Brigg's Tesco store now has a number of self-service checkouts, where town shoppers can scan the barcodes on the items they've bought and pay for them without having to deal with an assistant manning one of the tills.We aren't going to criticise such a huge retailer, which will have done a huge amount of national research before taking the plunge with what will seem to many of us the other side of 40 as a strange step. Clearly it's progress and designed to cut down the queueing and speed up the time people take to get through the store, plus requiring much less staff input.
Yet watching folk using the new checkouts - and they all seemed to manage the procedure without difficulty, even some pensioners - set me thinking about how Brigg shopping used to operate.
Remember the days when mum filled in her order in a little notebook? She dropped that into shops like Melia's, Instone's and George Mason's while she was doing her Thursday round of the town centre, and a van, or boy on a bike, would drop by the house with the boxed-up groceries that afternoon?
Tesco, of course, and other major retailers, now offer online shopping along the same lines - you use the 'shopping cart' procedure on the internet and they send a van round with your purchases.
I've no wish to use the new self-service checkouts at Tesco - I'd sooner go next door to Lidl. Much less busy, it's ideal for a typical old-fashioned bloke like me who only wants to buy a case or two of bottled lager or (in dire emergencies) a jar of marmalade or (a couple of times a year) a pack of sweetener tablets.
Grocery shopping is Mrs Fisher's domain, and long may that continue!
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