Sainsbury's self-checkout fail

[fanf]

I hate plastic carrier bags, so I take a canvas bag when I go shopping (unless I forget). The city-centre Sainsbury's in Cambridge recently replaced their express tills with self-checkout tills, which use weighing scales under the bags to check that scanned things have been bagged properly.

If you put an unexpected object in the bagging area it flashes up an annoying message. This screen has a button on it saying "Using your own bag?" which I am pretty sure used to cancel the message and allow you to scan your shopping. It is now non-functional: if you try pressing it a member of staff has to come over and explain the correct procedure. If you want to use your own bag, before you put it on the bagging area you have to go into the "select an item" menu (for bananas and fresh bread etc.) and choose the "bag re-use" icon. Obviously.

Comments

[pir.livejournal.com]

I tend to just put my items on the scales without a bag, then when I'm done load them all into a bag... but I'm rarely buying a huge amount at the self-checkout tills.

[fanf]

I'm usually shopping for a week of lunches at a time, which needs a bag to keep it all on the scales - as well as being a pain to repack while the till is shouting PLEASE TAKE ALL YOUR SHOPPING AWAY (or whatever it is).

[oosp.livejournal.com]

The thing that irritates me about the repacking is that in order to balance everything on the scales in the first place [1] it's sensible to put the largest and heaviest items at the bottom of your carefully constructed shopping sculpture. Then when you want to repack into your rucksack the items are in the wrong order, so you end up having to move the light and delicate items onto the ground or into pockets before putting them into your bag.

[1] I actually have a lot of trouble opening up the Tesco bags at all, so it's a waste of time trying to use them to keep everything together...