A bloke goes into a Tesco store to buy a sarnie with cash, only to find that there’s no checkouts with humans anymore. Instead he has to use a self-serve checkout that uses cameras and weight-sensors to work out what items the customer wants to buy.
These self-serve things have been around for years, but now Tesco has gone one stage further by insisting that customers can only buy their items not only by signing up to their loyalty card, but also to download their data-intrusive app to your phones and pay electronically.
Tesco is trialling these new cashless stores – calling them “GetGo” – for people who don’t have time or inclination to pay with cash. In other words its probably aimed at the smartphone generation who don’t care about what personal information is being farmed whenever they use the loyalty cards or the Tesco app via their phones.
Critics also feel that this is going to be the “dystopian” future with all supermarkets and retailers shedding hundreds of their staff in favour of self-serve checkouts. At the same time valuable personal information from their customers will be used and probably sold to third parties so that the shopper will be assailed with spam and cold callers.
Returning to the bloke who couldn’t buy a sarnie the old fashioned way, Tesco responded in a rather aloof way, more or less implying that if he doesn’t like it he can fuck off elsewhere. Quote:-
“We want everyone to feel welcome in our stores and we’re really sorry to hear that Mr Rowson was not happy with his experience at our GetGo store in Holborn, central London. This store trial uses technology to offer a checkout-free experience, giving customers the opportunity to shop and pay without scanning a product or using a physical checkout. This saves time for those who want to pop in to pick up something for lunch or grab dinner on their way home.”
This is all very well, but technology quite often fails, especially during power outages (which could be on the way come winter). And then what? How do you pay without power?
If anyone has seen Tom Cruise’s 2002 sci-fi film “Minority Report” you’ll recall that pedestrians/drivers were being constantly monitored and tracked via CCTV and shoppers electronically data-farmed by what they were buying, how much and where from.
20 years on and here we are…
Nominated by: Technocunt
I absolutely refuse to shop in Tesco when I’m in the UK, due to the fact that during the Covid bullshit, the staff at Tesco Dorchester acted like fucking Nazi’s. Some stupid cunt gave the cunt bitch on the door a yellow vest and you’d think it was the full SS uniform the way she acted. I hope you’re reading this you fucking fat, turd faced cunt! Asda Weymouth didn’t give a fuck and were treating people with dignity and not behaving like they were controlling the gates to Auschwitz!
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I hadn’t realised that the guards at Auschwitz were there to vet the people who wanted to enter.
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Any Red Sea pedestrians wanting to come in for a sandwich were always given priority!
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HBH &JP. Best wishes for your upcoming ops fellas. Don’t forget ISAC needs you both up and running pronto.
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Thanks, CM!
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Hopefully their GetGo will GetFucked and go the same way as Jack’s (their discount brand shop). Honestly who works in their marketing team? Only shopping historians know that Jack Cohen was the founder of Tesco’s.
I fucking hate Tesco. They have 2 types of automated self-service checkout: One where the scales don’t work and one which has different software which is very fast for you to put present your clubcard and pay which doesn’t print receipts by default. You have to press the Print Receipt button (within 3 seconds) and I always select the Unhappy face at the bottom of the screen. Cunts.
Their clubcard app is also another pile of shite. If you don’t have an internet signal you can’t present it, or if you have forgotten your password because it signs you out every 30 days you can’t use (if you have a complex password you can’t remember because that’s stored in your password manager AT HOME) or if it needs to update. You can’t take a screenshot of your clubcard’s QR code and present that from the pictures on your phone because screenshots are disabled in the app. QR codes are so blocky you cannot take a picture with another phone and use that.
Tesco: utter fucking useless thieving scumbag bastards. Just let me pay the proper price for things.
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