I’m not proud of this, but I do occasionally visit fast food restaurants,  such as McDonald’s. Mostly, it is for drinks. Now, that may seem stupid, given that you can get a bottled version of the same drink for a lot less (or maybe you can’t – or at least not reliably. Pricing of cola appears to be one of the worlds more baffling algorithms and this could well be the subject of a future blog.)

For now, let’s get back to my attempted
purchase of cola from McDonald’s. There is a reason why I would prefer to buy my soft drinks from a vendor that has it on draught, rather than to simply pop into my local newsagent or supermarket and buy a can or a bottle. That reason  is simple – most fast food vendors serve their soft drinks with ice. I know some people don’t care about this. but they are wrong, and I am right. Look at the image. The ice is what makes this so appealing.

So, I recently stopped at a local McDonald’s and ordered a diet coke. I paid my £1.29 and drove to the next window. The young lady passed me the coke and I gave it a little shake to check there was ice in it. There was not, so I passed it back and asked her to put some ice in it.

Without hesitating, she told me that they did not have any ice.  At that point, I decided that paying £1.29 for a draft carbonated drink without ice just did not stack up, so I asked for a refund. The girl looked a bit confused, but I pointed out that I had believed I was buying a drink with ice and as that was not the case, I would like to have my money back. She disappeared off into the back and I assumed she was seeking advice from a manager. But no, when she reappeared, it was with my drink again, now with a generous helping of ice. It was my turn to look confused. “So you did have ice all along?” I asked, though this was obviously somewhat rhetorical. With no trace of shame, she stated that she had meant she did not have any ice in the tray next to her. I was lost for words, so I just drove off, taking my ice cold drink with me.

Most people who know me would probably agree that I’m a bit of an antisocial bastard. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons that I like self service checkouts in supermarkets. At least, I like the idea. It should minimise the contact I need to have with real people. It’s similar to internet banking in that respect. No human contact – marvellous.

In practice however, the bloody things are really annoying. It starts off when I bring my own bag. I’m still rubbish at remembering to do that, but I’m getting better. It’s amazing the incentive that 5p can have. So the checkout asks me to put my bags on the scale and click “done”. At that point, it decides not to trust me and I have to wait for a human to check that all I’ve put on the scales is bags. Humph! Last time that happened, I picked up my bags and went to a conventional checkout. If I have to interact with humans, it might as well be efficient, rather than waiting for the girl being chatted up by the shelf-stacker to notice the large flashing red light above my checkout.

So, having got past the bag crisis, I begin to scan my groceries. At this point the checkout starts braying at me in a loud, strident voice to “Please put the item into the bagging area”. Either I’m really slow at this, or the timing is all wrong. Give me a chance before you start to nag me. Please.

Next comes the booze. All right, I accept that some form of age checking is needed when buying alcohol, but does it have to be so judgemental?  When the girl can next be dragged away from her compelling chat about the X-Factor, she wanders over and without even glancing at me, declares me to be “clearly over 25”. OK, I’m well past mark of mouth, but she could make a pretence of checking. Is it my clothes that have given me away? The grey hair? The middle-aged paunch?

Then there’s the troublesome item. Presumably it weighs just a bit less or a bit more that it is supposed to. The margin for tolerance on some items must be wafer thin. These machines are not in “benefit of the doubt” mode. Over comes the girl again, to confirm that an apple is indeed an apple.

Where’s the trust in all this? Perhaps the problem is that I’ve not identified myself at this point. I do that at time of payment by scanning the loyalty card. Why not do that at the start of the whole process and then build up a bit of a history with the customer – he shops here all the time and can be trusted. This after all, is part of what loyalty cards are for, though admittedly, they are mostly so the shop can record that I buy a lot of wine, so they can target me with offers for detergent.

Finally, it’s time to pay. But, I have a voucher that says 60p off if I buy some bacon. I’m always buying  bacon, so this makes sense. I scan the voucher. Now the girl must be summoned once again to confirm that the voucher is valid. If only computers could do this sort of thing.

Supermarkets are just starting to catch up with the rest of the retailers and offering contactless payments for smaller amounts. However, at least one chain has done this incredibly badly. The checkout asks me how I would like to pay. I click on “credit/debit card” and I’m instructed to insert my card into the card reader. Sadly, I know a bit about these things and I can clearly see that the device is capable of taking a contactless payment, so I waft my card at it. It detects my card, declines the payment, and informs me that if I’d wanted to make a contactless payment, I should have selected that option as my payment type. Really? How shit is that?

Finally, I’m about to leave, when it emerges that the ludicrously overpriced safety blades for my razor have a security tag attached. Another wait for the teenager, who then can’t work out how the instrument of torture used to remove security tags works. She calls a colleague and ten minutes later, I’m free to go, with my now slightly mangled box of razor blades.

One of the larger supermarkets in our area has taken this a step further, allowing you to take a scanner with you to scan your your shopping as you go. I first tried this years ago in a Safeway, before they all became Morrisons. I quite liked the approach, but it didn’t catch on. I’ve seen it in Watitrose, but I don’t shop there often enough to make it worthwhile registering. However, when I saw this scheme introduced into a local Tesco, I though “Yeah. Why not?” All went well until I came to pay. Once again, I am confronted with a self-service checkout, but this time I scan the scanner and my bill appears. So far so good. But, then I am selected for a “random security check”. Marvellous. This involves some woman, who looks like one of the dinner ladies at my old junior school, rummaging through my shopping and scanning a few items to check that I had, indeed, scanned these myself. What was weird was that she did not select the new £300 Dyson that was in the trolley, nor even the bottle of gin. No – the items I was deemed most likely to have sneaked into my trolley were a tube of toothpaste and some sun-dried tomatoes. Relieved that I have escaped the full cavity search, I am finally allowed to pay and leave.

The bizarre thing about all this is that I continue to use these self-service checkouts, convinced that this time, it’ll all go right.  I’m like Charlie Brown with that football.