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Lost in the supermarket
If any of you have visited one of our major supermarkets recently, you might have noticed that some of them are experimenting with self-scanning, as they do every few years.
Reader Chris Harwood’s wife popped in for a few groceries last weekend. ‘She was allowed to choose what she bought but when it came to pay, she did the scanning and a staff member did the packing,’ he says.
This also means that while three staff members watched silently, the computerised system took over the job of talking to her: telling her to weigh her flowers (‘Put it on the belt’) and demanding to see her cheese again.
Undoubtedly an innovative system, but we wonder – as does Chris – if this allocation of tasks best suits the skills of the three parties involved. Perhaps having the staff trained to scan and talk would help.
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