Alamy“Unexpected item in bagging area,” says the smooth robotic voice of the self-checkout, again, as you fly into a rage, smashing the machine into a million pieces with a particularly stale piece of French bread.
Does this scene seem familiar? Do you often find yourself destroying machines with stale bread? Well, fear not, self-checkout rage might soon be a thing of the past.
Sort of.
AlamyTesco have announced they will be dropping the phrase ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ from their self-service machines, delighting thousands of pissed off shoppers, who in fact have only placed ‘expected’ items in the bagging area.
They’ve also decided to make the automated voice a bit friendlier, with some customers reportedly finding the current one shouty and irritating.
Here’s a sample of the new voices, in case for some reason you’re really interested in that kind of stuff:
There are worse self-service checkouts than Tesco’s, though, with a special shout out going to the useless machines at Morrisons, and the retro Windows 98 style failures at the Co-op.
