Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I mean, what? Loneliness is a bit more than not being able to talk to someone on the till in Tesco's. We should go further and abolish "faceless" supermarkets, and revive the small shops. Extra tax breaks for real old schoolers where one person serves you on the till, and someone else retrieves items off the shelf for you.

Or we could fund social services better, all of us?

Blame someone else for the problem you caused.
Suggest something unworkable and cheap to fix it.
Kick the can down the road.
Get the rightwing media to applaud your success.


It's the Tory way.

I don't know if the writer is Tory. Probably just someone with a bee in his bonnet about self-service check outs.

In Boots in Great Malvern the other day, we could have done with a few of them. Staffing levels were actually OK, and the staff were good, but they kept having to leave the till and retrieve expensive items from out the back (to be shoplifter proof). I'd have liked a bit of "No dummy boxes, Sir? Come and pay here straight away".

I'm sure Boots know their business, just that it's possible to miss self-service tills when they aren't there.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 4:48 pm We should go further and abolish "faceless" supermarkets, and revive the small shops. Extra tax breaks for real old schoolers where one person serves you on the till, and someone else retrieves items off the shelf for you.

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, apologies if it is.
Supermarkets exist because they are cheap and convenient.
Who exactly is it who wants their grocery shopping to be more expensive and time consuming and how many of them are there?

It was sarcasm, apol.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 5:00 pm I don't know if the writer is Tory. Probably just someone with a bee in his bonnet about self-service check outs.

I think that they are one and the same thing.

I remember working on the RAC and having to endure focus groups; nasty, small-minded tory types who likes the RAC because the breakdown guys had to salute their members. Same on the tills - having a vulnerable "girl" who you can treat like shite, if you are so minded.

You need a shower after an evening with those cunts (and Saatchi account handlers.)

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 6:35 pm I remember working on the RAC and having to endure focus groups; nasty, small-minded tory types who likes the RAC because the breakdown guys had to salute their members.

My vision of an RAC member since childhood has been Arthur Lowe as Potter. Now I have data to back it up.

Do away with computers?

I've used this example before, so apologies. A few years ago there was a TV show where they replicated the high street in a typical British town over the last century. Everyone loved having the artisan bakery and so on, but the moment they hit the 1970s and a supermarket opened, they all went shopping there. While complaining about the lack of personal service. Something Greg Wallace, presenting, highlighted.

I remember the time our local record shop closed. How we mourned its passing. How fondly we recalled spending our pocket money there. One or two of us could remember the last time we went in there.

I had the same thought just the other day, going through the LP racks on a Saturday morning. Back in the day when a big name group released and album it was a major event
Returning to the subject of self-service checkouts: personally I think there a good thing, nip in for a few items, no queue , there are people around, including staff, it’s not as if you are in splendid isolation. And if I do queue with a “big shop”, always have a chat with the assistant, sometimes (when flying solo), indulge in very low-level flirting, just to remind myself that I’ve still “got it”!!!!!!

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:37 am I've used this example before, so apologies. A few years ago there was a TV show where they replicated the high street in a typical British town over the last century. Everyone loved having the artisan bakery and so on, but the moment they hit the 1970s and a supermarket opened, they all went shopping there. While complaining about the lack of personal service. Something Greg Wallace, presenting, highlighted.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/05/17 ... s-of-1988/

Some pictures of mostly closed East End shops from 1988. These shops don't just look closed, they look almost Detroit-like. At that time, there wouldn't have been too many locals who could have passed up the chance of much cheaper shopping.

davidjay wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 11:38 am I remember the time our local record shop closed. How we mourned its passing. How fondly we recalled spending our pocket money there. One or two of us could remember the last time we went in there.

I recall the mourning of the passing of Woolworths. At the time I was teaching a lot of marketing and students and colleagues sought my views on why it had failed. My response was always the same, to ask them when they last went in there and what they bought, this invariably brought forth misty eyed childhood memories, often involving stealing the pick'n'mix. And there's the answer, people voted with their wallets.
Anecdotally, I know the last time I went in a Woolworths, Christmas Eve 2003. We ran out of paper doing some last minute wrapping. All the shops had either sold out or had long queues. Then I spotted Woolies, staff standing around idle and only a handful of customers. On Christmas Eve.

We still have Woolies. A mate and I, over lunch in the summer, mutually fessed up why we always have pristine t-shirts.

Two bucks a pop in Woolies, that's why.

We turned to quite how they manage to flog them at that price and still pay a reasonable wage in the factories. It fell quiet.

(They are actually rather good. Ring spun, medium-weight, long-stem cotton from - erm - Xinjiang Province.)

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 4:13 pm

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 9:37 am I've used this example before, so apologies. A few years ago there was a TV show where they replicated the high street in a typical British town over the last century. Everyone loved having the artisan bakery and so on, but the moment they hit the 1970s and a supermarket opened, they all went shopping there. While complaining about the lack of personal service. Something Greg Wallace, presenting, highlighted.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/05/17 ... s-of-1988/

Some pictures of mostly closed East End shops from 1988. These shops don't just look closed, they look almost Detroit-like. At that time, there wouldn't have been too many locals who could have passed up the chance of much cheaper shopping.

Then they were re-opened as Asian grocery shops and takeaways, and the East End has been taken over by the third world.

I saw someone moaning about coffee shops in book shops and yet you can't get a seat in the Waterstones one near me most of the day (To be fair Waterstones is never really empty bar early mornings and their Thursday late evening out of season), but if the cafe is contributing to the fact we still have a thriving book shop then so be it, I know at least two record stores that did this as well as well as WH Smith and post offices.

The one in Penzance for instance would have gone years ago as I see about 1 or 2 people mulling around the shop area every time I go in but the queue for the post office is massive.

If this keeps a thriving business on the high street then I'm all for it.

Bookshops are, for me, a retailer for which the internet is no substitute.
I'll only buy books online if I already know and trust the author. But if it's someone new to me, I need to brose. If it's fiction I read a random page or two to check that I like the style, for non-fiction I look up a topic I feel I already know a little about and judge how well they describe it.
I don't know how to replicate those checks online.

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 10:21 pm We still have Woolies.

Likewise C&A (now based in Belgium) still have a couple of thousand stores around the world, mostly in continental Europe but also further afield (they're big in South America if I recall correctly).

Then they were re-opened as Asian grocery shops and takeaways, and the East End has been taken over by the third world.
[/quote]

Be fair, these shops sell lager after the pubs close. Unlike all the shops selling offensive stuff like pretty fabrics.