Rise of the Machines: Self-service tills are taking over our high streets and you should resist their invasion

“And the human cost of this relentless tech invasion extends to the lack of interaction that many older, single and home-working people now have to endure on what can be the only chance of a daily face-to-face.”

Love them or loathe them, self-service checkouts seem here to stay, but I fear the march of the machines may have gone too far.

The past few years have seen major retailers strip out banks of manned tills in favour of their robotised alternatives. The revolution has been spreading to smaller convenience outlets, and non-food stores, with some shops offering no alternative to the self-scan checkout. Marks & Spencer, for example, has gone down this route for its busy branches at railway stations such as Haymarket and Waverley in Edinburgh.

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Advocates for this tech revolution will point to their ease of use, particularly when paying by contactless card or mobile, and note that the rollout has accelerated as a result of the pandemic, and some people’s fear of close personal contact.

Self-service checkouts are reshaping retail - for good and illSelf-service checkouts are reshaping retail - for good and ill
Self-service checkouts are reshaping retail - for good and ill | Canva/Scotsman/Getty

But do they actually speed things up? Not judging by the length of the queues seen snaking towards them, often resulting not from choice, but from a lack of manned till options. Pity the poor store worker darting between a dozen machines authorising alcohol purchases and dealing with the multiple tech gremlins.

The machine era has also seen a surge in “stock shrinkage”, in plain terms theft, as some folks simply avoid scanning certain items or walk straight through. The tech has led to more tech in the shape of multiple cameras, piercing alarms and other security measures.

Ah, but we are told that freeing staff from operating manned checkouts will improve other aspects of the store, chiefly shelf stacking. Few if any job losses will result. This is not about cost-cutting, etc, etc.

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Speak to some of the harassed workers remaining and you will find that is simply not the case. Departing and retiring colleagues are not being replaced. Indeed, it comes as little surprise to hear that almost 170,000 UK retail workers lost their jobs during 2024. The end-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research noted that around a third of all retail job losses resulted from administrations. The remainder of the jobs lost were through “rationalisation”, and I suspect a fair chunk of those will relate to the continued rollout of automated tills.

Christmas shoppers and now January Sales consumers may find automated options unavoidable.Christmas shoppers and now January Sales consumers may find automated options unavoidable.
Christmas shoppers and now January Sales consumers may find automated options unavoidable. | John Devlin

And the human cost of this relentless tech invasion extends to the lack of interaction that many older, single and home-working people now have to endure on what can be the only chance of a daily face-to-face.

Personally, I cannot stand these bleeping robotised tills, which is about all they seem to utter, along with the depressing chorus of “unexpected item in the bagging area”. I have been doing my utmost to avoid any interaction with self-service checkouts since the invasion began but fear that I may be close to raising the white flag.

On separate occasions in four major retailers in the countdown to Christmas, I was forced into joining the self-service queue as no manned alternative was available. Given my resistive stance, this then entailed having to wait at a free machine until a single stressed-out human worker was coerced into interacting with another stressed-out customer. One of those frustrating encounters even involved being sent to a customer service desk as the transaction involved cash, which our robot friend was incapable of accepting, though I was tempted to shove my tenner somewhere that would definitely have caused a few bleeps.

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I had an equally frustrating experience in the M&S food outlet within Waverley Station, which these days has no manned checkouts. After patiently queuing and requesting some intervention from the sole human overseeing his dozen or so mechanised counterparts, the single item I was purchasing refused to scan at the reduced sticker price, necessitating much button pressing and subsequent rescanning by the admittedly very apologetic and sympathetic member of staff.

Meanwhile, my local superstore in Dunfermline recently underwent an overhaul centred on “customer improvements”, which meant more self-scanning stations, of the variety that can accommodate a large trolley-load of shopping. It’s all incredibly disheartening to see nearly every big name go down this dehumanising route, even those like Aldi and Lidl that have held out for so long, and I’m not convinced there are any cost benefits, given the level of pilfering going on. Surely having a row of manned tills that every person has to pass through provides a better line of defence?

There have been some glimmers of hope for refuseniks such as myself. Morrisons recently said it may remove some self-scan tills after admitting the technology had gone a “bit too far”, while Booths, the quite posh north-of-England supermarket chain, has opted to remain predominantly human-focused.

So, while an alternative to having to do the job yourself still exists, I call on shoppers to resist, resist, resist.

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