AND EVEN THE SHOP STAFF HATE THEM

A SAINSBuRY’S worker, who does not want to be named for fear of losing her job, wrote to the Mail with her take on the tills: I WORK in a small city-centre supermarket with six self-service checkouts and one assistant watching them.

When the machines were first put in, staff were told that they wouldn’t cost jobs, but several years later, I’m convinced that they have. Colleagues who have retired haven’t been replaced; others who have gone to

different stores haven’t been replaced either.

In fact, they have cut the staff down to an absolute minimum.

We all hate going on the self-scans. You have to have eyes like a hawk because you’re watching six tills and it’s really difficult to keep tabs on all of them at the same time.

A dishonest customer, for example, can tell the machine that the golden delicious apples he’s put on the scale are actually onions — the cheapest thing we sell loose — and get them for a fraction of their real price. Or they hold something like a newspaper under an arm and don’t scan it.

But if you’re helping another customer, it’s very hard to see every scam that’s pulled.

Watching the automated tills also means you’re taken off your own department, and work you’d otherwise be doing doesn’t get done.

Often that means shelves aren’t being re-stocked as efficiently as they should be, and things like fresh bread or milk or yogurt run out.

It also means that we fail the sporadic tests we are given. Every so often, a supermarket employee disguised as a shopper wanders the f l oor and checks that each department is properly stocked. And if an item is in the warehouse downstairs but not on a shelf, we get marked down.

Our annual bonus — such as it is — relies on these marks.