Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area

Tesco, W H Smith and similar store chains seem to have committed heavily to customer self-service checkouts.

Based on the discoveries that the barcodes work, and that debit and credit cards work, and the belief that the business of working behind the counter in one of those chains can become ever more menial, we can now fully serve ourselves. Anyone can do it, it is so deskilled.

At the same time, this automation – and cost saving for the shareholder – is painted as a bonus, a step forward. We are sold the idea that we can escape from the queue, we can upgrade by doing it ourselves. And this notion today, at the checkout (what a word! what an essay in itself!) is sold to us by those whose jobs close ever faster the more we buy into this nostrum.

(I could wax nostalgic, for the time when every purchase was a personalised conversation between me and the shop assistant – idealised, private and special. But I have to admit I am a surly, taciturn shopper at best – grunting and gesturing by preference, rather than comfortably discussing my retail needs. There may have been a time when shopping was social – but not, I’m afraid, for me. In fact, the exhortations from the downtrodden soon-to-be-fired assistants that I should want to use the machines are themselves far more interactivity than I crave).

To continue: we buy into this idea - we pay with time and frustration to become part of the store’s system. And yet, for us poor store users, this is nothing new. The system trapped us years ago.  The only thing we don't do now is stack the shelves.  And I imagine that time too will come.

The new technology is not the important technology; the play of standardisation masquerading as quality has held us for years. So, we acquiesce – this is nothing new.

But if this is not a fracture, in itself, it demonstrates another widening gap. For being in a store, buying stuff, is not shopping. Tesco , W. H Smith are not shops.

And to the extent that they define our physical retail experience Napoleon is proven out-of-date: we are no longer a nation of shopkeepers.