You either love them or you hate them and believe it or not the debate around self-service checkouts has been rumbling for decades now.
Self-service tills became popular in the 1990s and by 2021, there were 325,000 in operation across the UK.
However, they have been the subject of complaints with one petition calling on Tesco to “stop the replacement of people by machines”, gaining almost 250,000 signatures last year.
Last week Booths, which operates 28 stores in northern England, is believed to be the first UK supermarket to move away from using self-service tills, which have increasingly replaced manned tills in recent years.
All but two of their stores will remove their machines in favour of staff serving customers.
“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.
We want to know if you have grown fond of self-service checkouts. Do you like breezing through the supermarket without any human interaction or do you prefer the personal touch from a checkout operator?
Do you think the big chain supermarkets should follow suit and ditch their self-service machines in favour of more staff? Or is a more balanced approach between the two your preferred option?
If you want to share your opinion then add it in the comments and we’ll highlight the most insightful ones as they come in.
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