Challenges of shopping in Accra

There is a shop /supermarket here in Accra which irritates me so much that sometimes I could scream, and sometimes I have walked out in frustration!

Yet I still shop there because it has a reasonable selection of the items I usually buy, and good prices. I know what I want when I go there, and can fill my shopping cart in 20-30 minutes.

Then comes the palaver, as we say in this part of the world. If I have selected soaps and toiletries I have to make sure to keep them separate from the groceries, as there are separate checkouts. This doesn't work too badly when I go with someone else, but if I am alone, I have to finish paying for one set of items before putting myself in another queue.

So two separate queues, and that assumes that there are enough young women working at the checkouts. Then one has to have everything one has bought and paid for checked yet again before being packed in boxes or plastic bags!

But actually this shop has four payment points, because if you want to buy hair products there is another cashier, and if you want towels or bedding, then there is another place to pay. And then there are some items - right at the checkout - which the cashiers tell you are not on the system, and therefore there is no receipt! Aaargh...

Recently - actually the week before Christmas - I went to do some pretty large buying, only to find that there was something wrong with the power, and the cash registers/pcs were not on UPS's so every time the cashier started inputting the purchases, she lost the totals and had to start again. After this happened three times it was suggested that a manual receipt might be appropriate. But needless to say that advice/comment didn't get us anywhere, so I just abandoned everything and told them my piece of mind. And of course there was no senior person, or manager around... And in this busiest of shopping seasons, were there extra staff to help? Not likely. We the customers can wait... and wait... and wait...

After ranting and raving, I did wonder, isn't there any analysis of purchases over time, days, weeks, months? Surely the manager and/or owner knows what the peak periods are, and one would think that a manager or owner could adjust staffing accordingly?

Wouldn't it also make sense to put all the product information in one database, which is shared by all the pcs/cash registers - which are of course protected by UPS's?

Is it asking too much for cashiers to smile, and say "thank you" "please come again" and so on?

Or is it that the owner knows how she managed her smaller shop in Mokola or any of the other markets, and feels that she doesn't really need to change her processes, as no matter what, the money keeps rolling in?

And people like me contribute to the continuation of this lousy service, because even while we complain, we return, so what is the incentive to change?