SUPERMARKET customers have complained for years about the delays at the checkout. The situation has not improved, indeed, if anything it has got worse, particularly in my local store.

The minimum wage is £4.20 per hour so every adult customer is worth that. If therefore a customer is delayed for 15 minutes this amounts to £1 of the customer's time.

This presumably saves the supermarket an equivalent amount. Assuming say 1,000 customers per hour, then the supermarket is saving £1,000 per hour at the customers' expense.

When shopping this morning at least half the checkouts were closed with queues of three or more at the rest. I had to queue for 12 minutes. This is just not good enough.

JOHN MACINTYRE

Popham Court

Wood Lane

Chippenham