Not only that, but the reduced shrink during Covid, tucked up to “normal” levels… but this was then presented as a 100pct increase compared to last year… and thus a huuuge increase.

Not just that. When self-checkouts were first introduced, the argument was that even with the added shrink, the benefits outweighed the costs of employing an actual person. Now, of course, the shrink rates have no longer made this profitable and shareholders are crying.

Personally, I’m fine with self-checkout since I can bag my own groceries exactly how I want them and without having to interact with anyone. That said, I will not be stopping for anyone to check my receipt and my items. If they don’t want the possibility of shrink, then they shouldn’t have gone this route in the first place.

I never understood the “less social interaction” argument. Cashiers don’t care if you go through the whole interaction with them without making eye contact and only saying what’s absolutely necessary for the transaction. Plus, self checkouts are very picky and if you mess anything up even a little bit they start loudly inviting someone to come help you anyway.

I would rather spend (modestly) more time checking my own than less time standing idly with nothing to do but watch some kid checking out my goods. It feels better to be an active participant. Where it breaks down for me and my 12 items is when all the self-check lanes are clogged with people trying to ring up a full cart of groceries, who still haven’t figured out how to work self-checks, who are encumbered by a baby in one arm and a phone in the other hand, or who just can’t move all that well.

Managers using the presence of self-check as an excuse to understaff the actual checkouts makes all of those problems worse, and makes the checkout process suck for everyone.

When self-checkouts were first rolled out, my friends and I loved them.

As twenty-something introverted nerds, it helped a lot when buying “embarrassing” things like condoms.

You didn’t have to have the checkout person giving you the stink-eye because they’re ultra religious or something.

Now, twenty-some years on, they’ve been abused to the point that some places they’re all that’s ever open, Target and Walmart seem to be the biggest offenders there. When there’s a line down three different aisles because the self-checked is so backed up, it’s defeated the purpose of creating “efficiency.”

However, I’ve noticed that about a lot of business practices lately. We’ve rounded the bend and they’re still doing things that aren’t actually producing efficiency anymore. Like staffing with nothing but a skeleton crew, so anytime someone calls out sick, everything falls apart because you’re short a person. Personal opinion, but if one person missing work wrecks everything, that’s not an efficient way to schedule people.

It’s proof that these MBA business school chucklefucks are just repeating the shit they tell each other ad nauseum, because when it comes to real-world results the results are abysmal and inefficient.

Your store did it smart. My local grocery store has 8 self checkouts by one door and 8 more on the other end by the other door. Although there are 10 or more normal checkouts with human cashiers, Ive never seen more that two open at a time.

They’re a godsend at Costco when I have like 5 items and the normal lines are super long.

My supermarket implemented these barcode scanner you can carry in the store so that you can scan and put your stuff in your grocery bags in your cart as you go, as well as some scales so that you can also scan those items paid by weight, which you can then scan at the self-checkout terminal. They also spot-check every 4th scanners and scan for random items in the cart to make sure you actually added them to your list as a theft-deterrent.

It’s way faster and less finicky than dealing with the scale that checks if you added the item you just scanned (and complains often that something’s wrong).

I hope this kind of system will stay, it’s really nice going to a self-checkout terminal and pay with your bags already filled.

Yeah. I’m fine with using them at wal mart most of the time, but the grocery store where I load up at once every other week just went full send on self checkout and outside of being a pita dealing with so many bags and no place to set them without going into the cart with stuff you haven’t even scanned yet, some have a stupid conveyor belt after you scan and if you let like ten items get on it the damned machines locks you out until a worker comes by and unlocks it after the belt has been cleared off. Total piece of junk, but there’s now usually only 1 real person.

Is there something weird about how your Home Depot did it? I absolutely love the self-checkout at the Home Depots in my state. They all have the wireless hand scanners so I just pull my cart up, beep beep beep beep beep beep beep and off I go I fucking hated before they had self checkout at Home Depots it always took for fucking ever now I’m in and out regardless of whether I need one thing or 20 things

Ok now I am curious where you live that you have to provide ID to shop. Here in the US we scan the items and then swipe our payment card, the ID is only used to check your age for tobacco and alcohol purchases which can’t be sold to minors. An employee has to come look at the ID to make sure a minor hasn’t borrowed someone else’s, so it doesn’t even get scanned. Employees just swipe their work badge and confirm that they checked your age.

As for the pain, a lot of self checkout systems have very limited space and can be awkward to run all your items through. Manned stations have the conveyor so you can unload multiple items from your cart at a time to be scanned. They also have more end space so you can have room to bag everything if you are doing a big shopping trip.

Not for me. Take in consideration that I don't do a lot of shopping. Two of the maybe four times times I used a self check-out last year;

1. So I go to the self check-out. One of my items is on clearance. I scan it. It shows full price. turns out I needed to scan a different bar-code for the clearance. However, I can't remove the already scanned bar-code from the list, so now I need to call assistance.
2. My kids drink a lot of coke zero, so when it goes on sale I usually buy a lot of it. In this case, I took all that's left in the store. I scan one bottle, do a quick count and adjust the number of bottles accordingly. I place the bottle in my cart and realize I've counted one too many. I can't take it off, and now need to call assistance.

Are you Dutch? I recall an old NJB video describing how Dutch supermarkets worked like this. (Plus, Martin is a name I associate with the Netherlands…)

But no. Most often, you put stuff in your trolley or basket, then when you get to the checkout, you scan the things and bag them yourself one-by-one, then pay.

Here in Australia, one of our two main supermarket chains in the last 2 years rolled out something similar to what the Netherlands has had for at least half a decade. You use their app on your phone and scan things with the app as you go, before paying through the app and scanning a QR code at the exit.

The other main chain, and the two main smaller chains, have made no moves to follow, so you’re stuck with a long line for a small number of open checkouts, or the self-checkout where you have to scan everything after you get to the checkout.

Wait, you don’t have to scan every item at the checkout?

I bet it depends heavily on what stores you frequent and where. Also which country ofc. In from the Netherlands and have similar experience, some stores even have portable DIY scanners… so I scan while I shop and just hand in the scanner and pay.

It works like that for me too. Even better if your list is short enough to avoid getting a cart.

My local shop around the corner doesn’t even require scanning a card or anything like that. Just get the handscanner at the entrance by pressing the button on the screen. Scan your shit and put it in the bag, go to the self checkout, put the scanner in the machine, touch your phone to pay and it’s done. I love it, I can be in and out in about 1 minute if I only need a couple of things. They’ve put in about 10 self checkout machines in the place of 3 old fashioned checkouts. Usually there is only one oldskool checkout open with a large line of old people.

Only irritating thing is people with like 100 items scanning all their shit at the checkout (if you don’t want to use the handscanner), it takes forever. I don’t get why people do that, but luckily there are enough self checkouts there is always one free.

Is this not how it usually works?

I want to shop without them generating a profile of me. I want to pay with cash. I don’t even want them to know who I am. And I don’t want random checks…

Fortunately, I have never seen your scenario in Germany where I’m living…

Consumers want this technology to work, and welcomed it with open arms.

That’s an actual sentence from that actual article. The fuck? I read it, like, four times. Is that even - what??

I think I used self checkout once in my life. I very quickly realized that they're pushing their work onto me and never went to self checkout again.

I also think those jobs matter. Not great jobs, sure. But they are jobs. I'm sure tech will eliminate cashier jobs someday but I don't see self checkout doing so.

Yes, but: They can shift the cost of theft onto consumers this way, without having to make their line item budget for payroll any bigger. The retailers don’t give a fuck as long as they’re not the ones paying.

Insurance is more likely to pay for shrink than paychecks.

Quite some logic.

Yeah, it’s win/win to the company. They save money on workers and charge more for the goods. They’re double dipping. It’s great… For them. But that’s the way the capitalist machine works and is going to continue working until we fix the whole damn thing. As unfortunate as it is, this is basically expected behavior in our current society.

Over here they increase their costs because we have no choice but to pay it.

and frankly the amount they lose is nothing to the amount they steal.

You go mate !

Oh come on, really?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about some big chain losing some money, for me it’s a matter of principle to not fuck with the system unless really needed.
Two cans of soup, I don’t care. But pine nuts? Cheating the system for some “luxury” goods and not some essentials is pretty low.

Same. And knowing that I have been an efficient cashier in the past makes the awkwardness of the self checkout super frustrating. If you have the items coming down the belt and are in a groove and so it regularly, you can get through a cart of items so fast. Between the poor UI and theft deterrence the self checkout is way slower.

Ans what happens to the people whose jobs are eliminated by the self checkout? Yeah, it’s a crap job, I know, I’ve done it. But if the only alternative in our current system is more homelessness and absolutely desperate poverty then I’ll skip the self checkout. I’d love to live in the glorious future where machines do all the grunt work and people are free to spend their time in better ways. But it seems humanity can’t have nice things.

I wonder if this sentiment was common when the introduced the stores where you have to go and pick up the products instead of telling someone what you want.

Yanks seems to have totally fucking bungled self-checkouts. Dunno how they managed that but almost every single complaint i hear is from them.

I am surprised too. Self checkout only intensified recently in my country. What is surprising is that the dislike seems to come from the corporate side. So it exist since 1990, and just now they realised they are loosing money on it. Pretty weird… But I’m all in on big corpo losing money because they didnt want to pay wages.

Mark my word: they installed self-Passport machine in Paris airport in planning for the Olympic tourists grand arrivals. It will be a disaster!! It doesnt work, it is slower than having an human check your pass, and a lot of travelers will be very angry at thoses machines. Plus I suspected you can trick them easily if you’re a criminal

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You would hate the self checkouts around here then.

Policy seems to be that if there isn’t a queue then they should shut off half of them to save power. So now there is a queue for the self checkouts.

Self-checkout does not make up for stupid people.

My personal favorites are the ones that scan everything, then start bagging everything, then start looking for their card in their handbag, shoulder bag, backpack, pockets etc.

My biggest complaint about self checkout at Walmart (specifically) is that I still have to wait in line! There’s 20-ish self checkout machines of which 15-20 will be working and like fucking forty regular checkout lanes with two cashiers working. So of course there’s going to be a long ass line for the self checkout!

It’s lane upon lane of wasted space. If you’re only ever going to have 3-4 people working then you should only have 3-4 non-self checkout lanes!

The article says the expected cost savings haven’t been realized because people steal stuff and generally suck at scanning & bagging their own groceries.

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There are stores trialling exactly your preferred method. One of my local supermarket chains has portable barcode scanners on a wall. You pick one up, scan your groceries as you collect them, then take the scanner to a self checkout that links to the scanner. At that point you pay for your items and leave.

small talk? If you start small talk in Germany, the cashier will probably be confused…

I stopped using them. It’s always something, requiring me to wait for and deal with people.

The rack with the mobile scanners is full, and scanner not in the rack is not paying, so flag someone to deal with it.

The thing double scanned an item, and it takes someone from the shop to remove the scan, so wait and then explain.

I had a coupon, but the system can’t deal with those. Again wait and explain.

And because now apparently I’m a trouble maker I get flagged for a random check by the system regularly. Again wait and deal with that.

On average, it turned out to be less waiting and dealing with people by getting in line at the regular cashier.

Scan and Go is becoming very wide spread in Denmark. It’s lovely! Cuts down the time for a quick shopping trip on the way home from work to less than half

I always use the store app to scan as I shop and just pay at the machines at the exit here in Portugal. Hate shopping any other way.

What you’re requesting is exactly how Amazon fresh works. the cart itself has barcode scanners on it

That system has been a thing for at least a decade in most supermarkets in Sweden, is it not a thing in (I assume) the US?

You can do scan and go at Walmart now, if you were previously only using that at Sam’s Club. It’s fantastic.

Is self scan that rare around you? One of our (Latvia) two big brand supermarkets have scanners you carry around, then deposit at the slef checkout lines. The other one, however, I just scan everything with my phone, then at checkout scan a QR code with my phone and pay.

Sure, it works great if you’re a single person who doesn’t have all that much to buy, but here’s the thing; if you’re shopping for a family or a multi person household or whatever, and you have to buy a lot of things at once, your self checkouts just plain suck ass because pretty much no matter what you do, you’ll get dinged with an error message every ten or 12 items and have to wait for the overworked and underpaid attendant to come free you up so you can keep going until the next inevitable fuckup.

Self checkout is fine if you have something like 15 or less items, but anything more than that and it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

Jeez you sure love working for free

The two places I go to that have self-checkout seem to have disabled the scales. The only thing that is an understandable hassle is having to check my ID for alcohol.

One of those places knows me well enough to authorize the sale before I can get my ID out, which might be a sign that I have a different problem than the hassle of having my ID checked at the self-checkout.

they also often dont work with any discounts or bulk buy

And my biggest problem is that the self-checkouts I see in stores around me do not accept cash (even though earlier there WERE cash-accepting models - in the chain now merged with another). So even if there are faster lines to the self-checkout, that doesn’t help me much.

Self checkouts don’t have those here. Just scan all the barcodes. What is even the point of the scales?

And have us do the work for them.

I said all this at the beginning self checkout. I’m for it, but where’s the discount for using it since I know it’s dropping staff hours tremendously.

I’ve seen stores drop from 6 cashiers to 1. Listen corp, my din your work is saving you gobs in taxes, insurance, HR costs, scheduling, etc, etc. Where’s my cut?

It’s faster until you need the human operator to keep coming over because the anti-theft sensors keep getting tripped up by false positive readings. Or you need to find some vegetable code that a normal cashier has memorized.

Self checkout is great when it’s done well, and total shit when poorly executed. And unfortunately, it’s not always just a matter of technology (which normally keeps improving); it’s often a matter of business model: sometimes customer convenience is really important, other times loss prevention (which creates frustration) is more important.

I’ve seen countless good self-checkout experiences backslide into crap experience because the business felt that a controlled client is more profitable than a convenienced client.

At my grocery store the line for self checkout is longer than for the registers, so people would very much be waiting for you. And instead of the time the cashier takes to scan all your stuff being out of your control, they’ll judge you personally for being slow instead.

Over here it’s a mix, some chains use the scales + sensors, some use simple scan machines. I absolutely hate the scale + sensors, some of them are almost completely unusable and the attendants have to keep running around fixing errors or resetting the ones where people just give up mid-cart and go to a manned checkout.

Can confirm. The only deterrent is the potential for an random bag check by an employee but that never happened to me in years of using self checkout. Some shops have a worker over watching a dozen of stations to help out or just identify suspicious behavior but it’s very unintrusive.

Here in Finland handheld scanners have been getting added to more shops, you grab one, scan and bag as you go, and at the end you return the scanner and pay it all at once.

For sure, I use self checkout at at least 5 different places in China and they all work fantastically, including a Walmart.

To be fair, anything that allows a Swiss person to avoid small talk will be overwhelming popular.

I avoid places where self checkout isn’t available. And, it’s not just me. I stopped counting how many time the cashier is jobless and the self checkout area is full.

I'm sure in the future we won't interact with people at all

Oh god I wish.

I can scan and bag my stuff better and faster any cashier I’ve met. Fuck standing in lines for someone to do it slower and shittier for me.

they back it up with companies rellying heavily on self chekout losing more money

Oh shit, I just started going to Aldi and sounds like I am one of the idiots doing it wrong. The store I am going to seems to be setup same as a typical SCO though. I don’t know that I have noticed a bagging counter. Will be looking next trip I guess.

Sorry, they lock you in until you pay? What country is this?

Turns out even under socialism, I’d still rather have someone else scan and bag my things.

Why? Seems like a win for everyone. The end goal should be to eliminate all jobs so we dan spend our time doing things we enjoy.

nope. hate dealing with a cashier, never going back. If I’m grabbing an item or two, I can be out in like 2 minutes. Most places I don’t even have to touch the screen or fiddle with a card reader. scan scan, tap phone, I’m out! even at wallmart you can finish a transaction without pushing anything.

Where do you live that supermarkets don’t have this?

Sam’s club has this and it is amazing

Many German supermarkets do this. You scan as you put items in the trolley.

Really? Do you actually go shopping? It’s a phenomenally regular occurrence.

Thinking of those two clowns at the hardware store, clearly following me around, very unsubtly acting like they were sure i was there to shoplift. They kept asking what i was looking (which was actually non specific christmas gifts) so I started throwing out meth ingredients, phosphorous, ammonia, neo citran daytime, sodium hydroxide, caustic soda, lye…I know that went right over their heads because they found me a gallon of pure crystal form dry lye. Anyways, she bagged half the stuff up without ringing it through. I’m sure i started a rumour in town, when they told their husbands bout the big biker looking dude asking for obscure chemicals. Took the lye though, that’s stuffs hard to find these days.

You mean selecting the non-organic item but you actually have organic one? Would be an “honest” mistake.

It surely is. My hobby is to look at a person entering self checkout to remember who they are, as I enter the human checkout. I’m usually bagged, and paid whilst that person on the self checkout is still working through their groceries. The professional human is SO much faster than the self checkout.

It’s not always the case, but in the vast majority of times it is, so I choose speed over doing it myself.

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I really prefer self-checkout too. There was an initial year or two when the machines were kinda buggy and did that “unexpected item in bagging area” a lot, but you work around it: just never put your shopping bag on the scale. I scan fast and efficiently, and start bagging my stuff while the payment card is doing its thing. And when I bag my own stuff I can be sure the bread is going to be on top.

The only things I run into trouble with these days: 1. when the backend database doesn’t have the right info, like some produce type is entirely missing, or the only option is for organic(=more $ and you know darn well you’re not going to select that one). 2. Some stores don’t use the barcode on the fruit labels, and you scan the label by accident or out of habit because the other store does use those barcodes. Both situations need a clerk to clear them, and that’s 90% of the delay.

I wish I knew why Target is limiting to 10 items. It’s pretty annoying. I suspect that theft is what’s driving retailers away from it, rather than customers hating it.

To prove your point, will you be my friend?

If you are talking about Germany, yes. I recently (3 years) moved to Germany and I love the tech. I can avoid having contact with the rude people that usually work at the tills.

My only critique of self checkout is, when the machine has an error, or if I’m buying alcohol, I have to wait 5 minutes for someone to come fix the problem because there’s 10 self checkout kiosks, but only one employee tending them.

The machines had problems like 10 years ago, but I’ve had zero problems with them in recent years. Used to be a few of them were always broken and bulk items were hard to find, but now I’ve not run into any problems. They’re great for small purchases, but they’re too cramped for big purchases so the belts are still needed.

I see you’ve never had to use Kroger self checkouts. It’s almost like they’re purpose built to slow you down.

I use them but don’t like them. Putting people out of work should not be the goal. I mean it’s like the manufactured this only have one or two tills open at a time. Then bring in self checkouts to fix the issue the problem. They could have had more cashiers in the first place.

If another human being speaks to me I run home and tweet about it

Found the drug dealer.

My favorite thing about some self checkouts is one big line for like 8 checkouts. You don’t have to gamble with who you get in line behind.

I feel the people who don’t like self checkout keep trying to push the idea that it’s bad or putting people out of jobs, rather than just admitting it’s convenient for most people. If i want to buy one or two items I don’t want to queue up behind 5 people with a full trolley.

Especially those ones where you can grab a hand scanner to scan your items as you go, and use it to put everything into the terminal when paying.

Having express self-checkoit is great. The Kroger near me went full-self-checkout. They have large kiosks that mimmic the traditional checkout belt kiosks, except the customer scans at the head of the belt and the items move into the bagging area.

If you have a full cart, you scan all the items, checkout, walk to the end of the belt, and bag all of your items. Takes twice as long as bagging while a cashier scans (for solo shoppers), and because of the automatic belt the next customer cannot start scanning until you finish bagging, or their items will join the pile of your items.

It effectively destroys all parallelism is the process (bagging while scanning, customers pre-loading their items with a divider while the prior customer is still being serviced), and with zero human operated checkouts running you get no choice

I have a lot of anxiety, sure I can just ‘get over it’ or ignore it and go to the actual cashier, but I love having the ability to scan things myself, it is also much quicker because I usually have less items than most. They still have the employee there, there are still other cashiers so I’ve never seen it get too hectic where I go.

Lmao how’s Walmart so bad with their self check out but Sam’s club is easy? Hate using it at Walmart if I have more than a few items. At Sam’s I can load up my cart, scan and pay for everything on the app, person at the exit does a quick check, and I’m out.

Some of the supermarkets here have self scanners with a belt, and a packing area big enough for 5-6 bags, it’s pretty awesome.
Aside from the odd age-restricted check, the only real problem is Mrs. Scoggins buying three items on it over the course of 20 minutes

If you work for free, you’re bound to make mistakes. Sometimes a pound of fish might get rung up as a pound of oranges.

Grocery stores used to have you bring in a list of what you needed and the grocer picked it all out for you from behind the counter and packed it up. If you walk through a store and put your own groceries in a cart, you’re already doing free work for the owner of the store.

I wouldn’t change that, and I wouldn’t change self checkout. I prefer both. It’s not work if I’d rather do it.

(The first paragraph is a true story, but also a joke. Doing “work” is all relative.)

If they cannot apply best before rebates then the store needs to change the system of applying them. One of our local chains uses orange stickers with new barcodes for best before discounts so the self checkout scans and accepts the new barcode with a lower price.

It is 100% implementation. In other countries there’s either a staff member watching over all the self checkouts to make everything go smoothly, or a kind of electronic gate that only let’s you leave after scanning a receipt. Usually the scanners are much more reliable and theres a usable UI. Plus a modicum of trust. Also thise hand scanners you can carry around the shop so you don’t have to do it at the end (although I think if seen some of them around now).

In the UK there’s usually the weight detection mechanic that slows things down 10x and no interactivity with the machine other than it loudly telling you you’re doing it wrong. You often need to ask for help anyway.

If it was a quick and easy experience the scheme wouldn’t fail.

It absolutely infuriates me when I go into a store and this thing isn’t working or they don’t have it to begin with. And now I have to stand behind someone in line who wants to pay with 350 coupons all of which are out of date except for one, but they don’t know which one so now we’re going to have to wait while the cashier checks each one.

CROM!<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/34687d00-b7d0-451e-99ae-0a869a7fa099.png">

Absolutely agree.

Here most self-checkouts are often called something like “express checkout” There is often a rule of max 15-20 items per customer (The rule is not enforced in any way, so you are just supposed to follow it for others sake)

I don’t think that’s what the article is talking about. The cart and hand scanner are different.

I know entirely too many people who don’t use the hand scanner, and it’s crazy to me. It is by far the most efficient way to shop. I get irrationally angry when there are people in the self checkout line with a whole cart of groceries. This line is not for you. Get with the times.

You’re obligated to do it too. They used to pay baggers and it was a separate job from cashiers. Now you play at both, super part time, and with all the money they’re saving they graciously raise the price on everything.

I feel like this is a symptom of the writers saying, “What would make a good headline?” And not “Would this headline be misleading?”

Same in Europe, it seems a success.

Business owners are told it will save them money, they’re told that everyone in the “first world” is doing it, and they’re told that customers love it.

All lies. But business owners routinely make foolish decisions in hopes of trimming costs by a few percentage points, only to discover they’ve been fucked sideways by slick marketing teams and smooth talking salesmen.

Also having one employee for 8 machines doesn’t sound like a failure

It’s more like 1 employee for 20 machines at my local supermarket. They’ve been increasing the size of the self checkout area as more customers use them.

Hey, as someone who has a job installing and configuring and training independent stores with the NCR version, thank you for your basic ability to recognize cause and effect.

Genuinely, the number of people that hold something in their hands after scanning it and see and hear the thing telling them to put it down multiple times and then get mad because it won’t let them keep going while it is explicitly saying out loud to place the item down really makes me wonder about us as a species.

Like, I know that’s not how Walmart does it, because they turned off security as a consequence of only paying vendors on scan data. If a cart full of stuff goes out the door at Walmart, for the most part Walmart doesn’t pay for it either. Everyone else in the world needs to have some assurance against theft.

Anyways, have one person hand the other person stuff from the cart and the other person both scan and bag everything and you should get things done a bit quicker.

Edit: I know that traditionally, asking “wHy DoWnVoTe” is kinda a deathknell for the poster, but I am actually 100% open to hearing the criticism to this comment.

Or just RFID chip all the food items and I just walk out of the store and it charges me later based on what I walked out with. If no account exists automatic deployment of security personnel to catch the thief.

This exactly.

Also trying to fit a bunch of awkward stuff off the scale and some of it is leaning against the edge and you have to balance everything just right cause heaven forbid it be off by a gram. Or it getting stuck because a bag doesn’t weigh enough to register.

Like if you don’t trust me fine but don’t half ass it. If I’m gonna steal something from a grocery store it’s gonna way more than a gram and sure as heck isn’t gonna be an empty plastic bag.

The value added by a cashier is not worth the amount of time I expend waiting for them to become available. Self checkout is a win for me and for the retailer.

You are free to wait for a full-service cashier if you like. I’d rather be on my way.

What I’m annoyed by is when going to a cashier they expect you to bag your own groceries, and give me attitude when I ask them to do it.

I much rather prefer self check out. I don’t need to deal with the attitude.

Nah fuck that, I don’t have to talk to a single person, don’t have to wait in line, don’t have to have forced smalltalk, it’s great

I thought lemmy was anarchists and you have everyone simping for the corporate food overlords, what gives?

They let me avoid human interaction if I choose

Not even that, really. There’s always a cashier or two who needs to hover over my shoulder to check an eye or protect against shoplifting or help with a malfunctioning device. The change is in their role. Cashiers are no longer helpfully bagging your groceries, they’re just functioning as underpaid rent-a-cops.

It would be fun to have worked on this tech and then see it helping others by failing or being sabotaged, lol.

The original check-out lanes were already incredibly efficient. Self-checkout is comparatively clunky and time-consuming, which is why you’re encouraged to use lanes for more than 15 items.

I wouldn’t call it particularly helpful, even from a labor standpoint. Everyone is functionally more miserable than they were ten years ago. What we’ve got with this technology is a sunk cost that businesses are loathe to write off as a failure.

They let me avoid human interaction if I choose

I used to like them for this at least, but now my local store has someone come talk to you and do the whole “did you find everything OK?” and loyalty card conversation while the other machines in the background need their attention and people are getting impatient. if you have headphones in they’ll literally just keep trying and wait until you remove them to say “yep, nope, no thank you, don’t need the pamphlet, thanks, nope, yep all good”.

I avoid them entirely now, there’s no value and only drawbacks. I’ll wait in the long human checker line as long as I need. the human doesn’t stop scanning randomly half way through the slow scan, bag, wait loop and start emitting loud alarm noises for an employee to come over (sometime in the next 10 minutes) and be forced to review a video of your whole self-checkout process titled “CHECK THOROUGHLY FOR THEFT” before they can unlock the machine and stop the alarm.

The machines don’t like when you accidentally spill cooking oil on them

Now that AI is getting decent, it can be quite fun coming up with creative insults when its foisted where it shouldn’t be and creates significant extra friction for otherwise mundane daily tasks.

I do just about everything I can to not walk into a Wal-Mart, and on the rare occasions I do, the self checkout there is notably worse than basically everywhere else. There’s something with the way they have it implemented where it just doesn’t work right.

Most other places it’s okay; it feels like it has improved in most places; I remember when it used to be pretty bitchy about placing items in bags and whatnot; in fact it seems a lot of places have stopped making them talk, which is a huge plus.

Walmart is a penal colony

Half of our self check stands around town are empty too, mainly because they are seemingly perma broken

monthly subscription for “Walmart+” where you can scan and pay for your items as you shop and never even have to go through the registers or kiosks at all.

This isn’t entirely true. You still have to stop by the self checkout and scan a code on the screen there and confirm a few things, but it is way faster.

I don’t use self-checkout for one reason only: if I am doing the work, why am I paying the same price. It’s just another scheme by the business people to get them more money.

There are far better ways of queuing, and they can always hire more people to deal with the demand. But no, they figured out hiring fewer people makes it inconvenient for many, which is an incentive to use self checkout, which gives them even more money on top of already high margins.

Same thing with gas stations. No thanks. I’ll happily leave a tip to people providing the service, but it’s a matter of principle. You don’t go to a restaurant and rummage through their refrigerator to get the meal, nor should you serve yourself anywhere else.

The savings is your time. It’s generally much faster to go self checkout, especially for small purchases.

I’ve never seen the level of problem described in the article. Self checkouts work fine around here (Massachusetts) and people seem to prefer them to the cashier checkouts.

I go to the cashier’s and try to never self checkout. It has always seemed like a way to reduce the number of employees. The price of goods sure hasn’t gone down as a result. People need jobs. These stores are rich enough. I realize that’s a little naive but that’s where I am with it.

you swipe your credit card, pick up food or drink in a little monitored area and walk out with your items.

The only time I used one of those was at a conference center and I was trying to get a cheap lunch. The item I wanted was out of stock in the computer system so it wouldn’t let me purchase it and the item I grabbed was charged as something else entirely (netting me a $3 discount at least)

Vending machines have been around for years and their faultiness has long been a trope in media. I’m not holding my breath for employee-less checkout

So much this. I started using it during Covid, and it’s been so great that I prefer Sams over any other shopping experience.

Though the BBC is obviously identified most with UK, it in fact has many international publications. This article focuses on the US, with only a reference to “Booths in the UK”, a very small supermarket group I have never heard of before.

Self checkout in the UK is commonplace and largely popular, though some of the general customer criticisms in the article are familiar to me as a regular user of them.

Same here in Switzerland, very well made and pretty efficient. But I really hate the fact that I’m basically working for the store.

They’re very popular here too, but a lot of older people really struggle with them, so they’re widely hated by boomers that want things to be like the 80’s again.

The technology is a bit shit, and more often than not there’s a lot of waiting around for someone to unblock you. Where it was probably a “failure” to many is in the initial promise of being able to get rid of employees and replace them with self-scan.

Same but mostly because I like to scan each item and see it associated with the price on the screen before adding another item

Don’t forget to sweep the floors and bring in the carts

I use self checkout on the machines that don’t weigh what you buy. Those work so well. The kind that have to weigh what you buy are slow and they always have an issue when I put items in bulk on them. Like two cans of beer if I don’t set both of them down at once it just breaks down and tells me I have the wrong weight in any configuration.

Relatable.

Problem is they save on the humans so you have to do their work too but you don’t see any price reduction or benefit for doing so, and that is on top of all the usability issues…

It gets better, they’ve converted the Walmart tech help for the self checkout into sales people for their master card now.

some terminals have 2 or even 3 cameras pointed at you, displaying on the screen so you know for sure they don’t trust you. they’re probably scanning your face nowadays too so they track individual purchase history