Tesco self-service till voice dropped for being too annoying

Anyone who has been driven demented by Tesco self-service tills could be in for a nice surprise. The supermarket has been trying out a new voice, after people complained that the female voice telling them about the 'unexpected item' in the 'bagging area' was too 'shouty' and 'irritating'.

According to a report in The Sun, the new voice has been trialed in tills at a number of stores, and Tesco plans to roll it out across the country by the end of October. City AM added that in response to feedback, it was also going to drop the hated announcement telling you about those unexpected items in the bagging area, and replace the demand for you to take your items with one thanking you for shopping with the supermarket.
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Will it be better?

Of course, this isn't going to radically alter the experience of using a self-service checkout. We're still going to struggle to have our bags recognised, to get things to scan, to get the machine to notice we have put our shopping in a bag, and to get assistance when something goes wrong.

At the moment 45% of people need a member of staff to help them at some point every time they use the tills - according to Viewsbank - and changing the voice isn't going to make this any less painful.

The move has sparked claims of sexism, as the current female voice has been described by some media outlets as 'bossy' and 'nagging' and the new male voice as 'friendly'. Unfortunately, this hasn't been helped by Tesco's twitter account posting comments such as: "I'm sorry you feel a bit rushed by the till, she is a little bossy. Don't worry though, you can take your time. :-) - Dan".

However, gender aside, we're arguably likely to find it marginally less stressful dealing with a voice programmed to sound as much like a human as possible - than we were with one trying to sound like a robot. There aren't going to be many people who are gong to miss a machine using words like 'dispensed', 'bagging area' and 'items'.

In the meantime, it's worth being aware of the fact that you can turn the voice off manually. There's a volume button at the bottom of the screen - in the middle. You can press it three times, which aromatically mutes the system. It will cut out the voice, although it'll also cut out the beeping that tells you a barcode has scanned, so you'll need to keep a closer eye on the screen as you swipe.

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