Last week after dropping the kids off at school I went into my local Morrisons store. It was a pretty big store that sold things like socks, olive oil and washing powder, so I was in a proper supermarket and not just my local Tesco Express.

But lo and behold, when I went to check out my purchases, there was not a single manned till open. “Nobody’s here until 10, darling,” explained the apologetic cashier who inevitably had to help me with an unexpected item in the bagging section (a packet of toothbrush heads that were too light to register on the pathetic rack you get at a self-service checkout). A week later, the same thing happened to me at Sainsbury’s, this time in the afternoon – not a single cashier to be found – apparently the only cashier who normally worked at that time (5pm; hardly an unusual time to be grocery shopping) was ill. Once again I had to pile my not inconsiderable purchase on a surface the size of a coffee table book, swearing as things rolled criss-cross off the surface.

To be honest, supermarkets are bargain hunters. Not only do we now have to pay deep for our groceries – Morrisons recently went from being the cheapest supermarket to the second most expensive – but we are now expected to behave like supermarket employees. But I’m not a supermarket employee, I’m a journalist, and to be honest, I’m a failure at getting over 50 items through a checkout in five minutes while having a pleasant conversation about the weather. Self-service checkouts might be fine if all you’re buying is a pint of milk and a loaf of bread, but there are no cashiers available? Will we soon be forced to mop the floor before we can leave the store with our purchases?

I’m not the only one who gets annoyed that customers always have to do all the work. A quick Google search turns up multi-page threads describing the excruciating nature of having your groceries beeped through the checkout (“they’re obsessed with bags”; “the technology isn’t fit for purpose”; “I hate being barked at by a machine”), and when I asked my friends for rants, they poured in. One environmentally conscious friend is freaking out because the bagging areas at self-checkouts don’t recognize the cloth bag she puts over them in anticipation of her purchases, so she has to transfer the rickety stack after paying instead of being able to put it straight into the bag. Another points out that problems always arise when you’re in a hurry and it’s absolutely impossible to get a clerk’s attention.

It’s a huge hassle when you can’t find the right fruit or vegetable on the touchscreen (is it any wonder frustrated shoppers pretend an avocado is a carrot?), or when the barcode on an item can’t be read properly, or, God forbid, when there’s no barcode at all when you’ve accidentally grabbed a loose item from a multipack (happened to me last week). “No, that’s not an ‘unexpected item,’ that’s a little kid touching things because that’s what little kids do,” says one frustrated parent bagging something for themselves. If you’re elderly or disabled, forget it.

Even the more upmarket supermarkets are not immune – one editor of this publication finds it extremely annoying when, for example, he tries to buy a bottle of rum in his local Waitrose – the clerk comes over to authorise the purchase but refuses to remove the security label from the bottle until he has paid. “I go there three times a week and they recognise me, so I’m not going to run away,” he complains. “It means that after paying I have to call them again and wait for someone to come. It’s really annoying.”

How can you escape this plague of modern life? There seem to be only two options. One is to go back to the old-fashioned method and buy your bread from the baker, your vegetables from the greengrocer and your meat from the butcher – if you’re lucky enough to live near such shops and have a whole day to shop. The other is to switch completely to online delivery. But oops, then you have to undergo the dreaded substitution and get mushrooms instead of tampons or beer instead of washing powder. I’m seriously considering boycotting supermarkets completely from now on. Either that or retraining as a cashier.