On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:15:51 +0000, Alan
wrote:

In message , tim....
wrote

"Andy Burns" wrote in message
news:6o2dndAKedFxPXvXnZ2dnUVZ8rVi4p2d@brightview .co.uk...
On 27/10/09 01:23, Frank Erskine wrote:

What's the alleged advantage of an automated checkout? Clearly it
does away with a humanoid (although they still need to be such around
for, say, alcohol purchases). In RL they seem to be much slower than a
checkout manned by real people.

What they need is faster humans, such as the ones in Aldi, who are
equipped with tills designed to be fast, rather than pretty.

The problem with faster scanning is that you are still held up by the 50% of
the population who insisting on bagging everything before even thinking
about getting their purse out of their handbag with which to pay.


Customers are educated to the Aldi way if they even try to bag up at the
till. In Aldi everything goes back into the trolley and after you have
paid you are free to use the bagging area/shelves to pack your goods.

Around my way each Aldi staff member serves ten customers in the time a
Tesco member of staff takes to serve one.


And the result is that the stores need far fewer staff for similar
turnover, which means lower prices for the customers.

When a customer in Aldi tries to "beat the system" and slow everyone
else down, I (and a lot of other regular Aldi shoppers) get quite
annoyed, and with good reason.

If people want to benefit from Aldi's prices, they should learn to
speed up. If they want to shop slowly, they should shop elsewhere.