WH Smith bought by the owners of Hobbycraft

https://news.sky.com/story/bluesky-13337092


… with the high street stores to be renamed as TG Jones. Which just sounds like something they’ve made up rather than meaning anything?

They’re keeping hold of the travel stores though.

Let’s hope the ...

I can’t get my head around the need to go to a counter for something that’s available on shelves elsewhere.

Yeah, I had this happen the other day too. It's definitely new and quite a disconcerting feeling. My Sainsbury's also now has a camera that identifies loose produce when you weigh it, so you don't "accidentally" press the wrong button. It's all making supermarket shopping quite a depressing 1984 ...

Could it have picked up a QR code by mistake? I’ve had that a few times now.

Can we all at least agree that the people who say “I should get staff discount for using the self checkout” and refuse to use them like it’s some sort of quirky personality trait are the biggest fucking bores that exist?

You’re right on that and maybe the timeframe will be longer - but there have been advances. Just Walk Out tech isn’t working right now, but that’s not to say it won’t in some form. Waitrose now let you use your phone as a self scan device - and I believe they were looking at having payment done ...

It all feels like it’ll be irrelevant in the coming decade anyway. Surely some form of just-walk-out technology will eventually be the norm. RFID feels like the way forward if it can be developed to be smaller / cheaper. Zara use it well for their self checkouts.

Zara control all their ...

It all feels like it’ll be irrelevant in the coming decade anyway. Surely some form of just-walk-out technology will eventually be the norm. RFID feels like the way forward if it can be developed to be smaller / cheaper. Zara use it well for their self checkouts.

Some new design SELs appearing in my local Asda but - surprise surprise - they seem to be nothing like the design of anything else. A quite ugly bold italic font for both the product name and price.

To be fair the early closing is probably to allow staff to get their things out and carry out audit processes etc. before builders move in on Monday.

I think there’s a real opportunity for one of the supermarkets to come out with a back to basics ‘we make decent food and charge alright prices’ campaign. Feels like they’ve all got confusing messages at the moment. Probably Sainsbury’s are the closest to getting it right.