I hate it and won’t miss it. The workflow is brittle and the anti-theft measures throw too many false positives. Every third time I use it, it requires staff intervention. I’ll always go to a checker if I have the choice of doing so.
I work retail and I’ve just come to the conclusion that… the system is just never gonna work for how people do.
They’re about as simple as you can make it; scan from one side to the other, scanning one item at a time, into your bag; when bag is full remove it and begin a new bag; continue until all your items are scanned and press “Pay” and follow the prompts.
About 1 in 3 people struggle with this. They scanned from right to left instead of left to right, they pressed “pay” too early and can’t figure out how to go back, they picked up a bag and waved something in front of the scanner so it scanned twice accidentally, there is an “ERROR: Unknown Barcode” popup but they were re-arranging their bag and can’t remember the last item put through, their kid or spouse decided to “help” and now the machine’s confused…
We’ve had them for years and it’s not getting any better. There’s no fixing it. Sometimes customers are dumb, sure (a few I question whether they can even read), but also you can’t blame people for just acting like humans.
the left to right requirement is solved my the much smaller machines that only have bags on the right and nothing on the left, without a scale thst does anything except weigh produce, and with an employee to overlook less than a dozen machines
You’re describing the exact machines I work with.
And no, people still manage to scan the wrong direction. Kind of a lot. You would think the bag racks would be a dead giveaway. They are not.
does the scan direction matter? because I’ve gone through them scannin things from right to left (putting them into a backpack on the floor) and it works fine.
Reads like a misleading statistic. Why would you invest in self-checkout if you already have it in place?
I mean, the fact that growth is slowing is relevant. What would be really interesting is: has the pace of opening new stores changed? Because if they’re opening lots of new stores without investing in more self checkout machines, that would be indicative that they’re going to be less of a thing going forward
It’s not my fault if the chocolate milk lid is loose.
You still need employees to help hapless customers and flag tech problems, the security cameras from above to dissuade theft, and someone to man the monitors of said cameras. They were banking on full human replacement. Can’t wait for our AI future with a store devoid of employees where they drop a net from the ceiling and pepper spray me because I forgot my eggplant was the organic price.
I don’t think this means they are actually pulling out.
Its unclear to me if the 36% is bc they already have the tech so they don’t plan to invest further and new adoption don’t happen bc everyone who “needs” it already has it or if the ones who have it are planning to get rid of it.
To me it just sounds like the people at the top didn’t foresee the problems that actually arise in a real world setting and their overconfidence gets adjusted to a more reasonable outlook but the self checkout will not go anywhere, 36% is still a pretty big number, self checkout might just not be feasible for a lot of places in the first place.
I see it being implemented in more places not less, they are just finetuning it now.
I never use self-checkouts but I observe them while walking by. I wait in line for a clerk at a cash register while all those in the self-checkout line seem to have a personal assistant.
I don’t see any evidence they’re “pulling back”, at least not in Europe. More and more are self service checkouts than ever before. That said I think stores prefer the kiosks where people scan their items than the kind where people have barcode readers and wander the store scanning (or not scanning) goods.
Mayor Mamdani said self checkout should, by law, provide a ten percent discount. That might have helped.
Because self checkout should provide a discount. And grocery store workers should be unionized.
I would be sad to lose my beloved self checkout :( I still want real people and full service lanes for bigger / more complicated purchases, but daily small purchases are much more relaxing self-serve.
Many likely believe self-checkout saves time compared to a cashier lane, but the opposite may be true.
Oh actual cashiers are faster no doubt, but they’re almost too fast. They’ll spin 15 items through in 3 seconds and I can’t check prices or bag fast enough. Once I’ve paid I still have a minute of bagging with next in line pushing me down and 2 minutes of reading the receipt prices left… in self check out I like being able to catch prices errors as they ring up and have less pressure bagging.
In my personal experience, especially in recent years, cashiers are often not even faster than self-checkout (though I’ve often experienced bagging pressure, lol). They’re either chatty extroverts who slow everything down because they’re socializing too much, or they’re new employees who don’t seem to know how to do their job yet (I assume this is prevalent due to high turnover, which is increasingly common).
Retailers within the same chain seem to have different policies on how many check outs are staffed.
I’m in Australia and buy our groceries from woolworths.
There’s one I go past on my way home and there’s very rarely any proper checkouts manned. There’s usually one “express” at which you can only buy 12 items or something, but there’s usually several people queued there.
The other one where we go to do our weekly shop always has several proper checkouts manned. Usually when there’s more than 1 person being scanned and 1 waiting they will call over the PA to get another staff member to open another lane.
IDK who’s decision it is or what strategy they follow to decide which stores will do check outs what way.
Good. I fucking hate them.
Do the work yourself and then wait ages while the one checkout assistant deals with everyone else’s issues because your checkout is happily accusing you of theft. Bullshit cost saving at the expense of the customer experience.
Don’t even get me started on Asda’s dystopian AI security gates. Want to take your young child for a piss? ACCESS DENIED! Try to open the gate manually? ALARM! ALARM! SOMEONE IS TRYING TO ASSERT THEIR HUMANITY!
in our area, people are just smashing in grab at a grocery store, because they arent even allowed to give them “customer” service anymore. these people are not hurting for money, but to fuel thier addiction(very high area of people doing various drugs. not even allowed to lock up the expensive stuff, because idiot regionals think the store needs to have all items available for customers.
In North Italy almost all groceries stores offer
Self checkout: where you do your groceries and at the end you scan the item one by one
Advanced self checkout (you are registered to the store): you get a PDA and you scan and bag all the groceries while you roam the store. Then you scan a qr, you get the total, pay and go. No Id checks for alcol or anything (sometimes you get a random partial re-reading where you get an sales person coming and scanning 3 items at random from your bag to check if you scanned them, or a total re-read)
Normal slow cashier point
Advanced self checkout is something I would never give back. Even if I buy a lot of things, the quick payment process is so quick that nothing compares.
I can enter and leave a store in under 10 minutes buying a lot of stuff (note that I go there walking multiple time per week)
We have that system in Sweden as well. In my experience if you add up the total time lost fiddling with the scanner while browsing the store it’s usually much more than the time you save during checkout.
I use self-checkout occasionally. On the one hand I don’t absolutely hate if I have a few items. Yea, I cannot scan nearly as quickly as the pros. Which is fine if I have three things. Luckily I have mever either been accused of theft myself or seen it happen to anyone else.
That said, I will absolutely not be sad to see these machines go. Nothing of value will be lost.
Hire more cashiers and pay them a living wage so they don’t have to immedeately sign up for food stamps right after being accepted into employment. Our government should not be subsidizing the billionaires, who are all mentally unwell from having long since surpassed mere riches.
I’m pretty sure I stolen bottle of wine because of the self checkout.
I’m bought a bunch of stuff and some wine, I scan to the bottle and it beeped and I put it in the bag but then no one came to ID me when it came time to paying, presumably it somehow didn’t register.
May be that they used a camera with face age guessing
