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Facebones ,

I don’t mind self checkout.

I mind that I need the one employee overseeing 12 checkouts every other scan because the system decides something is wonky. I mind that it now has AI that assures said single employee that I’m fleecing them for an $0.80 can of tomato sauce and I now have to wait for this person to dig through my 3 bags looking for this hoisted sauce.

If they’re so determined that every customer is lifting everything at checkout all the time - if only there was a way they could have an employee verify every item gets scanned, every time, perhaps by doing it themselves. Then we could wait in a line and feed our items to them so they can rest easy knowing everything was scanned appropriately. Oh, what science fiction Dreams I have.

ExfilBravo ,

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.

Facebones ,

I went to one of Amazon’s spots in NYC, it was neat but it feels sus as hell just moseying out of the store 😂

Buddahriffic ,

No, don’t add more waste to packaging.

nixcamic ,

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.

flango ,

You do the work for the company and pay them! Fuck self-checkout!!

Rivalarrival ,

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.

aceshigh ,
@aceshigh@lemmy.world avatar

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.

yokonzo ,

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

rabiddolphin ,
@rabiddolphin@lemmy.world avatar

Yes shuffling from point a to point b without interaction is living

yokonzo ,

Who are you to decide what is “living” for me

rabiddolphin ,
@rabiddolphin@lemmy.world avatar

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

dangblingus ,

You can really tell these days who has never worked in a grocery store or restaurant before.

Zink ,

They let me avoid human interaction if I choose, AND they’ve hurt these big retailers while showing them the value of giving people more shifts/hours?

Spectacular success if you ask me! It would be fun to have worked on this tech and then see it helping others by failing or being sabotaged, lol. That’s not a feeling you usually expect when you launch a product.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

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.

DeadlineX ,

I hate when cashiers bag my groceries. I have the large reusable bags, and they put like 4 things in each. Why? I always tell them I’m going to bag my own at this point anyways just to get my grocery bags full.

Buddahriffic ,

Even when they had plastic bags here, I’d be surprised at how little they’d put in some bags. Those things can handle more, fill them up!

That’s the part I like the best about self checkout. I can set up a couple of bags and then optimize what I scan. Put all the freezer stuff together, fridge stuff, soft things on top, heavy stuff at bottom. Helps that they got rid of the weighing where I shop, that shit was so annoying plus it limited your total space to however big the weighing table was (unless you got someone to reset it so you could remove some bags back to your cart).

experbia ,
@experbia@lemmy.world avatar

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.

wildginger ,

Around here you cannot use coupons without assistance, and each one needs a 3 button confirmation sequence.

Did you get 2 or more of the discounted breads? Whoops, those gotta get individually checked to make sure you didnt secretly duplicate the coupon! Grab the meat that expires next week for tonights dinner, which gets a lil price slash to make sure it sells? Nope, sorry, that one also needs to stop the cart and call for help too.

None of this in a regular stand, those scan coupons like normal. I guess theyre afraid I know how to make these discount codes at home?

afraid_of_zombies ,

Hate those things. Every time I go up them it seems like a quarter of them are broken so there is still a line. Also the guy babysitting the machines doesn’t appreciate when I yelled at the machine “EXPECT THE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA!”. Been tempted to start randomly leaving ice cream by the machines. Oh I am sorry did the scanner get sugary syrup on it?

And now of course it is am excuse to have even less normal lines open. So the choices are dealing with crap tech or stuck behind old people with coupons.

rabiddolphin ,
@rabiddolphin@lemmy.world avatar

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

Trainguyrom ,

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.

lolcatnip ,

I wonder how many of the people who say self-checkout is unpaid labor will also try to shame people for not returning their shopping carts.

gveltaine ,

It doesn’t work everywhere. Smaller store like CvS? Sure

Being watched like a hawk in Walmart? Not a comfortable experience and would rather work with someone face to face

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

rabiddolphin ,
@rabiddolphin@lemmy.world avatar

Walmart is a penal colony

abhibeckert ,

a queue of people, waiting to use a self-checkout kiosk

That’s not how it works with the stores I frequent. Usually about half the self-checkout kiosks don’t have anyone at them.

I’d shop somewhere else if they took self checkout away. It’s so much faster.

wildginger ,

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

DarthTron ,
@DarthTron@mander.xyz avatar

I very specifically wait in line to make an actual employee scan my items and bag them. I will go out of my way to make the corporation pay someone to do the job rather than pass the labor on to me the customer. They sure as hell aren’t passing on any savings to me, so they can pay a human to check me out.

ji17br ,

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

gerowen , (edited )

For most of my shopping, which takes place at our local Walmart (I live in the US), I actually really like using the self-checkout. Now when we make a big grocery run, having a person there makes things easier because they can scan and bag, I can unload things onto the belt and my wife can pull bags off the little turnstile thing and put them back in our cart, but most of the time I’m just running in to grab a handful of items so when I leave I can just walk up to the kiosk, scan my stuff, scan the QR code with the Walmart app on my phone and walk out the door. It’ll auto pay with the privacy card I attached to my Walmart account and give me a digital receipt to show if somebody wants to see it at the door. They even have a thing now where you can pay a monthly subscription for “Walmart+” where you can scan and pay for your items as you shop.

lordkuri ,

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.

gerowen ,

Thanks for clarifying. I hadn’t actually used that particular feature so I must have misunderstood the way it was worded in the app.

gerowen ,

Edited my original comment for accuracy.

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

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.

gerowen ,

If I go to a buffet style restaurant like Golden Corral where there’s a long table full of precooked items, I’m gonna go up to that table and rummage around and fill my own plate, 😜

tamal3 ,

I do not use self-checkout for several reasons, including what other people have said: i don’t get a discount, it’s taking someone else’s job, it’s annoying as fuck. Further, I use my own canvas bags, and that machine yells about the weight mismatch no matter what I try. I’d rather listen to nails on a chalkboard.

But i also shop for groceries 1 time per week, which means I’m buying beer, which means the self-checkout STILL requires somebody to help me. I end up standing around for longer than it takes to go through the regular line.

Anyway, the self-checkout lines generally see very loud usage in my NC town.

intensely_human ,

Failure?? It’s in every store in the world

babypigeon ,

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.

normalexit ,

In a new stadium in my city you swipe your credit card, pick up food or drink in a little monitored area and walk out with your items. It is an interesting idea but it is also creepy. That’s probably what stores will be like eventually – at least the ones with the resources to implement something that expensive and complex.

As far as self checkout, I don’t mind it for small orders or when it is more convenient for me at the grocery store. Unexpected item in bagging is a bad consumer experience, and buying produce/alcohol is also a pain. If I feel like I am going to run into trouble I head for the traditional lines.

I really despise the ones at big box hardware stores that show a video of you checking out. I’m not stealing, don’t judge me or make me judge myself with that unflattering angle.

cranakis ,

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.

icermiga ,

The human checkout gives a better service but the shop does not charge me differently for different checkouts. For shoppers, the equation is simple.

normalexit ,

I’d always rather shop at a store with real life helpful employees who are happy to work there because they are treated well and properly compensated. I hope companies continue to see the value in that approach.

Shellbeach ,

People need good jobs. I doubt there are tons of people whose dream job is to be a cashier.

Trainguyrom ,

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

slingstone ,

I enjoy Sam’s Club’s “Scan and Go” feature in their app. I scan my items and pay in the app. I never have to interact with a soul, and that’s peachy keen in my book.

tinkeringidiot ,

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

kaffiene ,

Maybe this is just a British thing? They’re very popular here in NZ

mahomz ,

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.

1rre ,

I mean Booths aren’t that small, they’re just exclusively north-western & fill the same niche as Waitrose, who have virtually no stores in the north west as a result

That means their customer base is pretty much a perfect intersection of people who won’t want to use a self-checkout - older people & people who are friendlier to strangers

mahomz ,

28 stores is small by UK supermarket standards. Sainsbury’s alone have over 1400. I can’t reasonably consider Booths reflective of trends across the country, perhaps for the reasons you suggest.

OP’s question as to whether the UK is rejecting self checkout on any level isn’t really addressed by the example in this article.

EnderMB ,

Booths is basically unheard of anywhere else in the UK. The only reason I’ve heard of them is because the bald guy on TikTok that reviews the worst towns in the UK did a video on them.

telllos ,

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

EnderMB ,

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.

Fapper_McFapper ,

… 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.

In my experience it’s not that older people are struggling with it. It’s that Walmart has 300 self checkout kiosks but only two are open and the line for a regular register is almost out of the premises.

And the CVS self checkout always ends up confusing itself and constantly yelling at you to place the item in the bagging area.

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