d love to see what their loss rates are like. We’re all honest when we think we’ll get caught…

Ditto. Am surprised theft & substitution isn’t happening more. Along the lines of “Transformation Man”. Oh yes folks we’ve discussed this plague before.

c_c said :

Big difference to Woolies then. Bought a pack of batteries the other day (Woolies always security tags them and has never disarmed them, nor had the ability to at checkouts). Paid, beeped on the way out, waited for a minute, no one came over and the staff member near by didn’t even look.

The alarm going off doesn’t qualify as a reason to detain someone for theft.

I hate self serve. The big retailers expect us to do their work for them, next they’ll be charging us for the “customer convenience” of scanning and packing our goods.

^ Its the first thing it asks you for at coles once you start scanning. Not sure about woolies because I stopped going there when they stopped accepting Visa debit cards.

Self Serve doesn’t ask you for a fly buys card. Or an everyday rewards card.

Its not Woolworths responsibilty to solve unemployment issues. Self serve is faster and easier. You can find work if you really want to. Both my kids managed too. They were prepared to do whatever work they could get and found work virtually straight out of school. Not work they wanted but it got them started.

Self serve is a way Woolworths can keep prices down (not saying they do but its a possibilty) so I dont feel the need to pay more just to feel good because they are employing extra staff they dont need. I imagine Woolworths shareholders would agree.

thatsnotme said :

I like the idea of scanning items into the trolley, and then paying on the way out. How does that work with fruit and veg sold by the kilo though?

You weigh and get a barcodes sticker you scan. Bit like the good old days.

This is the way of the future, I prefer to use Self-Serve myself.

It is unfortunate that it will mean less checkout positions in these stores, but technology will replace a lot of jobs we have taken for granted in the past.

^^^

Funnily enough a conversation at a Grand Final party on the weekend convinced me that self-service checkout users do get a discount – if they take matters into their own hands!!

I was mentioning that when in a rush I accidentally hit lemons instead of limes and with the supervisor helping out an old lady with some problem and no ability to remedy the mistake myself, I simply paid and left.

Another person at the party said they’d done exactly the same with limes – though deliberately! And one more chimed in saying that they pulled their truss tomatoes into individual ones and weighed them as cheaper tomatoes.

Was quite amazed since I consider the people to be honest and are earning decent wages.

I refuse to use the self serve checkouts. I don’t get a discount for serving myself, so I’ll make sure someone else who is getting paid does the work for me.

I love self serve, but at least at the Woolies at Kippax, they sure as hell don’t result in shorter lines – you can easily be behind a dozen or more people. It doesn’t help that their machines are so unreliable – it’s extremely rare for all the machines to be both operating, and also accepting all payment forms. Hand written signs saying ‘EFTPOS only – no cash in or out’ are very common.

I like the idea of scanning items into the trolley, and then paying on the way out. How does that work with fruit and veg sold by the kilo though?

buzz819 said :

c_c said :

leneuromancer said :

nothing worse than those who can’t ‘figure it out, or those who insist on taking the whole weekly-shop-trolley through them

As I said in my post above, Woolies is bringing out a smartphone function that allows you to scan each item as you place it in the trolley, and then add the total up when finished. That produces a unique 3D barcode that you scan at the self-serve checkout.

So hopefully those who choose to do that won’t be an issue in time.

There’s also some experiments out there with NFC on products.

Cause that’s not going to increase the shrinkage due to shoplifting or anything.

Have used a similar system in Holland. At this particular supermarket you have a handheld scanner and scan as you go, then when you get to the checkout you dock the scanner and pay. To prevent theft they have random searches and I have no doubt other hidden systems.

As for the issue of trolleys through self service in the UK they have self serve belt registers for trolleys. They are long enough to load a shopping trolley full up on the belt , scan and then feed down a belt into a loading area capable of holding two loads of shopping. So you direct your shopping to one side then when your loading the next person directs to the other side.

Thats interesting, last time i was served at Big W, it was by an older, fatter, ugly older person (pretty sure it was c_c). Not a pubescent teeneager to be seen.

c_c said :

leneuromancer said :

nothing worse than those who can’t ‘figure it out, or those who insist on taking the whole weekly-shop-trolley through them

As I said in my post above, Woolies is bringing out a smartphone function that allows you to scan each item as you place it in the trolley, and then add the total up when finished. That produces a unique 3D barcode that you scan at the self-serve checkout.

So hopefully those who choose to do that won’t be an issue in time.

There’s also some experiments out there with NFC on products.

Cause that’s not going to increase the shrinkage due to shoplifting or anything.

There’s one thing I agree with here and that is, the self serve registers should only be for hand baskets, not for trolleys. It is most frustrating when you are in a hurry and the self serve is full of people trying to do their monthly shop, whilst those who aren’t have the machine blaring at them because they have either 1) run out of money and become EFTPOS only, 2) do not recognize the bar code and don’t give you the option of typing it in, 3) haven’t got the fruit item in the alphabetized menu [ ie. why would you advertise something as “seedless watermelon”, then have it listed as not “watermelon”, not “seedless watermelon”, but under M for “melon, water, seedless??], 4) require staff to verify signature for credit card purchase, 5) won’t let you go back and cancel an item that scanned twice or 6) “incorrect item in packing area, please replace item”.
All these things, sometimes occurring simultaneously on several machines, whilst the one staff member looking after them has been re-called to the cigarette counter. No wonder the queue extends half way to the deli.
I have to say one thing though, how about putting these things in fast food outlets. Maybe it wouldn’t take 20 minutes for the pimply faced teenager to take and process one order while you stand there, stomach grumbling, wishing someone would give the poor kid some sugar or caffeine. Honestly, fast food has never been so slow.

Is your real name Sylvia? And are you my grandma? You sound exactly like my 85 year old grandma. But it’s good that they teach the oldies to use these new fangled computer machines these days.

My review of the woolies website reveals that there are many jobs waiting to be filled in most woolies stores across Canberra, so your assumption that the introduction of self serve checkouts have somehow put all checkout chicks out of work seems to be you making excuses as to why your darling child cannot find a job. Judging by your post, you may have passed on you bad negative attitude on to such offspring and I’m pretty sure answering the interview questions at woolies with “those new fangled self serve checkouts are the devil reincarnated who will rise with the rest of the machines of the world against us humans to plot world domination and dance on the graves of the greedy executive and overall I don’t like them” will not get him the job.

Self serve checkouts are great.. Normally short lines and short waits to get through. I can scan and pack quicker than any operator, with a basket or a small trolley. Although its getting to the point when he pack mentality is taking over where there will be a line at the self serve and none at the other registers, it always pays to check all the lanes. But I have no problems with letting other stupid people wait.

tommy said :

Henry82 said :

Self serve is fine, provided they’ve been programmed properly. Whoever programmed/designed the system at BigW is an idiot.

Hah. Big W is fine really. Try the self service at Supabarn in the Canberra Centre. They have all the anti-fraud stuff turned on high for sure – ie speck of dust hits scanned items plate and you have to wait until the supervisor clears it. Scan two of the same item twice but don’t put it onto the scanned items plate and you have to wait again…

Big difference to Woolies then. Bought a pack of batteries the other day (Woolies always security tags them and has never disarmed them, nor had the ability to at checkouts). Paid, beeped on the way out, waited for a minute, no one came over and the staff member near by didn’t even look.

Henry82 said :

Self serve is fine, provided they’ve been programmed properly. Whoever programmed/designed the system at BigW is an idiot.

Hah. Big W is fine really. Try the self service at Supabarn in the Canberra Centre. They have all the anti-fraud stuff turned on high for sure – ie speck of dust hits scanned items plate and you have to wait until the supervisor clears it. Scan two of the same item twice but don’t put it onto the scanned items plate and you have to wait again…

Henry82 said :

Self serve is fine, provided they’ve been programmed properly. Whoever programmed/designed the system at BigW is an idiot.

My oath, they suck. Woolies ones are weird too. Coles ones are good, pretty much teh same as the ones they’ve been using in the US for years and years. Masters are annoying as some kiddie tries to show you how to use it.

Self serve is fine, provided they’ve been programmed properly. Whoever programmed/designed the system at BigW is an idiot.

Hosinator said :

Get used to it. The supermarkets are looking at cost cutting where they can. Checkout operators at Coles and Woolies will be a thing of the past in the next 5 years.
In 10 to 20 years, you may be sitting in a plane being flown by someone sitting in a control room thousands of km away. You may have one pilot on board for “safety” reasons, just to make passengers feel comfortable but they won’t be doing any of the work on board.
Also if you have money invested in commercial shopping centre real estate, sell it, sell it now.

Job automation by computers and robots has been around for a while, but mainly in factories. It’s now starting to pervade into everyday life.

A quote I once heard: “The cockpit of the future will not be crewed by two pilots, but by one person and one dog.

The dog is there to bite the person, if they try to touch any controls.

The person is there to feed the dog.”

don’t go to Masters – that’s all they have, unless u need to use the service desk.

On a slight tangent, I visited the fancy new Apple store in the Canberra Centre. You can pick any item off the shelf less than $100 and buy it “online” using an IOS App. Then walk out the store no questions asked (well sort of – http://www.macworld.com.au/news/teenager-caught-out-by-apple-stores-easypay-69997/).

I guess it’s clever in that Apple can fill the store people humans selling expensive stuff or solving people’s problems (mostly it was solving people’s problems). Leave the cheap stuff to the app.

Anyway, if you have kids and need 30 mins break, take them there, there’s a bunch of ipads set aside for kids with pre-loaded kids apps. Sip a coffee and browse the web on your android phone.

At least by using self-service I can ensure that my bread is going to arrive home in the same shape in which it was put into my shopping trolley and that it won’t be tainted by the scent of fabric softener. I often think that checkout operators have never done a weekly shop for household goods themselves.

gospeedygo said :

You’d think people could see that trolleys/trolley loads simply don’t fit in the space provided and could tell by the contemptuous glares of the people still waiting in line that its not on but I guess I’m over estimating the general public.

Or underestimating how much the average Canberra thinks it’s all about them.

I’d love to see what their loss rates are like. We’re all honest when we think we’ll get caught…

leneuromancer said :

reepy said :

I for one am glad the OP leaves the self service register free for the rest of us

+1

nothing worse than those who can’t ‘figure it out, or those who insist on taking the whole weekly-shop-trolley through them

can we get a candidate to campaign on a self-serve licencing scheme (for customers that is)

I know how to use them and when they first appeared, I did use them. I’m just a tad stubborn in the fact that I would like a person to serve me.

Get used to it. The supermarkets are looking at cost cutting where they can. Checkout operators at Coles and Woolies will be a thing of the past in the next 5 years.
In 10 to 20 years, you may be sitting in a plane being flown by someone sitting in a control room thousands of km away. You may have one pilot on board for “safety” reasons, just to make passengers feel comfortable but they won’t be doing any of the work on board.
Also if you have money invested in commercial shopping centre real estate, sell it, sell it now.

Job automation by computers and robots has been around for a while, but mainly in factories. It’s now starting to pervade into everyday life.

I like self serve.

Human interaction sucks.

(This comes from someone who spent too much time as a slow dimwitted teenager either behind a cash register, or even…working a shift on self-serve)

But, uh, remind me not to buy nuts and bolts at masters..

puggy said :

Madam Cholet said :

I bought 16 nuts and bolts. There is no “multiplier” function so I had to scan every single bolt individually (which did have tags attached) and every single nut, which don’t have a barcode. That was F-U-N fun!

This.

Self serve makes sense, but at a hardware store where you might buy many of one item, the inability to enter a quantity for an item is stupid. At Masters, you can wander down to the service desk and have them process the transaction normally, which is fine unless they’re busy sorting out refunds or returns.

And they don’t have Paywave 🙁

We self-scan large trolley-loads. It’s 40-50km home from the supermarket depending on where we’ve been shopping, and we like to make sure that things are packed efficiently and without squashing in the bags that we’ve brought ourselves*, including the cool bags for all meat, fruit, veg, dairy and frozen stuff. Packing makes a difference for transporting food that length of journey.

Check-out chicks and chaps don’t tend to look ahead and plan what’s going where. They have limits on how much they pack into one bag because of manual handling requirements*.

We do try to be efficient and not take too much time. We know that others are waiting but there are several self-serve checkouts for one queue; I feel under more pressure when we use a ‘normal’ checkout and the rest of the queue is waiting for us.

I’d love to be able to scan as I go. I remember it being trialled by Sainsbury in the UK over ten years ago. You had to register and they rescanned a certain percentage randomly. It wouldn’t use the weight checking that doesn’t let you scan one item until you’ve deposited the next into the bag.

*We often shop in NSW so could accept giveaway bags, but I’m sure they’re breeding at home and they result in even less being put in the bag because they’re so flimsy.

The fact is that they are (in most cases) easier and faster to use than the manual operator. This means that it is quicker to get through the shop and I like that.

Unfortunately for your son, any opportunity that can be found to automate menial jobs is going to be taken because there is no reason to hire unreliable humans when reliable computers will do it for you.

leneuromancer said :

nothing worse than those who can’t ‘figure it out, or those who insist on taking the whole weekly-shop-trolley through them

As I said in my post above, Woolies is bringing out a smartphone function that allows you to scan each item as you place it in the trolley, and then add the total up when finished. That produces a unique 3D barcode that you scan at the self-serve checkout.

So hopefully those who choose to do that won’t be an issue in time.

There’s also some experiments out there with NFC on products.

tr0jan said :

….several occasions lately I have been waiting with at least 5 people ahead of me with trolley loads of food to scan. I think like the express lanes there should be an item limit on the Self Service, and if you exceed it then move to a normal lane.

Wow, that is pretty shameless. You’d think people could see that trolleys/trolley loads simply don’t fit in the space provided and could tell by the contemptuous glares of the people still waiting in line that its not on but I guess I’m over estimating the general public.

And here I was starting to feel guilty that I love self serve – until I saw the other comments.

;o)

Woolworths wasn’t putting on enough checkout staff even before the self serve units arrived. Both Weston and Tuggeranong always seemed to be understaffed when I shopped there – bye bye Woolies, hello Coles after that.

reepy said :

I for one am glad the OP leaves the self service register free for the rest of us

+1

nothing worse than those who can’t ‘figure it out, or those who insist on taking the whole weekly-shop-trolley through them

can we get a candidate to campaign on a self-serve licencing scheme (for customers that is)

I don’t want to startle you, but they also have radio with moving pictures now.

Agreed, I am also a big fan of the Self Service, though only in theory it is faster. The truth is if you have a queue of people with trolley loads of items it is not fast at all. On several occasions lately I have been waiting with at least 5 people ahead of me with trolley loads of food to scan. I think like the express lanes there should be an item limit on the Self Service, and if you exceed it then move to a normal lane. I also think that the speed of the self service line is dependant on who is doing the scanning, not a problem for the tech savvy Gen Y’s.. its a much slower process for anyone who is a geezer.

I love self-serve. It makes me feel like i’m really doing something worthwhile with my life. Well, until I have to buy nuts and bolts at Masters, I suppose.

I for one am glad the OP leaves the self service register free for the rest of us. I like them so much it annoys me when shops don’t have them (*cough* Lanyon).

Madam Cholet said :

…only to find the queue snacking back to the other side of the shop…

Well you can go without food only for so long and sometimes, it takes a very long time.

The OP should visit Masters. There are nothing but self serve checkouts. I bought 16 nuts and bolts. There is no “multiplier” function so I had to scan every single bolt individually (which did have tags attached) and every single nut, which don’t have a barcode. That was F-U-N fun!

Prior to our Woolies having self service check outs added it was highly frustrating to pop into the supermarket after work to grab a couple of things, only to find the queue snacking back to the other side of the shop with the people on the registers also required to serve those who want cigarettes on the other side of the counter. The self service area has relieved that problem a lot.

I do take your point about less work, but I have had conversations with frustrated over worked supervisors at Woolies who will tell you that staff regularly fail to turn up for shifts. For them you’d have to think that self serve is a god-send.

Hmm, while I agree that they shouldn’t be an excuse not to put an appropriate number of staff on the manned tills, the self-serve checkouts are very useful at peak times when most of the regular checkouts ARE manned already and they still can’t cope with the number of customers (a regular occurrence at Dickson Woolies).

Personally I quite like them and can see them completely replacing at least the express lane checkouts in the future. If I have a whole trolley full of stuff I’ll use the standard checkouts as normal, but if I’m just buying a couple of things, the self-serve checkouts are much quicker than the normal checkouts (even the express/12 items or less ones).

That’s it, let it all out.

As someone who really, really, really hates waiting in line, I love self serve registers. There’s usually no line for them, or if there is, it’s usually way shorter than the staffed registers.

That said, I don’t often have more than a basket worth of stuff, and appreciate staffed registers are much better if you have a trolley load of gear.

I love self serve!

Precisely because I don’t need to put up with a slow, slow witted teenager who takes forever to do their simple task, often while scratching his/her pimples, and then half the time manages to stuff something up.

Self-serve, I’m in and out in no time.

Woolies is now rolling out an iPhone app where you scan each item as you put it in the trolley around the store and then scan the phone at the self-serve checkout, making it even faster!

Bring on more of it I say.