'Not an amusement arcade:' Time for supermarkets to ban children from using self-serve checkouts
By Merryn Porter |
OPINION -- P?arents everywhere will tell you there is nothing like a trip to the supermarket with young kids to really feel alive.
By the time you strap them into the car, drive to the shops, wrangle them into the supermarket trolley or beg them not to run away จC and for God's sake stop touching everything จC you will already be breaking out in a sweat.
Once you have traversed the many, many aisles and listened to repeated requests for junk food, begged them to put back toys and finally complete the shop, the prize at the end used to be standing still for a few moments while a checkout operator rang up your purchases and packed them into bags.
?Then a little thing called self-serve checkouts came along and WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? Suddenly you not only had to shop AND pay for the groceries but scan and bag them yourself, while jammed into an impossibly small space and often with small people in tow.
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Now that some supermarkets are doing away with checkout operators completely and converting the few checkouts that were left จC but let's face it, rarely manned จC with new do-it-yourself versions, it seems we will soon have to contend with scanning and bagging our own groceries.
There is only one problem. A growing number of parents are hellbent on letting their children 'help' at self-serve checkouts, and I am getting very tired of it.
Now, before you start yelling at me, I am a mum myself and yes, I have let my children help me at the checkout.
But I was always mindful of taking over if things were taking too long, or if people were waiting. And it always involved us working together. Whether that meant one of us scanning items and another packing, or giving them assistance when needed to find the right product.
Lately though, ?there seems to have been an explosion in the number of children 'helping' at these checkouts, and their parents don't seem to care how long it delays those behind them.
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This week I ended up behind young children scanning items at self-serve checkouts on several occasions at various locations. While each time I have tried to be understanding, by the last experience my patience was wearing thin.
It was the end of a rather trying day during a stressful week, and I had run into a local Coles to grab a few things.
I had only recently discovered there were no manned checkouts at this store, with those remaining converted into large self-serve areas complete with conveyor belt and an area to pack your own groceries.
I opted for one that appeared to have no one waiting and a smaller amount of items on the conveyor belt, thinking it would be faster.
Oh, how I was wrong! It wasn't until I had unloaded all my groceries that I realised the mum ahead of me was allowing her two preschool-aged children to take turns scanning the groceries.
This is all fine and good, I hear you say. Childhood development and all of that. Except there wasn't a lot of scanning going on. Instead, there was arguing over whose turn it was, with long gaps between anything being scanned, raised voices and tantrums, confusion and errors, requiring a staff member to be called repeatedly.
I looked at my items and considered packing up and moving but thought it required too much effort and might seem rude.
So I told myself to be patient, checked the ends of the aisles for bargains, looked at my emails and waited.
Finally, when the last item went through I thought we were on the home straight, but apparently it was also little Johnny's job to select the payment method and use mum's credit card to pay, which seems fairly straight forward unless you are three.
Numerous attempts and cancelled transactions later and they were finally done but Mum was in no hurry to move.
I began inching closer, hoping this would prompt her to ?move on, but no. Something someone wanted urgently was in one of the shopping bags and would need to be retrieved before they could leave. Better yet, she decided, why doesn't little Johnny run back and get another one, seemingly while she waited there to put it through.
?With no sign of her moving, I couldn't take it anymore and politely asked if I could put my groceries through.
She didn't answer but stepped aside, however her shopping bags were blocking where everything is packed and weighed so I had to ask her to move them.
Somehow I wound up feeling like the bad guy as she turned to her daughter and said, "The lady is in a hurry and wants me to move."
"Yes!" I felt like screaming. "I am in a hurry. I was in a hurry 10 minutes ago and now I am in an even bigger hurry because you are treating the self-serve checkout like it belongs in an amusement arcade."
She did eventually move, and was happily holding up shoppers at another self-serve checkout when I left.
So if supermarkets insist on continuing their march towards a fully self-serve future, at least do us all a favour and ban young children from using the checkouts.
And until then, if you have young kids, purchase one of those toy checkouts and leave the actual supermarkets to the time-poor adults who just want to get their groceries as fast as possible and go home. ?
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