I have noticed that shops are becoming all technical.
I remember the old days where a man in a brown overall cut up cheese and wrapped it in greaseproof paper. Meat was wrapped in brown paper and string from the butchers. Veggies were bought loose from the green-grocer, and tipped into your own bag.
When supermarkets first arrived, a whole new shopping experience was promised, and marketing started to appear – in-store strategies were in place, focussing on maximising each purchase through smart layout design, staff coaching, and targeted promotions. Sensory cues of bakery scents and pleasant background music made shoppers linger and buy more, some even had the comfortable sound of clucking hens where the eggs were piled up. Oh, yes, nothing was missed in pursuit of persuading us to buy more in our shopping experience.
Now countless checkout assistants are out of jobs
Self-serve tills now encourage you to scan your items yourself. I thought this a great idea initially, something fun to do, to see if I could beat the speed of the German supermarket staff who whizz items through at warp speed. Well, the first stumble is don’t put your purse or shopping bag on either side of the scanning bit – I found out the hard way that they are weight sensitive, but not clever enough to say ‘take your bag off please’, which would save endless hours of finger tapping and frustration, waiting helplessly for the staff member to notice you to sort things out. And don’t talk about the scramble to find the receipt that has the magic QR Code on it, which is the only passport to freedom through those saloon style doors to get back outside.
Then what about the automatic cash payments? A screen tells you how much you owe, and your money is snatched in through one slot, and any change gets spat out somewhere else. Gone are the days of idle chat with the cashier about the weather, or the price of a loaf of bread. This must mean the end of cash counting at the end of the day, where staff stood anxiously waiting to see if everything balanced, breathing a sigh of relief that any mistakes made wouldn’t come out of their wages at the end of the week.
Automatic Shopping
A couple of shops have gone one step further. A handheld scanner for barcodes is an option for self-serve, or using a smartphone app to scan, or just put your goodies in a big bin, and the machine knows exactly what’s there, and you don’t even have to scan it! I admit that given the choice, I will choose the line to be seen by a human, but on my first day of being confronted with the choice, a security guard noticed me, and murmured that ‘that line is quicker’, pointing to where these scanning monsters lingered, and escorted me to the first free machine, and even did it all for me, like I was some helpless old lady (well, if the cap fits, etc…), where he just stuffed it all into a carrier bag (that I paid extra for) that barely made it to the carpark before tearing.
Behind the scenes
More goes on behind the scenes too. AI, cameras and sensors can do your shopping for you in some instances, and retailers use massive transaction datasets to build powerful advertising systems for brand partners. It’s a far cry from when shopping was a personal and tactile experience.
The next step is a reality too – using an app on your phone and stuff magically turns up on your doorstep, your cards having been depleted by the money owed – a great idea if you are housebound. What more could you ask for?
Well, personally I don’t think you can beat squeezing your own melons before you buy, or sifting through the pork chops to find the leanest before purchasing. And the till experience – those that live alone may only speak to one person a day, and it would be nice if the cashier was the one - the one who made the change with a smile and exchanged a few words.