The town where pensioners are boycotting self-checkouts

Telegraph

14-03-2025

At the Marks and Spencer store in Bridgwater, 10 self-service checkouts are sitting in a row waiting to be used.
The one manned checkout, however, has a queue several-people deep. 'If there's someone on the till, I would rather wait four or five minutes to have a conversation,' says Antony James, a 59-year-old resident.
His sentiment is shared by many in the Somerset town where the Bridgwater Senior Citizens' Forum has launched a rebellion against automated checkouts.
'The face-to-face checkout tills might be the only conversation some people have all day,' says Glen Burrows, a member of the group leading the boycott.
Admitting that she now is applauded by the till workers when she goes to pay for her shopping, the 75-year-old adds that her main reason for starting the campaign was to highlight the importance of protecting jobs.
Ms Burrows, one of 20 pensioners in the forum, launched the campaign to boycott self-service checkouts in January after 'going into Asda, and finding there was nobody on the tills'.
Over the coming weeks, the group, whose ages range from 70 to 90, plans to distribute leaflets and build momentum through word of mouth. 'I think it's quite a difficult battle,' says Ms Burrows, 'but it's a very important one to fight'.
The campaigners argue that the automated checkouts are costing the people of Bridgwater jobs. 'It's a working class town,' says Ms Burrows. 'And of course, jobs are very important to our town.'
Bridgwater, on the edge of the Somerset Levels, is an industrial town. It was the home of British Cellophane, with a large production site in the town until 2005, when 200 jobs were lost.
The town has a rebellious history – in 1685, an attempt to overthrow King James II known as the Monmouth Rebellion was crushed nearby. More recently, in 2009, residents succeeded in preventing a Tesco from being built after occupying a swimming pool.
The town has more than half a dozen supermarkets, including Asda, Sainsbury's and Marks and Spencer (M&S).
Ken Jones, 81, a retired shop owner and the campaign's co-chairman, whose wife died three years ago, argues face-to-face checkouts give him the company he misses.
'Isolation is a disease', he says. 'Meeting someone behind the till makes you feel as if you met a fellow human being. It's not AI. You're talking to someone, smiling. Just saying 'hello, good morning', to somebody makes you feel better – and surely that's got no price.
'I have good chats when I'm in the queue and you feel part of that community. That's what's missing in our lives.'
Mr Jones says that self-checkouts, on the other hand, feel like 'dehumanisation', adding that the campaign 'is not only against self-service tills, there's no bank in the town, it's just a hole in the wall. It's the whole way society is leaning now'.
'It has been a bit of a battle,' he says. 'It is between shop workers, the community, and the supermarkets.'
This sentiment is echoed by Dave Chapple, a 73-year-old former postman who has lived in the area for 38 years. 'Self-checkouts are perhaps increasingly popular, but that's largely because staff checkouts are less and less available,' he observes.
'In a lot of the supermarkets there are six, seven or eight potential staff checkouts and sometimes there's only one or two people at them,' adds Mr Chapple.
Barry Leathwood, 83, is making his way out of M&S from his weekly shop. He has lived on his own since his wife died three years ago. He says of the checkouts: 'It's nice to see a friendly face, rather than the machine.'
He adds: 'I'm not employed by [the supermarket], I don't really see why I should do the work for the company. They're making increased profits and reducing the number of staff and putting the burden on customers, particularly older people.'
Campaigners believe that reducing the number of manned checkouts automatically means a loss of jobs.
'Retailers will say that they've just moved people out on the floor rather than have them behind the till,' says Ms Burrows. 'But if you've got vacancies elsewhere, you should be recruiting more people, they're not to be dispensed with because you've got a machine. Automation is always about getting rid of jobs.'
Retail jobs are increasingly at risk. In 2024, nearly 170,000 were lost across the UK, a 42 per cent increase on 2023 and the highest annual figure since the Covid lockdowns of 2020.
Bridgwater has a population of around 42,000, and according to census data, nearly 40 per cent of the town are unemployed. Youth unemployment in the South West stands at 14.6 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, it is not only Bridgwater's pensioners who are rallying against the self-checkout technology but the town's teenagers.
Eighteen-year-old Ajay Barrow says he has seen the impact of the self-checkouts on jobs first-hand and is prepared to join the boycott of the self-service tills as a result.
'Quite a lot of my mates have lost their jobs as a result of self-checkouts,' he tells The Telegraph. 'One of my mates who is also 18 was [working at a supermarket] for quite a while, but they've kept the adults and kicked out the younger ones due to the self-checkouts. She hasn't found another job.'
Becky Mathews, 43, a personal trainer at the gym opposite Asda, argues that the self-checkouts are stripping young people of valuable opportunities for development. 'For the young generation, it tends to be that their first job is in retail. It's good for them to have that customer service to deal with people,' she says.
Louise Pickles, 64, a village shop assistant, says the self-checkouts 'make you feel like you're a bit stupid because you can't work out what you're pressing… I don't find the staff that work on the self-service are always that friendly. It's like you're a bit of a nuisance to them, but it's fine once you know the system.'
This suggests that self-checkouts do not necessarily deliver the customer service for which they are designed.
'The expansion of self-service checkouts is a response to changing consumer behaviours, which show many people prioritising speed and convenience,' said Kris Hamer, director of insight at the British Retail Consortium. 'Many retailers provide manned and unmanned checkouts as they work to deliver great service for their customers.'
Asda is among a handful of stores that appear to be listening to the backlash. In August, the supermarket announced it was going to put more staff on checkouts, with Michael Gleeson, its chief financial officer, saying: 'I think we have reached a level of self-checkouts and 'scan and go' where we feel that works best for our customers, and we feel we've got the balance just about right.'
Others have made similar moves, with Rami Baitieh, Morrisons' chief executive, admitting in the same month that the retailer had gone 'a bit too far' with self-checkouts. Northern grocer Booths has opted to ditch them outright after its boss said they made it impossible to deliver a high standard of customer service.
The backlash appears to be even bigger in the US. Under new laws proposed in February, supermarkets would have to comply with rules that would limit self-checkout use to when a regular manned lane is open. Major supermarkets including Walmart, Target and Costco have begun limiting or banning self-checkouts.
Though the Bridgwater campaign group has not yet had any meetings with supermarket managers, they warn that if bosses do not listen to them, there may be trouble in the town.
'If retailers in this instance don't respond to human needs then there will be a war,' concludes Ms Burrows.
'People will get angry and want to fight back. We are being reasonable, but if the managers are not going to be reasonable then it will escalate – it doesn't stop our anger.'