Tesco and the NHS are piloting a scheme that allows customers to check themselves for cancer at new 'Check Yourself Out' checkouts.
Tesco Head of New Ideas, Alex Fleming, said “The idea came from a checkout supervisor who used to be a doctors' receptionist. Seeing how popular the self checkouts are at Tesco and being aware of NHS cancer prevention campaigns that ask people to check themselves out, she challenged our development teams to come up with a checkout area where customers could scan themselves for early signs of testicular and breast cancer while the kids and Granny waited in the restaurant.”
The men's scanner is just like a normal checkout but at groin level allowing the customer to scan his testicles by dangling them in the little red beams. Some men may have to give them a swing or two until they get the reassuring bleep. The ladies scanner is at bust height as you have probably guessed and consists of two pads in which the lady compresses her bosom until it hurts. Just like the real thing except the customer decides when it hurts.
Unfortunately there was some confusion with the field trial. Many test customers were misled by the instructions and went to the self checkout instead of the 'Check Yourself Out' checkout.
Some Tesco regulars have been quite upset. Shoppers have observed male customers fumbling with their testicles and female customers fondling and squeezing their breasts instead of scanning groceries, swearing and calling for the assistant.
One customer said "They weren't just feeling themselves up, oh no! I stood and stared for hours as men attempted to run their bollocks past the scanner and women slapped their tits down one at a time on the little scale. Right disgusting I call it."
At times lengthy queues were forming. Testicles were coming up as plums and calling for weighing and women were being asked to press Cantaloupe, Gala or Honeydew. Tesco and the NHS refused to comment on the fiasco.
The problem has been observed nationwide with the exception of Tesco Croydon. Here customers and security staff saw nothing unusual.