Short changed!

So this weekend I popped over to the local Tesco Express with my son to buy some cheese.   Like most modern Tesco stores it had some automated tills that relies on the customer to do the work of the checkout staff.

I explained to my son that I would queue and wait to be served by a human being rather than take the express route and have to faff around with a machine and the lady in front of me turned around and agreed with me,  so may be I'm not alone in this sentiment.

Now, what really irks me is that Tesco has two automated tills which effectively kills two more jobs and means my tax dollars are probably being used to give unemployment benefit to some poor souls who could be working in Tescos.  More annoying is that Tesco's is making us customers serve ourselves while it creams off the profit.

I was extolling the virtues of being served by a human only to be short changed by the lad behind the checkout.   When I pointed out the error, he told me he was busy and had been known to make this kind of mistake, but it wasn't a problem.  Well, not to Tesco's, it would have made an extra £3 of profit if I hadn't been explaining to my son that one needs to check the change.

So all in all it was a valuable set of lessons for my son:

• Humans make mistakes.

• Tescos seems to like making profit out of it's customers and will reduce staff where possible.

• We like being served by humans only when they don't short change us.

..such is progress.