Don’t let the self-checkout tills ruin your appetite for a light gossip

The contribution to human happiness made by the Dutch is not to be underestimated. Holland has given us gin, tulips, Rembrandt, the smash hit reality series The Traitors – and now the supermarket kletskassa, or “chat checkout”. If you fancy a little light conversation with your trolley-load of groceries, the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo has the answer: leave the automated checkouts to the people who imagine that shopping is about the peremptory exchange of money for goods, and join the lively social event unfolding at the kletskassa.

The experiment, first trialled in 2019 as part of the Dutch health ministry’s National Coalition against Loneliness, proved so popular that hundreds more chat checkouts have opened, concentrated in areas where loneliness is most frequently reported.

In Britain, too, isolation is a problem, and one with formidable costs, both financial, where the figures run to billions, and in health terms – loneliness and social isolation are associated with a grim catalogue of illness. While the issue is particularly associated with an ageing population, the rise in numbers of people living alone means that loneliness affects people of all generations.

“Convenience” – invariably framed as a benign social advance, enabling us to accomplish everyday drudgery at top speed, thus freeing us to spend more time with our loved ones (or our smart devices) – turns out in practice to benefit organisations far more than individuals.

From the maddening automated voice announcing “unexpected item in the bagging area”, to the infuriating chatbots whose sole purpose seems to be to frustrate and annoy the hapless customer, “convenience” has proved to be a euphemism for purging all human contact from everyday transactions, inexorably eliminating all the warmth, kindness and unexpected grace that can attend the purchase of a pint of milk and a loaf of bread (not to mention the fascinating opportunities for people-watching that a queue affords).

Momentary though such exchanges usually are, they can sweeten an entire day, and it is noticeable that in my local supermarkets, people often choose to queue for the cashier, even when an automated checkout is free.

Of course there are moments in our busy lives when all we want from a shop is to pay for our stuff and run; for such moments, automated checkouts are perfectly designed. But we are a social species, for whom chatting is as nourishing as calories. Time for the kletskassa to join gin and tulips on the list of excellent Dutch imports. 

I am buying less, but better; he spends money like a drunken sailor; they are hopeless shopaholics. A survey by the charity Keep Britain Tidy finds that 80 per cent of respondents believe that as a nation we buy too much stuff; but only 25 per cent admit to buying more than they need. Overconsumption, it seems, is other people’s vice. And recycling, which we dutifully practise, isn’t as virtuous as its billing. The only sustainable option is to buy less.

Enter Marie Quéru, whose job at the French department store Printemps was once to flog unnecessary stuff. Having seen the sustainable light, she has developed L’écologie d’intérieur, an antidote, in podcast and book form, to “frenetic consumption”.

Here I find my inveterate Francophilia at war with my incurable fondness for shopping. These days, my frenetic consumption takes place almost exclusively in charity shops. Does that count?