To self scan or not to self scan. That is the question.

Lucy Burton, aka Daily Telegraph Employment Editor, has decided we need to know whether we like or dislike self-checkout in Britain.

Unfortunately the article has some of the common false statements such as: Self-scanners are everywhere, accounting for roughly 80pc of sales in a typical supermarket, yet nobody seems to love them.

Nobody? Well we do and according to her own survey 26% of those that took part actually prefer them. How about that. This sort of statement is in the class of "everybody knows" which is a convenient way of avoiding any true discussion.

But never mind.

The main blunder of the article is that the clickbait headline doesn't differentiat between self scanners at the exit and self scanner used when you put an item into your trolley or basket.

Towards the end of the aticle, readers are given the opportunity to select

Do you prefer manned checkouts or self-checkouts? to which 84% sated they prefered manned.

This may not be surprising if one considers the effort on the part of us shoppers with the self scanning at the exit, with all the problems it creates.

A great friend will now smile because we are agreeing that self scanners at the exit can cause problems and are probably not the "non plus ultra". An example just before christmas. Two families each with at least one child on the worst of all self-scanners which are the ones where they just turn the original till with conveyor belt into self scanning. So, yes, there is queue.

Just before christmas. The supermarket (Morrisons) is packed. The children want to do the scanning. Of course everybody has to learn sometime but sorry - not on my time at the busiest time of the year. As one might imagine, the scanning excercise was a disaster, with the buzzer going off every three or four items and the red light for the shop assistants constantly being turned on and off. One additional problem was that one of the kids, constantly attempted to rearrange the shopping by picking items up which immediately causes an error.

Thank goodness the shop assistant at some point intervened and asked the parents if they could do the scanning themselves because the queues were getting too long.

But this is really an extreme situation.

However the number of people who obiously are not savvy enough to use the self scanning system seems to us to be enormous. So no wonder that they state they prefer manual tills.

Lucy states something we have often heard but which doesn't match our experience. Maybe it is because we are chatty anyway. Standing in line at a till with a queue behind you is not very chat encourging. In fact you can end up with some reather unpleasant comments if you take too long.

Our experience is that we get more chance to chat with the staff standing around at the self checkouts. Something that never reaaly happens on a real till. If we buy any mdicinal items, booze and even alcohol.free drinks the cashier just presses the button to allow purchase and the item goes through.

On self check outs at least the assistants take a proper look at you, very often making a pleasant comment.

We shop very regularly at Sainsbury's and have had the opportunity to ask the staff their feelings about the self scanners. To be fair these are the smart system where you scan each item as you put it in your bags or baskets.

Every time asked the answer was: We are the same number of people manning all the tills. We get a chance to talk to the customers (like us). Do you prefer this system?

We have to stand but here we can choose during the day to swap between smart checkout and standard tills. So it is quite pleasant.

So it doesn't seem to be true in our experience that less people are employed nor are they losing out pay-wise.

For us it a huge plus for Sainsbury's and Waitrose that you can take your scanner with you and scan while you shop. Also small advantage it tells you as you go round how much you are out of pocket.

Another argument is that there is a campaign for older people that this is not customer friendly. Again, from a visit last week to Waitrose it was surprising how many really elderly people were using the hand scanners as they went round. Are Waitrose customer more tech-savy? Who knows.

Waitrose customers seem to be prepared to pay a bit more for the goods and presumably have higher incomes which might suggest better educated. Teachers, Lawyers, civil servants and who knows what else.

As ever we also need to ask if Telegraph readers are even representative.

Using smart systems each item is only handled once before you get to your car. Both standard self-scanners and conventional tills mean the goods are handled three times. So as a trained systems analyst this to me is a no-brainer.

Smart scanners win every time.

-pw- Weymouth Dorset