I purchased something from WH Smiths the other day and with no other customers at the till i automatically went to pay for the purchase,the sales woman took my money and walked over to one of the self service checkouts and payed the money through the system that way.I asked the woman why and she told me that she had been told to do this by her boss.
So whats that all about?

The more people who go through the self service till the more her boss can persuade his boss to sack the staff and have nothing but automated tills in place

The attendant probably has NFI, lol

The manager of that branch of W.H. Smiths has a manager. His / her manager has a manager. They have a manager. And so on, until you get to the executive board of the company. W.H. Smiths are probably in trouble because they have an outdated business model. At the executive board of the company, the directors have said "if we could phase out as many workers as possible, it would be good for us". How can we do this? Get more electronic tills. What if there's a public backlash to people being made redundant as a result of introducing more electronic tills? What we need to ensure is that more members of the public use these tills, then we can claim that they're popular. How do we do that?

This is where your experience comes in. The manager of this branch is told to tell the staff to utilise the electronic tills whenever possible. She doesn't know why she's being told to do that, and the person who's telling her to do it probably doesn't know why.

That's my guess, anyway. I suppose the other possibility is that they've just been installed and they've been told to test them. It could be a combination of the two. But eventually retail jobs will be slashed as people are increasingly replaced by these electronic tills. They will find a way of justifying it sooner or later, indeed some retailers already have, and most people will go along with it in drone-like fashion, I'm sure.

Thanks andyh and wake_​up_​bomb

Yeah i though similar and told the lady i made a point of going to the till where she was in case it had an affect in such a way as you have both explained.The lady knew herself what was going on but i think she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't by the people above her.

humanspirit wrote:
True enough, they'd get rid of her if she didn't 'do her job as instructed'.
Its a good idea not to keep on full time staff and/or beyond 2 years because of the issues with redundancy pay.
No problem though, just get some Polish in on minimum wage and part time hours, prob solved.

There's no such thing as job security imho, not anymore.

humanspirit wrote: This is the problem, but you're always better standing up to these people. The absolute worse thing that they can do is make you redundant. They're going to do that anyway.

Who needs checkout lines?

/shivers and trembles in a corner

wake_up_bomb wrote: Yep totally agree with you wake_​up_​bomb if the lady has children then she would be doing them a favour by not carrying out the stupid policy.
Back in the day a man would stand up to these ruthless people by wearing a dress and smashing the machine to bits LOL.


Luddites

Yep, just read the whole thread, agree with all of you... so am answering to all of you.

The automatic till thingy started in aussie a few years ago... I did it a few times, just to get the hang of it... then once i knew how to do it, i went back to the queue system with all the oldies who were too daunted to try the new-fangled crappola, cos i am trying to get the staff to keep their jobs.
Every day on telly there are stories about people being laid off from their jobs... 200 bank staff here, 400 car workers there, here.. there.. everywhere... everyone is getting laid off. ... and they gubberment crap on about lazy unemployd.

This chip thing better not happen! "Have a Nice Day" yikes!

the only thing i can do is keep using people , rather than the machines, yuk!


I have confidence we will win somehow.