Karen From Coles Ruins My Day

Coles recently, has been replacing most of their manned checkouts with these automated self service checkouts. Basically, you load up the conveyor belt, scan all your groceries yourself, bag them, pay, and then go. It sounds so simple. Obviously, Coles (and every other supermarket) are doing this to save money. No more need for costly, complaining workers. As the old adage goes, “If you don’t see any staff, you’re the staff”. I made that up, but it’s not far from the truth, right? What will Coles be asking of us next? “All customers, please report to the loading dock to unload the truck.”

So anyway, the other day, I was using one of these self-checkouts. There were about 20 people waiting at the two manned checkouts, and this checkout was free, so I used it. Noting you could use cash or card (I wanted to use card). I got to the payments screen after scanning everything and it asked me to select my payment method, but it only gave me the option of cash. I don’t mind paying with cash, but I didn’t have any. So I waited around for the middle-age lady who was the only one manning all these self-checkouts. I literally waited for about 10 minutes. She was so busy with all the other customers and their problems. I should have gone to another checkout.

Normally I’m fairly stoic about these sort of things, but what she said to me after really pissed me off.

Finally she came over (I think her name was actually Karen), and I said, “Excuse me. This machine isn’t letting me use my card.” By the way, my kids were patiently waiting just outside the entrance getting a bit antsy. And then the lady went off. “Sir, this is a cash-only terminal. It’s clearly labelled at the front.” (It was – I went and checked. Although it was just a handwritten sign). I pointed out that it said “Cash & Card” on the sign above, but she just looked at me like I was an idiot. Obviously handwritten notes take precedence. Stupid me! “And when you started using this machine, it clearly said that it was cash-only”. Again, she was right. On the screen at the start, they normally write “Card only”, but in this case, it actually did show “Cash only”. But to be fair to me, I’ve done this so many times now that I almost ignore all these messages on screen.

She then told me that I had to go to another terminal and rescan all my groceries. So from here, I was planning to duck outside (just a metre or two), and then reenter through another entrance to get to another self-service section, and then she yelled at me. “You can’t go that way! Go back inside and go around!”. At this stage, I lost my cool, and went out anyway. Thankfully, she didn’t report me or anything and went off and got angry at some other customers.

Look, I get it. She probably sees the same mistakes being made day in, day out, and is absolutely sick of her job. Okay, fine. But if all us customers are making the same mistakes, surely that means there’s something wrong with their system, doesn’t it?

Anyway, that was my Karen from Coles story, and she absolutely ruined my day.

Coles is Australia’s second-largest supermarket chain. I usually only go there to buy half-price specials, because I’m not going to pay $26 for a bottle of laundry liquid, or $24 for 5kg of rice, or $54 for some dishwashing tablets. Actually, I usually buy the $2 laundry liquid, and it’s fine. It does the job. I don’t need to wash my clothes in liquid gold. And although I have a dishwasher, I don’t use it. I use my hands and a bottle of cheap dishwashing liquid that lasts me a few months. I just don’t like wasting money.

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