I had a shopping list of gripes about our supermarket duopoly even before I was wrongly accused of theft.

After recently returning home with two bags of groceries that cost over $100, I read an article by this masthead’s Shane Wright about how our supermarket duopoly are milking us on prices. I found myself mooing in agreement. Seriously, how can cheese cost that much?

But I have an even bigger beef – between escalating prices, lack of service, self-check-out surveillance and pushing their own brands over others I trust – I’ve come to the conclusion Coles and Woolies are having a laugh at us, their customers.

My disillusion about my local supermarket came to a head one evening last week when, not for the first time, there were exactly zero conveyor checkouts open at the prime dinner-shopping time of 6pm. Instead, one single staff member was covering both the 12-item-or-less mini-checkout and the service desk, where a single return or request for ciggies can spark despair for those waiting in line.

I gave up and headed to the self-service area, a decision I suspect is precisely what powers-that-be want to happen. I mean, those box-like mini-checkouts seem to have been carefully designed to dissuade people from using them. Forget 12 items, if you have more than two you quickly discover they offer neither space nor any logical flow.

I wasn’t the only one. The tiny area, crammed with 10 self-service machines, was packed. The only other staff member visible in the entire supermarket was a teenager who raced between machines that kept deciding an item had been scanned too fast. Or too slow. That a bagging area was too light. Or heavy.

I then discovered that, since my last visit, cameras had been installed above each self-service checkout; a level of surveillance I suspect I’ve been spared longer than most due to living in a regional area. Evidently, this is a response to an increase in retail theft.

During a city trip earlier this year, I had a camera decide I was stealing two magazines. I’d left them in my trolley while attempting to pay for the food I was buying because I was going to purchase them from my business, rather than personal, account. Although the matter was eventually resolved, had I been at a checkout with a staff member, I’d have flagged this plan well before being taken for a thief.