Self-Service Checkouts 'Significant Factor' In UK Violent Crime Spike

A Sainsbury's customer leaves an 'unexpected item' in the bagging area yesterday.

Self-Service checkouts in supermarkets have been singled out as the UK's number one cause of violent, blood-curdling rampages, it was revealed this morning. 

Home Office statistics released yesterday show an alarming three hundred percent increase in spontaneous acts of vandalism, threatening behaviour, arson and murder since 2007.
"This sharp increase perfectly coincides with when Wilkinson's and Sainsbury's Local fired all their check-out staff and started asking customers to do that job instead." said FPWK Maiming Correspondent,  Danny Fishcharge.  "To be honest," he continued, "the Rozzers couldn't really give a monkey's toss about road rage or domestic abuse anymore - all their time is being spent retrieving the headless torsos of convenience store managers from burned-out deli counters."

Asda in Bolton yesterday after a customer 'just snapped'.

Supermarkets nationwide, including market leaders Tesco and Asda, have been slowly phasing-in the new self-checkout systems for the last few years, in what is seen by almost everyone as a wilful attempt to add a side-order of psychosis to the already soul-destroying experience of doing the 'big shop'.  "They want your sanity, and they will stop at nothing to get it." says Liam Franklin, spokesman for consumer rights group, bulliedatschool.org.  "It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such an obviously transparent way for them to make walloping piles of cash at the expense of customers' mental stability and by potting all their front-line staff, who then go on to claim benefits.  I mean, it's not as if the usurious cunts have even dropped their prices is it?" 

The main cause of the checkout-induced psychosis is believed to be the fairly crucial fact that they do not actually work and that most people could not operate them even if they did.  "'Please place the item in the bagging area' is quite a vague instruction."  Insists shopper, Doris, 72.  "I mean, IT IS IN THE FUCKING BAGGING AREA!!  If it asks me again, I'll ram-raid the fucking gaff and torch it!  I shit you not!"  

An unlikely defendant of the self-checkout is X-Factor supremo, Simon Cowell, whose vomit-inducingly-massive personal wealth has spiralled thanks to his pioneering new genre of 'Check-Out Chick' music.  "There is a never-ending supply of them!  These Self-Checkouts have freed up thousands of Check-out girls, none of which can sing, obviously."  Said Cowell, with a beatific, shit-eating grin.  "All I do is tart 'em up a bit, invent a tragic life story, usually involving some sort of unspeakable abuse or abandonment in childhood, teach 'em to screech through a few banal pop covers and Robert, as they say, is your Mother's brother." 

Former Sainsbury's checkout assistant, Betty: 'The new Janis Joplin' according to Cowell.

With his systematic destruction of the music industry almost complete, Cowell has revealed plans to spread his culture of materialism and banality into the recruitment business:  "We go live with the first series of  Who Wants To Be A Forensic Pathologist? next year."  Says Cowell.  "It's must-see TV.  A bit like CSI, except with more tits and arse and a lot more crying.  Playing with people's emotions just gives me the horn.  What can I say?"

Tesco declined to comment on the matter, which probably means they were too busy counting their gargantuan piles of cash.  Either that, or a lynch mob has stormed their headquarters and slaughtered everyone therein.  Neither would surprise us.

Johnny Plantpot
FPWK