Stephen McGinty: They also serve who stand and wait

When my local branch of Morrisons introduced the self check out, they did so in a rather sneaky manner. As a customer, one (are you permitted to use "one" outside of Waitrose?) is usually greeted by at least two to three of the ten tills in full operation, allowing one (yes, you are) to make that crucial calculation between old biddy with the half empty trolley but the dexterity of a badly oiled suit of armour and the limber family with the heaving trolley, as to which qu

After you have made your choice, and spent approximately five minutes, according to the most recent research, regretting it and covetously eyeing up the other one which is now shuttling trolleys through like luges at the Winter Olympics, a member of the human race asks you if you would like a hand packing and, unless you are a complete cretin, or said old biddy, you say: "No thank you" and fumble with the unopenable plastic bags or your own coarse-grain shopping satchel.

Now, on this particular morning, there was no such choice, just one till open with an ever-growing queue. There was, however, a member of staff ushering customers towards the new self-service check out. Did I wish to try it? No, I replied, rather than serve myself while you watch, I preferred the old system in which she served me and I watched, could she oblige? She smiled, but sadly no. Her new role was that of oversee-er, we, the customers, were the new staff now. On that morning I pondered when we, the customers, would soon be required to stack the shelves, round up the trolleys or even Tarmac the car park, all for a few more loyalty points and a greater claim to self-sufficiency. Would our own employers accept, as a legitimate excuse, the fact that we have innocently popped in for a pint of milk on the way to work only to find ourselves dragooned into an eight-hour shift loading pallets of Robert Wiseman's finest? So my first response to shopping's Brave New World was to ponder the words of Bartleby the Schrivener: "I would prefer not." I was stubborn, over-the-top, conservative, I had contempt prior to investigation, as it is known. However, today I'm not so much trapped in a love/hate relationship as a sadomasochistic one with she who must be obeyed. Forget HAL, each of our supermarket chains are being taken over by HER.

Anyone who has used these machines will know who I mean by HER, the automated lady who keeps a running commentary on every transaction and, at the slightest hesitation announces your public incompetence with the words: "Please Wait: The Assistant is Coming".Only on a few occasions have I managed to negotiate these machines without HER calling in fleshy support. They should introduce a loyalty card and for every ten successful self-service shops in which you do not require The Assistant to come calling you get a 30-second free grab and an actual person to total up your booty. Except no-one would ever win, for even those smug early adopters who view the system as the latest staging post on the road to an automated nirvana will reach nine perfect passes before being struck down by an impatient machine and an unopenable plastic bag. I remember thinking how do the checkout girls keep their cool when a queue backs up and the system jams, and now I am that "checkout girl" frantically fiddling with a tin of tomatoes like its a Rubick's cube, trying to find the barcode and making nervous smiles towards the queue behind. I know the computer is polite and says things like: "Please scan the bar code or select an item" and "please put the item in the bag" but when customers are frazzled it does take on the persona of the serial killer Jamie Gum in Silence of the Lambs and we're the trapped senator's daughter, stripped of our humanity and identity and being told: "it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose". Or is that an over reaction?

The man behind the largest shopping innovation since the 1950s would say: "Yes it is." Dr Howard Schneider devised the computer system in his garage in Montreal in 1991 and by the following year his self check out "robot" was operating in the Price Chopper supermarket in New York. It first arrived in Britain in 2002 and by this year there will be 15,000 of them across Britain. The appeal for supermarkets is simple: they require less space and manpower than the current long line of tills with six self-service tills fitted in to the same space as two old tills and now looked after by one member of staff. The argument is that, instead of cutting back on staff, management can then direct them to other tasks. However when you consider that there are now Tesco Express's which only offer self-service tills, in the long run it must mean job losses.

So what do we, the consumer or "voluntary check-out staff" actually think of them? Well, according to a new report published this week 57 per cent of shoppers would rather put there own shopping through the till, especially if it contains "embarrassing products" such as condoms, lubricants or the greatest hits of Daniel O'Donnell. In comparison, a report last year said 48 per cent of shoppers think they are a "nightmare" with the most common complaint being that items do not scan properly and that they can't use their own bags. I must say that since I started using them my one contribution to holding back global warming - a worn shopping bag - has been ditched on the grounds that it always seems to require recalibration by the staff while using the plastic bags is easier.So why, given my rant, use them at all? Well, if you do have only a few items they can, on occasion, be easier and more convenient. The socially maladjusted who previously prefered to keep their ipod earplugs in, so as to screen our the check out operators inane banter need no longer fear any unnecessary conversations. But they do require a certain temperament. The shop workers union, Usdaw has for the first time identified "self-service till rage" as the driving force behind 3 per cent of all cases of staff abuse.

Yet one of the most interesting points is that while you would assume that the introduction of self-service tills would reduce waiting time it has actually increased at Tesco and Sainsbury's As for those who view them as an opportunity for a five-fingered discount, forget it. One enterprising chap in America switched the price tags on a $4.99 DVD with that of a flat-screen television then tried to scan it. HER told him: "Please Wait the Assistant is Coming". Along with the police.