I do enjoy self checkout, but yesterday one demanded that I put my bag of rice back in my cart before I could continue. Something about heavy or fragile items. The problem was that I didn’t have a cart, but I did have several more items.
So is this a US specific thing or not? The article doesn’t really make that clear.
They better have some pretty specific definitions of “theft” vs “errors”. I think everyone has had the experience of missing something, wondering if you should go back and scan it or if that would get security called on you, etc.
Then you hear the stories like Walmart keeping a running tab and if you go over “$x” it’s grand theft and that’s when they arrest you.
It is the stores job and responsibility to make sure their stuff is all scanned, and rung up correctly. Not the consumer’s. You can’t just offload the labor costs and also shift the risk on the customer.
That’s why I hate self checkout, at least.
Fuck the fucking idiots who ruined this
I hope they keep them at least in parallel. I’m so much faster usually when doing self-checkout, because I often only buy a few items and can just skip the line.
Hell yeah brother!
I had someone at target try to direct me to the self checkout… I politely declined with “I don’t work here”
If I’m doing the work, I should damn well get the employee discount.
I literally don’t see the point of the employee. Just scan your stuff, pay, leave. You only have to scan what you choose to buy and take, not other people’s stuff.
Those are great entry-level jobs I’d rather not be eliminated… People > Computers in all ways.
My question is: Why have the employee there?
Why is them scanning my few items and pushing a button better than me doing it? We’re doing the exact same thing and it takes very little work from me. It seems to me like them being there is just adding work for the sake of a job. Pointless. It’s quicker and easier without them in my experience.
Why not add an additional person to the check-outs to hand me my bags so I don’t have to pick them up from the counter? We can keep adding work for the sake of jobs.
As seen from what the company claims in the article, the employee is there, and it is better that they are, because people are both accidentally and intentionally bad at scanning everything and they’re losing their ass.
Because of just that alone, the idea seems to be dying without the previous poster’s philosophical argument, which is not invalid, even coming into play.
I’d rather have one employee per register, not one employee managing 8 registers… Because when something goes wrong, you’re standing around with your thumb-up your ass waiting until someone comes to check your ID or fix whatever went wrong…
Besides, I like employing people, especially people who need the employment and don’t have access to careers that require an education. Everyone needs the ability to work, and part of that is making sure there are jobs…
Right, but that’s what you, a customer, want. These guys are scaling back the self checkouts because there is excessive shrink happening due to customers being totally untrained and some of them shoplifting much more easily because they’re barely supervised. They’re claiming to be doing it of their own accord because it is hurting profits by way of shrink, though many consumers happen to get what they prefer by coincidence in this case.
Right? If they’re not paying someone to scan and bag my stuff, I should be getting that savings.
Im surprised how many people here hate self checkout. I am much faster at scanning and bagging my own items than most cashiers. I almost never get errors, and if I do I know what to do to clear them typically. I always look at self check first, and then human lines second. Plus, none if that “how’s your day? Want to apply for a store credit card?” talk from a bored looking cashier.
It is not the self checkout that bothers me but the occasional check after you are done scanning.
funny, I like it for the opposite reason. If I am buying a lot of groceries and want to pack them into my shopping trolley nicely, but there’s a line of 10 people behind me at the cash register. So I need to rush to put everything in as the cashier will just put more and more stuff on the conveyor to the point where other peoples groceries end up mixed with my stuff, because there’s only two lanes and the person right behind me only had 5 things, so the cashier is already handling customer 3 while I’m still packing.
With self checkout, I can decide the speed I want to pack at, make sure I don’t put fragile stuff at the bottom, can take it nice and relaxed. there’s 6 other terminals, so it doesn’t feel like I’m the one blocking the line. Just an overall less stressful experience.
I kinda like people
What country is this? They seem to becoming more prevalent here. (Canada) My observation is that people generally look at the cashier lines. If there’s too long a wait, they head for the self-checkout. Or, if they only have a few items, they head to the self-checkout.
Self Checkout hat serious drawbacks:
- the cashiers are not free to be transferred to more important work, they are fired. this is objectively bad.
- regardless if you are scanning the items when putting them into the cart, or you are scanning them at the checkout point - you are now doing the cashiers work, but you are not compensated for your work. the price you pay is the same. you are now an employee, but without being paid. this is objectively bad.
- when a scanning error happens, you are now responsible for it. the industry word for it is theft. you are a thief if your scan isn’t correct. the responsibility shifted away from a worker with (depending on locale, forget the US for a moment) insurance and workers rights, allowing for smaller mistakes. But the retailer isn’t picking up the responsibility, it just heaps it on the customer. As they did with the work. this is objectively bad.
- depending on the efficiency of this system, the retailer chains (not stores, the chains) are increasing profits. the workers and the customers don’t see a dime of that. this is objectively bad.
A store near me in germany has recently switched a number of rows to self checkout. Absolute chaos, nobody wants it, long rows on the few chashier points. I saw it exactly one time, told me what i think, they tried to sell me the convenience, i told them what i wrote here plus that they are located in a commercial area, not a mixed housing/commerce area. Nobody goes there to buy a handful of stuff. People came for “Hamsterkäufe” (german colloquial, hamstering essentially: buying large quantities for reserve), self checkout is not convenient. I will not visit there anymore, there are other stores who don’t do this crap.
One more - what about produce? Most produce I encounter does not have any way to scan it and I’m not going to sit there and look up a bunch of stuff. Good checkers know the produce codes by heart and makes that process so much more efficient.
I wonder if anyone has become injured during self checkout and attempted a workers compensation claim
reduction in labour requirements is good, scanning errors should have updated legislation so that the company is responsible for reasonable mistakes, capitalism incentivizes improvements in efficiency and rewards it with increased profits.
Why is it good for anyone else?
because, in theory, it will lead to a reduction in prices. In practice this requires a highly competitive market that would exist significantly more if the antitrust laws were enforced.
Until unions are strong and anti compeition has a spine, labour efficiency should not be championed.
unions are just workers forming a monopoly
Do you know what monopoly means?
a single supplier of a good or service, workers supply labour to those that want to purchase it.
AKA trickle down economics. Thats worked really well
did trickel down economics not promote the exact opposite of antitrust enforcement?
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.
Self check-out should be for maximum 5-5 products, no more. They should be Fast lane only.
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).
I’m pretty sure delivery made it obsolete?
Curbside delivery is awesome, in many situations.
And they can afford to leave a few checkers in there for the situations that call for in-store shopping. That’s where self checkout would fail anyway.
If you buy a lot of fresh groceries, curbside is worthless. You either get a cartful of compost or stuff you can’t eat until next week
I used to think this, and maybe I’ve been lucky, but I get fresh produce whenever I try.
I would never get a huge produce order curbside, but I use it for the odd thing here and there.
Usually fresh veggies and fruit are about 90% of my cart. So I haven’t even tried curbside in years. I love how it is a useful job, though. Hopefully they are paying a living wage.
Delivery or click&collect is the worst option. I like to actually pick my fruit, veg & meat very specifically rather than just getting whatever the overworked grocery store worker throws in in the mad rush to complete orders in the allotted time.
This. I will not trust just anyone to pick my food for me.
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.
