The end of scab tills

[AnnO'Neemus]

I like this feature but they’re taking away the scab tills with cash options, which is discriminatory towards those of us who have to use the last of our change to pay for things, without the embarrassment or inconvenience of using a manned till.
I often pay with cash and would prefer not to interact with another person to do so in certain situations

Although I noticed when my local Co-op got them, sometimes it wouldn't register all the coins I fed in, sometimes it would just swallow some up with knocking that 5p, or 1p or whatever off the total. Usually I had a few pence extra so could throw some more money in, but I vaguely recall being caught out and not having extra... I think I just walked out with my stuff with the till still saying I owed a few pence because there weren't any staff around to argue the toss with.

Anyway, some time later a friend made the point that she still went to staffed tills to help people keep their jobs, so I started avoiding scab tills. I rarely use them. Not least because it's a faff waiting for authorisation if I want to buy wine, and because I can never get through the scab tills without something failing to scan or going wrong so prefer real people tills, and because if I have a several items, I always get hit by the 'unexpected item in the bagging area' and staff having to come over.

Half the time when I attempt to use a scab till I end up picking up my items and going to a regular till anyway because of some fault or other scanning or bagging my shopping. Those tills are shit.

 

[liquidindian]

Of course, you don't have to use the term if it offends.

I don't use it for the same reason I don't call them "magical tills" or "cheese and onion tills". It wouldn't make any sense.

 

[alex_]

It's a fucking stupid term. Scabs are strikebreakers. There is no strike to break.

If you wanted to get the whole population on side, you’d call them shit tills.

They are objectively shit, they usually aren’t faster - especially if you are buying a lot of items or anything which needs approval like booze or tags removing.

 

[brogdale]

I don't use it for the same reason I don't call them "magical tills" or "cheese and onion tills". It wouldn't make any sense.

To you. I can se that because you are a compliant and willing consumer.

 

[liquidindian]

To you. I can se that because you are a compliant and willing consumer.

I tried to live off the land but it wasn't really viable in a flat.

 

[kenny g]

I doubt there's any way to enforce this. You've paid for your good, and you want to leave the shop - why do you have to show a receipt? What are they going to do if you don't? Call the police?

I wish some FOTL/SovCit types would take up this kind of thing, instead of some of the weird nonsense they choose as their last stand.

I am curious as to what the setup is at your Sainsbury's girasol. I can only imagine a train station-style turnstyle. Otherwise, what's to stop you walking past whatever barrier/check in place?

Speaking of train stations - what's the legality there? Can I hop over a train barrier to leave a station? Leaving aside the potential for getting gunned down by BTP, is there any legal way they can stop you doing this? Assume a fully paid and checked (on the train) ticket etc.

With train barriers just ask to have it opened as you want to buy a drink.

With supermarkets I have never shown a receipt. I ask security to open the gate for me and they comply. Unless they have reason to believe you have stolen something they can't in effect lock you in the premises.

 

[alex_]

With train barriers just ask to have it opened as you want to buy a drink.

With supermarkets I have never shown a receipt. I ask security to open the gate for me and they comply. Unless they have reason to believe you have stolen something they can't in effect lock you in the premises.

I just walk through the gate, there is no way after all the faffing around I’m waiting for a receipt and scanning it.

 

[brogdale]

I tried to live off the land but it wasn't really viable in a flat.

Straw man king.

 

[Orang Utan]

Does it inconvenience staff if I push the gate open? It does set off an alarm, which I guess could be annoying. But I’m usually in there in my half-hour lunch break and it’s a five minute walk from work, so I don’t have time to wait around

 

[alex_]

Does it inconvenience staff if I push the gate open? It does set off an alarm, which I guess could be annoying. But I’m usually in there in my half-hour lunch break and it’s a five minute walk from work, so I don’t have time to wait around

Probably, but you cannot really protest against them without inconveniencing staff.

 

[Pickman's model]

Does it inconvenience staff if I push the gate open? It does set off an alarm, which I guess could be annoying. But I’m usually in there in my half-hour lunch break and it’s a five minute walk from work, so I don’t have time to wait around

Does it inconvenience you if users set off alarms at work? I don't suppose they're greatly put out, tbh, any more than you are if someone's book or whatnot sets off the alarm as they depart your workplace

 

[brogdale]

What is meant by "inconveniencing staff"?

If it means that staff have to spend time on an activity that management had not expected/foreseen that would have a cost implication for the corporate retailer and that might effect a re-consideration of their ludicrous arrangement.

 

[hitmouse]

Forget tills; can you not make up your own mind about what you do or don't do and would you always follow what some organisation tell you to do?

I mean, this gets to the heart of it, and why I think Noxion was absolutely right to say neoliberalism above. Yeah, you're free to decide what tills to choose, and to argue why your individual till choice is the correct one, that's all fine; what people are objecting to is the use of a term that specifically describes an individual decision to undermine collective action in a context where no collective action is taking place. If the response to that is "it doesn't matter whether collective action is taking place or not", then I reckon that does show a bit of a worrying attitude.
And at the end of the day, yes, if I'm being asked to do/not do something because it's in the interests of retail workers, or for the sake of retail workers or whatever, I do want to know that at some point some group of retail workers have democratically made a collective decision to ask people to do/not do the thing.
Iirc, I'm sure I've seen people on here describing not voting Labour, or arguing against voting Labour, as a "scab position". I don't like that term, and I hope most people on this thread would also disagree with it, but that kind of nonsense seems inevitable if we want to go down the road of "scabbing is when someone does something I don't like".

 

[PursuedByBears]

Also, using the phrase "scab tills" marks you out as a bit of a tit

 

[hitmouse]

At the very least this thread could've been called "Scab tills' time is up".

 

[brogdale]

I mean, this gets to the heart of it, and why I think Noxion was absolutely right to say neoliberalism above. Yeah, you're free to decide what tills to choose, and to argue why your individual till choice is the correct one, that's all fine; what people are objecting to is the use of a term that specifically describes an individual decision to undermine collective action in a context where no collective action is taking place. If the response to that is "it doesn't matter whether collective action is taking place or not", then I reckon that does show a bit of a worrying attitude.
And at the end of the day, yes, if I'm being asked to do/not do something because it's in the interests of retail workers, or for the sake of retail workers or whatever, I do want to know that at some point some group of retail workers have democratically made a collective decision to ask people to do/not do the thing.
Iirc, I'm sure I've seen people on here describing not voting Labour, or arguing against voting Labour, as a "scab position". I don't like that term, and I hope most people on this thread would also disagree with it, but that kind of nonsense seems inevitable if we want to go down the road of "scabbing is when someone does something I don't like".

I think, in a sense, both Noxion and yourself are right about it being essentially neoliberal. After all, that's the corporate/retail context that is the reality we face if we are keen on eating. But to dismiss the term out of hand seems to miss the new neoliberal reality of 'consumer as producer'. If, as the shopper, I am expected to provide my unpaid labour to support the mode of accumulation favoured by the corporates but there is still the alternative of using the staffed till etc., then using the scab tills is scabbing against that 'wildcat' withdrawal of my labour.

Even if it only makes folk think about these neoliberal trends, then surely the term has some value?

 

[kenny g]

The argument that you are taking away people's jobs by using self service could equally be said about using litter bins.

 

[mentalchik]

Anyway, some time later a friend made the point that she still went to staffed tills to help people keep their jobs, so I started avoiding scab tills. I rarely use them. Not least because it's a faff waiting for authorisation if I want to buy wine, and because I can never get through the scab tills without something failing to scan or going wrong so prefer real people tills, and because if I have a several items, I always get hit by the 'unexpected item in the bagging area' and staff having to come over.

You do realise that this will in no way change anything...

 

[Orang Utan]

Does it inconvenience you if users set off alarms at work? I don't suppose they're greatly put out, tbh, any more than you are if someone's book or whatnot sets off the alarm as they depart your workplace

Not really. No one pays attention

 

[liquidindian]

Straw man king.

Using a straw is taking a job away from someone who could lift the cup to my face.

 

[brogdale]

Using a straw is taking a job away from someone who could lift the cup to my face.

QED

 

[Pickman's model]

Not really. No one pays attention

Just so

 

[brogdale]

You do realise that this will in no way change anything...

That's quite a negative comment. If enough customers behaved in such a way, there might well be a corporate re-thinking of the seemingly inevitable capital intensification of the retailing experience. Put simply, if staffed tills were done away with altogether and customers had other retailers that they could use, the shareholders would pay attention to falling sales.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Speaking of train stations - what's the legality there? Can I hop over a train barrier to leave a station? Leaving aside the potential for getting gunned down by BTP, is there any legal way they can stop you doing this? Assume a fully paid and checked (on the train) ticket etc.

we no longer have our resident expert on train ticketing here, unfortunately. you could try starting a thread on rail forums...

more seriously, i think you may be committing an offence - why would anyone with a valid ticket do that? i think any railway staff / revenue protection / BTP around would assume that someone doing that is fiddling in some way (either not having a ticket at all, or having got in to the system with a ticket from A to B but have travelled on to C) - although i think that the front line / gateline staff are not expected to get in to physical confrontations.

With train barriers just ask to have it opened as you want to buy a drink.

yes - sometimes if i'm changing trains at reading and either if i have some time to wait, or if i particularly want to go and do some shopping before getting the train home, i'll ask one of the gateline staff to let me out and in again (with most tickets, a 'break of journey' is allowed) but it's better to ask, rather than put your ticket in the barrier and hope it won't eat it.

 

[mentalchik]

That's quite a negative comment. If enough customers behaved in such a way, there might well be a corporate re-thinking of the seemingly inevitable capital intensification of the retailing experience. Put simply, if staffed tills were done away with altogether and customers had other retailers that they could use, the shareholders would pay attention to falling sales.

It's not negative it's realistic....if all the major supermarket chains go the same way what other choice will there be.....any slight fall in sales will be soaked up by the reduction in staffing bills and people will just get used to it. The younger generations coming up will not know anything else and they (in my observation) choose self service tills over manned checkouts. I have worked where i am for almost 8 years, there were self service tills here at the start, we have lost a third of our check outs already with another third going soon, home delivery and click and collect are a large slice of this shop's sales....this is a bit like people be-moaning the decline of the high street whilst not appearing to understand that if they shop online in massive numbers what did they expect to happen ?

There are already smaller, express type shops with no manned tills, Tesco and the like are experimenting with no manned checkouts at all, just hybrids and self scan and scan and go......i'm in a smaller, medium sized supermarket (one of the big three) and am quite often running services alone for the 1-2 hours of business.....services staff levels are totally related to numbers of sales so the quietest points of the day are now required to have a lot less staff.

Don't get me wrong, i understand why people don't like it but it isn't going to go back !

 

[oryx]

Interesting that Amazon closed three of its automated Amazon Fresh shops not that long after opening.

Three Amazon Fresh stores have closed in London

Is till-free shopping going out of style?

www.timeout.com

 

[Epona]

Scab till scab till scab till scab till scab till.

Hopefully that's filled my quota of annoying people who get annoyed by spurious but essentially harmless things for the weekend

 

[Epona]

I look forward to being proven wrong should USDAW ever call a strike, if they are out on the picket line with the rest of the staff then I'll take it back.

 

[Artaxerxes]

The argument that you are taking away people's jobs by using self service could equally be said about using litter bins.

"Someone will pick it up" is the attitude of people when asked why they are leaving trash around so that battles already lost

 

[hash tag]

Interesting that Amazon closed three of its automated Amazon Fresh shops not that long after opening.

Three Amazon Fresh stores have closed in London

Is till-free shopping going out of style?

www.timeout.com

I gather a few of these have also closed in the States.