Replacing supermarket checkout staff with self-service facilities could add to rural loneliness, it is being claimed. James Ackroyd-Cooper, 53, discovered staff had been replaced when he visited the Co-op in Laxfield, Suffolk, UK, last week, and he said he was concerned about the loss of face-to-face interaction.
Being able to chat with staff could be "really, really life-affirming", and just because you could replace them did not mean you had to, he said.
A spokesperson for the Co-operative Group said many customers enjoyed the ease of using self-service tills but staff were still in the store to provide support.
"I went in to find the two tills that are usually there, of which one was usually manned... had been replaced with two self-checkouts," Ackroyd-Cooper told BBC Suffolk.
"No tills at all. No human being at all, and the setting of this seems completely inappropriate.
"If we were on a main road, in a petrol station... I could kind of cope with it, but it seems so totally inappropriate in this setting where there is a sense of community.
"You often see older people, and my parents are older and I know they don't like struggling with their basket, their bags and scanning everything."
Self-checkouts are preferred by many shoppers, the Co-op said. Ackroyd-Cooper said: "I always chose this supermarket because of the staff who were behind the counter – you got a real sense of welcome in the shop."
He said one member of staff seemed to know about customers' lives and would ask about their families while another always had a joke to tell or a "hysterical" comment about what people were buying.
He said it was clear these people "lived in the community and worked in the community".
"It's really, really life-affirming – that kind of human contact... is so important," Ackroyd-Cooper said.
Full story 'Self-service checkouts in shops can add to rural loneliness' - BBC News
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