Rools is Rools

I’m not much of a drinker, I’ll buy an occasional bottle of my favourite brew when it takes my fancy while out shopping or a half bottle of wine to enjoy if I’ve invested in a ribeye.

Generally I will use self-checkout if the supermarket has them available. If they work well they can save a lot of time and queuing and a (sometimes long) wait while the person in front searches for their wallet or purse they forgot to get ready when they need to pay or when the card they chose is over the limit and I have to stand there feeling their embarrassment while they frantically re-offer it over and over or search for another card of scrape together enough cash.

Personally I find the the UK self-checkouts confrontational almost to the point of aggression. I suppose it’s the school teacher nuance of the computerised voice on most of them, but the worse thing about them is their blatant distrust of customers. You have to unload all your items onto a plate on one side of the screen and transfer each one past a barcode reader onto another plate which (used to) have bags ready for use. Woe betide if you put your free green bag on it at the wrong time or if you change your mind about scanning something and put it back on the weigh plate. Prepare for a long wait while a hassled assistant finishes another customer’s problem before getting to you. Generally they are friendly but not always because they are as pissed off as you are.

As some will know I live in Belgium. The self-checkouts there are much easier to use. Also they are multilingual offering, Dutch, French, German and English. There is no weighing as far as I can determine. You can scan your items direct from your trolly or from the shelf at the side of the screen past the scanner, usually hand held, into the trolly. Then you pay, but here’s the catch: your receipt has a barcode and you have to scan it on a reader at a swing gate so it opens and lets you out on the self-checking zone. 

I find this system generally hassle free (providing the swing gate works) but there is one thing common to UK and Belgian checkouts which can really piss me off and that’s if I forget I bought even just one bottle of beer. I AM OVER EIGHTEEN for fucks sake it’s bloody obvious, but I still have to wait for the assistant stab a secret button on the screen so I can get my stuff.

However, during one trip to the UK I got a nasty surprise (silly rather than nasty I suppose). At a supermarket just outside Dover I stopped to get a few bottles of IPA for my neighbour who likes British beer. It was summer, the time when students fill in for staff during the holidays. I couldn’t believe it when this polite young guy apologised, but he could not check my beer through because he was under eighteen. Of course this meant the inevitable wait for an older member of staff to arrive. I had so many questions, but I swallowed them mainly because I had a ferry to catch.

I returned to my car thinking, “what difference does it make the kid’s not gonna fucking drink it,” People passing probably wondered why I was laughing my head off as I loaded my catch into the car.