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> Based on personal experience living in Europe, a society can function quite well even with a pathetic level of customer service. This might be the new normal.
by throwawaygh 5y ago
> Based on personal experience living in Europe, a society can function quite well even with a pathetic level of customer service. This might be the new normal.
How do you mean? I've always much preferred European service to American service. But then, I also loathe interacting with waiters as if we're old friends or something and get unbelievably frustrated when someone tries to bag my groceries.
- kaesar14 5y agoTry getting anything done with a French or German bank. American customer service is several levels better than my experience with European institutions.
- jay_kyburz 5y agoWe have been using self checkout for a few years here in Australia, and the thought of having to even go through a normal checkout with a cashier now kind of yuck.
- swayvil 5y agoI don't relate with that yuck. I prefer a human cashier. And also a second person to do the bagging.
- katbyte 5y agoWhy is that? Generally curious as I prefer to just self checkout and save the cashier the effort
- ketzo 5y agoWay faster for everyone. Most people are really bad at bagging groceries, and it slows down lines.
- michaelmrose 5y agoCouldn't the second employee cashier and save even more time? Also for example WinCo which doesn't bag has 2 endpoints per line for it's treadmill of food they check out one person shoving order number 1 to endpoint one then use number two. One really slow person can't slow matters down.
- mytherin 5y agoThat fails to account for drastically reduced space and operating costs of self-checkout machines. In my experience one cash register is generally replaced by 3-5 self checkout machines. Even if the cashier is twice as good at scanning and bagging the self-checkout will have much shorter lines and as a result will be much faster.
- swayvil 5y agoI just like being served. The more effort expended the better.
- eru 5y agoFunny enough, in Germany cashiers never do your bagging. Germans would find cashiers bagging their stuff weird.
- swayvil 5y agoIt used to be that way in USA. But in the course of businesses squeezing more out of less the cashier now does double duty. He just has to work harder. We see a lot of that here.
- eru 5y ago> But in the course of businesses squeezing more out of less the cashier now does double duty. He just has to work harder. It's always nice to get an ideological dig in, ain't it? In Germany, the businesses 'squeeze' the customer instead. There are no baggers, customers bag their own groceries.
- jay_kyburz 5y agoYou have to bring your own bags in Australia too
- swayvil 5y agoGetting squeezed is as ideological as a shit sandwich. And just as distasteful.
- michaelmrose 5y agoI don't know of a reasonably priced store in America that provides a second human helper and in a few years you won't get one. Rfid is going to result in checking out mostly consist of confirming that you in fact want to pay for the items you've collected. Virtually everything you want a cashier to do is a papering over bad or broken process or user stupidity. For example item's with marred tags or which don't have one by design and inaccurate pricing are fixable problems. Customers not being able to read on the other hand is not the stores problem.
- swader999 5y agoI prefer the human interaction nowadays.
- russellbeattie 5y agoOh man, I remember doing my weekly grocery shopping at Caprabo, and having the miserable cashiers absolutely fling the bottles, bags, boxes, cans, etc. down the table after they rung them up, and you would have to try to bag as quickly as possible because she wouldn't wait once the next person was coming through. Gah! Anyways, I hate bagging my own groceries even in the U.S., so there's an example for you. Not that big of a deal, European society in general works quite well, regardless of how horrible and mean their cashiers are.