Butterfield wrote:

Quote :

[Northern]Supermarket chain Booths is axing almost all self-service tills in its stores in what it says is a response to customer demand.

The firm, which has 16 stores in Lancashire as well as outlets in Yorkshire and Cheshire, said the policy was driven by customer feedback.

Booths is believed to be the first UK supermarket to move away from using self-service tills, which have become increasingly common in recent years.

"We believe colleagues serving customers delivers a better customer experience and therefore we have taken the decision to remove self-checkouts in the majority of our stores," the company said.

Speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, Booths managing director Nigel Murray, said: "Our customers have told us this over time, that the self-scan machines that we've got in our stores they can be slow, they can be unreliable, they're obviously impersonal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67373472


More of this please. I hate self-service checkouts. They're okay for one or two items but make me anxious when it's more than that, telling you off for doing the wrong thing or locks up, has a red flashing light and calls a member of staff over like you've done something naughty. So frustrating.

I don’t give a toss about feeling naughty. I know I haven’t been. I just stand there shamelessly, with a look of resignation or withering disgust depending on my mood.

What I hate is having to place one item at a time in the bagging area, but not in the bag, because that seems to result in super sensitive responses from the machine. So once everything has been put through and paid for, then I start the bagging process. It all takes at least double the time of a manned checkout.

I also hate the ones with cameras that reflect back to you, in order to show how hideous you look while harassed under supermarket strip lighting. Record me, fine, whatever - but I don’t want to see it.

I love them, it's like playing shops. I hate it when there's only staffed tills.

My mum was watching that news item yesterday and I thought it was about Boots the chemist. I did wonder why the spokesperson was being so opinionated and pandering to the technofear crowd.

Luckily I hardly ever go in Booths, though there is one on the A65-A59 traverse which has much-needed toilet facilities.

Worse than machine only supermarket checkouts are the clothing store ones. Where you now have to remove the tag yourself after fitting it the correct way in a detagging device which only releases with certain pressure and angles, after a certain point in the paying process, and if you miss your chance you have to repeat some steps.

In Stradivarius, Zara, etc, it’s increasingly impossible to find any human to do anything for you at all. I was almost in tears of frustration the other day when trying to buy a few items. Then I felt my age because a couple of random teenage girls at the next till took pity on me and did it for me, which was almost worse than any other part of it.

I’m not comfortable with the idea that they probably thought ‘poor old thing, she’s our mothers age so we should help her to be kind’. It’s like the 2023 version of escorting a pensioner across the road. They might’ve even spoken about it pityingly afterwards - ‘well, she was swearing at the machine like a mad person, so we had to step in’.

What I have noticed is that different Poundland stores have the bagging area on different sides of the machine, which causes endless confusion.

Also, if you tell the machine you've brought your own bag, it can't cope with the information and summons a member of staff to deal with you.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

Also, if you tell the machine you've brought your own bag, it can't cope with the information and summons a member of staff to deal with you.

Yes, that too. Although it happens to me so infrequently because I hardly ever remember to take my own bags in the first place.

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Plane forced to return to airport after horse escapes on board

https://news.sky.com/story/plane-forced-to-return-to-airport-after-horse-gets-loose-on-board-13008688

Quote :

it then dumped around 20 tonnes of fuel over the Atlantic

The horse did?

It seems the top of Blackpool Tower is on fire!

Some people don't believe it's fire. There does seem to be a lack of smoke.

Seems the fire engine people - and the BBC - are taking it seriously.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-67835079

I hope it doesn't burn down.

It seems that it was a loose piece of orange tarpaulin flapping in the wind.

We've been fooled by Twitter.

That was a real let down. There hasn’t been a good landmark fire since Notre Dame.

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A note with slurs about Birmingham people that was stuck to a house in mid Wales is being treated as a hate crime.

Dyfed-Powys Police said it was put up on a property in Iorwerth Avenue, Aberystwyth, on Monday night.




It claims what it called "low-life" from the Midlands had ruined the area, urging them to go back to "Brummyland".

It called the West Midlands accent "vomit-inducing" and urged the occupant to "take a few thousand" other people back with them.

The note read: "Iorwerth Ave was once a nice, quiet, pleasant residential area until a load of [people] from the Midlands hit.

"Low-life like you should be forced to live in fenced in sites, preferably back where you came from."

The note continued: "Why don't you take your clapped out crappy boats, jeeps, cars and your hideous vomit-inducing accents back to Brummyland."

A Dyfed-Powys Police spokesperson said: "An offensive note was left outside a property that has caused distress to the occupants.

"The note was left just after 19:00 GMT on the evening of 8 January. Officers would like to speak with the individual who left the note."

Police appealed for anyone with information relating to the note to contact the force.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67935426