Despite giving off the appearance of a superannuated fossil, Under The Counter is all for technology. Indolent by nature, he reckons anything that makes life easier can only be a good thing.
Take self-service tills, for example. A genius solution that means retailers no longer need to serve customers – who simply serve themselves instead.
This means retailers, liberated from the shackles of the shopfloor, have oodles of time for any number of other tasks.
Like hand-printing notices informing shoppers that the checkouts are card only and – under no circumstances – do they ever. Give. Cash. Back.
Something has quite clearly gone wrong in your store when you have no fewer than seven, including one in both English and Spanish, manky home-made signs around a solitary self-checkout all saying the same thing. UTC was minded of Einstein’s definition of madness.
At least there’s a cracking selection of wee balloons on sticks to tempt impulse customers with.
The store is, of course, in the US and part of the Smith’s Food and Drug chain.
Under The Counter was tickled to discover that Smith’s stopped accepting Visa cards for six months back in 2019, describing the fees as “excessive”.
Given its aversion to cash, he was amazed it managed to hold out for so long.
