Booths is a very upmarket chain which operates in a limited region of the country.<p>However I would say that with self checkout machines there are a wide range of experiences. Some self checkout machines (e.g., Waitrose or M&S) are actually pretty okay. They tend not to have the little scales that try to reduce fraud and constantly complain about “unexpected item in bagging area”. My local Tesco express is the opposite. It only has self checkouts with scales - the scales are much too small and don’t accommodate the newer style plastic bags. I hate those machines with a passion, and I feel like Tesco has utter contempt for me as a customer whenever I use them.<p>Clearly there is a trade off between customer satisfaction, fraud, and business efficiency.<p>What’s sad is how little improvement there has been in self checkouts over the past 5 or so years. They rarely deactivate the security tags on products, or do anything else useful. Many don’t even accept coupons or successfully read store loyalty cards. They also seem to be used more in stores that probably should have fewer of them. The mini tesco in a major city has people buying alcohol on nearly every other transaction, and people shoplift much more. Checkout workers would help with that. On the other hand, a bigger shop in a more rural location might be well served with “scan as you shop”, which I think is a fantastic invention.
This is a fairly obscure supermarket chain and in no way indicative of a trend moving away from self checkouts in the UK. Self checkouts are as popular as ever and some are more crap than others. This is usually down to a benign reason like price lookup latency or barcode scanning accuracy. It could also be as pedestrian as Windows running out of memory and not being rebooted regularly. Yes, supermarket checkouts use Windows.
McDonalds revamped their stores here and reduced their in store frontline staff.<p>There are kiosks but there is a dedicated staff member standing around to help people use it.<p>It is sort of defeats the purpose and it is slow as molasses and UI nightmare.<p>Also Uber is too expensive for a happy meal and I loath using the drive through.
The display and the speaker barely works so it is repeating and shouting an order 3 times before they get it right.
Great news, there are only a means for capitalist supermarket chains to cut down costs in employees.<p>Even if it is Booths, maybe it can send a signal.<p>I am regularly expecting the next level, where besides self-service, we are also expected to take goods from warehouse, full of boxes downloaded from robot delivery trucks.