I like self checkout as an option, almost everywhere.
I DON'T like REQUIRED self checkout.
Same. I'm purchasing 2 small things and there's a line with the creepy incel cashier? Yep self checkout FTW. I have an entire cart full of stuff and the store doesn't even have a cashier? FML.
Ya, having a lot of items, or odd items like vegetables or bulk items at a grocery store that need to have a code entered or need to be weighed suck at self checkout.
I would also say large items, but home depot and costco provide wireless scanners which work very well. Can just roll your cart up grab the scanner scan and go without taking stuff off.
That and age-gated items like alcohol and [some] medicines. If the one human managing the self-checkout horde is busy, you're just left waiting.
Somehow Costco has managed this well (as has Sam's Club).
Costco always has sufficient ID checkers in the self-checkout, and Sam's checks your ID as you leave the store if you do the Scan-as-You-Go feature.
Quick and easy for both.
They really need to just pay for extra cashiers. And* can’t they also have “express lanes?”
O green peppers are 99 cents each but red and yellow are 1.29? That's so weird all these peppers I'm buying are green.
Fuck you, I'm the cashier now.
Bill Burr: "what're you gonna do? cut my hours?"
Also
Oh, something didnt scan and you walked out without paying for it?
Enjoy your broken spine as cops appear in full swat outfit and tackle you to the ground and beat you with clubs because you are shocked and arent immediately calm and compliant.
Clearly a joke, but they will start a record for you till they can get you for a felony...
Start a felony charge for a loaf of bread?
give me a break. These companies cut corners every where they go. You think there stocking up on hard drives and algorithms to cut up and record people?
Look up the target method. They can automatically connect your face/payment ID to items you haven't scanned. They get you after you've racked up enough cumulative value that you haven't paid for to count for a felony.
So no, they aren't sticking you with a felony charge for a loaf of bread. They're sticking you with a felony charge for enough loafs of bread to value a serious theft charge.
It's not going to effect you if you only ever stole one loaf of bread. Waiting until you commit enough theft is the cutting corners part you're talking about.
My husband had a nasty cold and the self scan he was using we later found out should have had an out of order sign on it. After missing the fact that it wasn't dinging for every item because he couldn't hear well, they pulled him and had him arrested. His total was off by $100 and he should've realized it, admittedly, but he just wanted to get home. We were able to get them to drop the charges because the self check out was malfunctioning but he's still banned from Walmart.
and getting banned from walmart is more devastating than most people realize, cause in a lot of places walmart has run out the competition, so if you cant go to your walmart due to a mistake on THEIR part, that means you might have to drive an extra hour to some not-walmart place.
Its complete and utter bullshit.
I hope that store burns down with the manager that made that decision trapped inside.
Yeah I'm not paid to use your stupid machine properly. I generally avoid self-checkout and never use it if I have a manually entered item. When there are no full service registers or only one, you know I'm going to be extra sloppy with the self-checkout.
I generally avoid self-checkout and never use it if I have a manually entered item.
At a certain point you're just denying yourself the savings. Go get that informal employee discount!
I'm against what Walmart especially has done by remodelling stores and removing their checkout lanes and replacing them all with self checkout.
but I have nothing against a store having a couple self checkout lanes.
Cause they are nice to have if you only bought one or two things, and don't want to wait behind a full cart.. or if you are buying something you are personally embarrassed about and don't want to have a cashier see.
Self Checkout should be a very minor option valuable to a select few.
not the primary means of checking out for everyone.
Oh for sure, if I gotta guess I'm picking the one that's best for me every time.
At Costco it's great minus the membership checks. Thanks this was a quick process, now let me stop and take my card out so you can see I'm not stealing deals.
Walmart, fuck you hire more cashier's why am I waiting 10 minutes to checkout at self checkout when you have 50 closed fucking lanes!
Walmart, fuck you hire more cashier's why am I waiting 10 minutes to checkout at self checkout when you have 50 closed fucking lanes!
I straight up said this the last time I was there to one of the managers watching the self checkout after I heard them complaining about the long ass line. Maybe if you actually turned the other 20 lanes on instead of only having 3 the lines would go by quicker, ya dumbasses.
You expect them to pull 20 extra people put of their ass?
If they offered a living wage it wouldn't be a problem. They can afford it, without raising prices.
No no no no no, HOW could they afford that?
Tell me how they could afford it as a giant multi billion dollar company.
It's not even possible to pull out billions to shareholders and CEO's each year if they did that.
Why don't anyone ever think about the poor ultra rich?
Whether they have them all open or just 3, they still only have 2 or 3 employees watching over it all. For some reason, they're all open in the morning when there aren't any customers, but then in the late afternoon, they turn everything off when the store is flooded with customers. It's ass backwards.
Probably some power-mad manager saying "employees must get up early to learn discipline".
Having worked at a grocery store, it has to do with inventory stocking. All the trucks show up in the morning, so you need more people around to do intake and stock the shelves. Sometimes they go help in the front in the downtime. Despite what the antiwork folks say, most managers are not power mad assholes, they're workers playing their role in the system. The owner class however...
...so the truck drivers are also forced to get up early? Don't let me down I want to be jaded today.
If you're genuinely curious, a lot of it has to do with traffic management. I will blindly assume that you live near a large city in north america.
Trucks are big and cumbersome, especially semis. They're fine ok the highway, but on city roads around busy places like grocery stores they're like one man traffic jams.
Your typical American grocery store moves literal tons of product every single day, very little of which is produced locally. They require constant, daily replenishing, and it has to be done without disrupting the flow of shoppers and surrounding traffic.
The solution is to start your night at a store or distribution center in a major city. Pick up your trailer of paper products or whatever, make your first stop in town, then hit the highway. Stop at towns and cities along the way, dropping off a pallet or two at each until you reach your final stop in another major city where you swap trailers and take a nap before doing it all again. Many grocery stores employ a small team of (frequently underpaid) workers to process all this at odd hours in the night.
Supply chain is 24/7
So you mean the mad managers are actually sitting in urban design, not building public transit? Rush hour over here is when there's enough cars on arterial streets so you can't walk across them wherever you want, there's no actual jams.
dropping off a pallet or two at each
That doesn't sound very efficient, over here they consign full lorries at distribution centres to stock up one particular supermarket or two, or maybe half a lorry if it's been a slow day and the supermarket didn't get a delivery in the last what three days depends on what they're missing (customers can survive one of five crisps flavours being out of stock, all toothpaste, not so much). The Swiss have it really nailed down, any business of any significant size over there has to have rail access so the likes of IKEA don't put a single lorry on the road, and supermarket distribution centres receive containers on rail and then maybe send out lorries: If a village has a train station chances are the village supermarket is within forklift distance. They have absolutely no qualms about pulling a freight car or two with a small passenger train set.
In North America our rail and highway systems are designed specifically with freight in mind, particularly in the west. 40% of freight in the US is moved by rail vs less than 20% on average in Europe. These rail lines rarely branch out or carry passengers however. Some of this is because of greedy assholes, but a lot of it is also due to history and geography (in much of the country, the train tracks predate the cities).
American freight movement follows a production line philosophy. Trains travel in long, straight lines between freightyards, where their cargo is offloaded onto trucks. Each trailer is loaded with one genre of goods (produce, paper products, milk, etc.), then drops one stores' worth at each stop along the way. This method has a variety of benefits and drawbacks.
I'm intrigued by this concept of loading directly from a train car to a retail store, that's something you don't often see over here.
The thing I really hate about it is that where I live, they don't have bags at the self checkout. Cuz you know, someone might steal a fucking plastic bag. 🙄
Where I live (Montréal, Canada) plastic bags are banned everywhere. You either bring your own or buy a reusable at the cash. Some places (like grocery stores) also sell paper bags. You get used to it. If you have a car you leave a bunch of reusables in the trunk, if you don't you just have to remember to bring one with you. The also sell some super thin ones you can carry in your pockets that are sturdy and large enough for a small run at the grocery store.
The only thing I’d hate about that, is if they don’t have a recyclable option and you always have to buy the reusable ones. At some point they just become garbage because you forgot them for the last 20 trips, and who needs 100 reusable bags?
Or how about you forgot to bring them in with you but don't realize it until everything is unloaded on the conveyor?
Most grocery stores still offer paper bags and personally I love them to pack everything I want to bring to the recycling bin
It's not that I care what they're made of. Here they're required to charge 10¢/bag. I would happily take a paper bag. The thing I don't like is being treated like an extremely petty criminal.
As an aide though, everything I've read supports the conclusion that the bag bans only lead to more waste. IIRC, a generous estimate would mean you need to reuse a bag at least 20x in order to break even on resource usage... Which basically never happens. It's an excellent example of a feel good solution that sounds good until you run the numbers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to see us eliminate almost all uses of disposable plastics.
I like the aldi model with no bags—when you forget a bag you look for an empty box. Not ideal for people who walked though.
It's different here (at Walmart at least), they leave all their reusable bags at the self checkout where you can just buy them. But there is a lot of staff and the area is like a bullpen, so there is only one exit and there are employees looking at the carts' contents.
As for the bags, for sure it's a contentious topic. And I agree with you. As I mentioned in another reply, I see a lot of the sturdier reusable bags for sale at thrift store, they have to roll them up and put them in a bin they have so many...
IIRC, a generous estimate would mean you need to reuse a bag at least 20x in order to break even on resource usage... Which basically never happens.
I’ve definitely used my reusable bags more than 20 times. Why don’t people use them more than 20 times?
In the before times, when you could still find baggers at checkouts, paper bags were provided. I know the cost was figured in to the prices but it is B.S. that they now charge for them.
Neverminding that we have to scan the cards to even begin scanning the (soon to be our) stuff.
My Costco has had “self checkout” for about a year now. There’s a Costco employee that waves you over and scans all your items. I really don’t get it.
The Costco self checkouts can only do a certain amount of weight per square inch before they shit the bed. Which is bad, because it's costco. Unloading the entire shelf while you haven't paid can't be done, so you have to scan, hit the weight limit, pay, unload, then scan and load the shelf again...and then pay again. Idiotic design that multiplies the wait times considerably, lol.
I have no sympathy for companies losing money due to theft at self-checkout, it's a cost saving measure that's bitten them in the ass.
They also suck for alcohol, or anything that doesn't have a barcode, as mentioned in the story. I never buy either of those products at self checkout.
That said, I really liked the opportunity to not have to socialize with someone
Ha,, I once got booted from a Safeway in my early 20's when I was trying to buy beers and the lady who was supposed to be verifying ID was shooting the shit w her coworker. She clearly saw the thing flashing, but wanted to finish her story. I tried waving at her to no avail. She had a very I'll get to you in a minute vibe, but she clearly wasn't talking about work stuff. I had worked at a Lucky previously and they used the same self checkout system system. I knew I just needed to type my bday on their terminal to get it to sell, so I went n did it lol. Hey, self check out amirite? I figured fuck it, I'll do that part too I guess.
She finally noticed like right before I paid and took my beers and wouldn't let me pay. I was like here's my ID, I've been waiting like 5 minutes to show you. Manager showed up told me to leave, and never come back, it was a whole thing. Granted, I was 100% being a young , dumb prick, but I was annoyed with the lady not doing her job, and wasting my time. Having been on the other side of that terminal before, knowing how easy it was to do, I was super annoyed that she wasn't even acknowledging me trying to get her attention. Fun times lol.
Self checkout is useful when you only want a few things. Much faster.
If you're getting a full trolley, you'd need a barcode scanner to take round the shop with you. If you don't have that, it's faster to go with a manned checkout.
A grocery store near me has the self-scan as part of the app. It's pretty good, but honestly it's not that bad to do a full trip through the self checkout.
Wegmans tried that at first but failed and removed it. No one wants to scan products with their phone while shopping.
Oh dang, I love it. It's awesome to be able to see what my total cost is as I shop. I definitely buy less when I do it that way, and added bonuses include everything already being bagged the way I like it and not having to talk to people (at least usually). I did it all the time during the pandemic.
Alcohol isn't so bad where I'm at, I just scan it first to give the worker some time to scan their badge and let me continue
I honestly only use self check out. I don't buy a ton in a single shopping trip and I just find it easier to do it myself since I bring my own bulky bags that go on the side of my bike. A lot easier for me in general and sucks some places are getting rid of it.
Interesting! Alcohol doesn't have a barcode there?
Here it does. But the self checkout lamp will go to red instantly and a clerk has to come to approve your age.
It has a barcode, but most places haven't figured out the "show ID to a human" flow yet.
Trying to tell the pears and their variants and potatoes and their variants apart is such a pain in the ass without a barcode. Especially since the example pic is usually quite different, and like 10px on a 480p greased up, airgapped touchscreen. I hate self checkout. The only time I use it is when the store is open late at night. Which, I actually do like. Having stores open till 1am or 3am can be extremely handy, especially if you have an office job during the day and do night classes.
After a few times I memorized where the bread or fruit (w/o barcode) I usually buy is in the menu and am almost equally fast as an employee would be.
So it just took me some time to adjust personally.
I bought beer last time I went through self checkout and of course it called some teenage girl over to check my ID; I'm pushing 60. I just said "No. I'm old enough to be your grandfather." She was fine with that.
Remember kids, if you see someone shoplifting or switching the barcodes at your big-box self-checkout: No you didn't.
Preach!
I'm lucky enough to not need to take the risks involved in order to get by, but I'll be damned if I'm going to fuck over someone that may be unluckier than me. Idgaf what it is, I'm fucking sergeant Schultz.
The way I see it, you're doing a public service...
You're creating jobs in loss prevention.
You're helping make the case for retaining more checkout workers.
You're keeping those minimum-wage checkout supervisors safe by not putting them in a position to intervene with desperate people trying to feed themselves.
You're helping the store avoid wage theft by having you play unpaid, untrained, unqualified security guard.
You're helping the needy feed themselves.
Give yourself a pat on the back, you local hero! 🫡
My grandmother snitch on some poor bastard stealing crystal light at walmart. If someones stealing fucking crystal light from walmart theyre clearly in way worse than I am.
I worked at a supermarket in a wealthy area for years - no one stole more than the wealthy old crones from the retirement village next around the corner.
The funny thing is she ain't wealthy, ffs we live in the same house. She's just got a really stupid and weirdly conservative and at the same time progressive sense of morality.
But the self-checkout cameras sure did.
Genuine mistake, I can't be expected to do a job I wasn't trained for. All those apples look the same to me
Everything is an apple for the untrained eye
Thats why you follow safe Covid Precautions. 😁👍
If I cared enough, I'd tell someone because I hate thieves, but I generally prefer to mind my own business. Same philosophy if I saw someone stealing from a small business.
Walmart and their ilk steal far more in wage theft than they lose to shoplifters.
"These companies don't pay their employees enough, in my opinion, so I'm ok with people stealing from them."
Just say what you mean.
I'm not OK with people stealing from them because they don't pay people enough.
I'm OK with people stealing from them and they don't pay their employees enough, and they still steal more in wage theft than is shoplifted from them.
Why do you feel compelled to play unpaid security guard for a bunch of billionaires? They neither need nor appreciate your help.
No they aren't they are gonna lean in even harder what a dumbass story. One time fixed cost will always win over paying people in perpetuity
Yeah I have trouble believing this. They just remodeled the Walmart near me and I bet there's 60 self checkout machines. There's like maybe 3-5 normal checkout lines in between the self checkout.
I saw a grocery store put in the best self checkout lanes I've seen, then take them out a couple years later because their customers didn't like them.
Things be weird sometimes.
My favorite is still having them closed when low staffed because they still need a person dedicated to helping them.
Just amazing how much trouble management goes to to make experiences for customers worse
Exit gates you need a receipt to go through. That shit isn't even legal, I've been waiting for someone pushing that to the SC so they'll have to dismantle them nationwide.
Ppft, stores thinking they can hinder my free movement in society? I'll go violent over that, that's where I draw the final line, no more of this capitalist surveillance shit, you put barriers in my way I'll stomp them to pieces.
So if I go in, don't find what I'm looking for and go out, am I unable to open the door?
Kroger here just added two more lanes of self-checkout. We won't use them. We're a family of 3. We buy a lot of groceries. Doing it by ourselves would take so much more time.
Our Kroger had two rows of mini self checkouts, 2x3, and adjacent it was a cashier checkout. They removed one of the rows of minis and replaced it and the subsequent with a conveyor self checkout instead, so 3 minis and 2 conveyors.
Now there are fewer places to check out, and the belted checkout is annoying as all hell to use. If you have 3 items it's wasteful to use it because you have to walk 5 feet to fetch your bags, and if you have a large cart of groceries you wouldn't want to self checkout anyway because it's a hell of a lot easier to have help.
I keep seeing stories every so often on Facebook about this. I feel like these stories just pop up to bring up engagement on the site. most stores in my area (Florida) have increased self checkout
Yeah I think they saw a couple of examples Of stores taking out the self checkout lanes and ran with them. Although you could say the theft that the self checkout lanes allow is a recurring expense, but that's probably not nearly as much as the saving that the machines give.
Shrink has hovered around 1.5% (that's 1.5% of total sales...) And the NRF has been coy about the fact that 1/3 of that shrink is "administrative" issues - lost product, mis allocated, warehouse issues, broken in transit, etc.
Additionally, a little less than a third is from employee theft, and a the remaining 36% is external theft.
But since they lump mistakes and general admin issues in with theft, they get to claim a higher number whenever they complain very loudly so that they can redirect the conversation away from the massive increase in profits they have had, along with the increase in wage theft cases they are losing, as well as trying to cover up the fact they are closing "under performing" stores in poorer neighborhoods (which not limits access to people in those locations, but the store doesn't care, they dont buy stuff anyway...).
unexpected item in the bagging area. place items in the bagging area. unexpected item in the bagging area.
Even worse, here in Canada at the Sobeys owned stores, you can opt to use your own reusable bag (plastic grocery bags are now outlawed) but if you do they prompt an employee to come check your bags. They never actually check, but if there isn't an attendant around you just have to wait there until they notice and end the prompt. I waited for 10 minutes the other day because the employee went off for a break or something.
Edit: spelling
Oh man I nearly gave my SO an aneurysm because I started scanning items while she set up the reusable bags. Both of us were so over that stupid machine getting made about those bags sitting there!
Oh same note too! If you dare start doing something before you've gotten those bags ok'd, or if you plunk down a bag before it prompts you to do so it's like you're committing a felony.
You gotta time it with a heavy item. Some machines have tolerances for weight (or so it seems). So I always pick my heaviest item and put it down at the same time I put the bag down. Basically bagging it and placing it down at the same time. That "tricks" the machine into not realizing the extra weight is from a bag since the bag should be within the weight tolerance of the heavy item.
I've never had it fail.
You know, around the 5-7 minute mark I'd be dumping my reusable bags and walking out.
I would've but I had just spent an hour getting a cart full of groceries and I wasn't about to go do that again somewhere else. Plus I couldn't imagine, at the time, they'd be gone that long.
I'd keep the bags. You get what you give.
I'm thankful pretty much every store here deactivated that sensor shortly after installing self checkouts.
A Kroger near me recently updated their self checkouts and now they're way more sensitive, they view any hand movements on its little camera as "you just slipped something into the bag I'm calling the employee over", and you can't mute them anymore which is the lost infuriating for me. I have trouble doing things with a lot of noise, and having a loud ass computer yelling about everything it's doing makes my checkout take easily 3-4x as long. There is no benefit to disabling the mute button, it still screams for employees when something went wrong, and it only frustrates and irritates everyone who can hear it, employees included. I can't count how many times I've heard the employees complain about it too.
Yeah the Meijer by us is sensitive like this and when it starts inevitably flashing with approval needed an employee comes over, scans their badge and an overhead security camera clip of me scanning the last item displays on screen.
Which is so awkward to have to stand there with this employee who I'm sure is just as sick of the process as I am.
I don't shoplift and I enter all produce honestly, it makes me want to start scanning my avacado as bananas.
Legit!
I'm already being treated like I'm doing shady shit, might as well actually pullshady shit.
Practice your sleight of hand movements. I’ve figured out how to make it look like I’ve just scanned one thing but moved two at both Walmart and Kroger self checkouts without any alarms going off. Helps a lot with my getting my employee discount for having to run a register.
Ugh I had a grocery store with great self checkout and then they added the dumb sensor. Became worst experience.
I assume it was intentional sabotage to the self checkout experience. Least that is what I would do.
In my experience, self-checkout started with the weight sensors, rather than adding them later. I've noticed some stores have a system now without the weight thing, which probably cuts down on confusing and time-consuming error situations, but it makes it seem chaotic. My parents use them in the most fucked up way - leave everything in the cart, scan stuff, bag it, then put it in the cart, and I'm just WHAT? Aren't they going to accuse you of stealing? Some walmarts aggressively pursue claims of theft from self checkout, like in the case of this lady who was awarded 2.1 million after being accused of stealing, which she said was not true. This article details the story of a lady who said she was arrested after not scanning things by accident, and the article notes "Sixty-two other people were cited and released by police at the same Tucson Walmart between January 2021 and April 2022."
During the civil trial, which lasted about three weeks, the judge criticized Walmart for the “intentional loss” of the security camera footage, according to court records. The judge, James T. Patterson, said that the court would advise the jury that the videotapes “were destroyed by the defendants with the intent” to deprive the plaintiff of the benefit of seeing them “and that the jury therefore is to presume that the content of the missing videos would be adverse” to the defendants.
Walmart also is starting to use 'AI' to detect self checkout theft, which I'm sure will be foolproof and work out great.
And if you're wondering which item causes the most problems, it's milk. O'Herlihy explains, "People find it hard to scan milk ... Sometimes they get frustrated and they just don't scan it."
What?
Anyway, I'm sure they love not paying employees to do this, but it seems like more trouble than it's worth.
From Tucson here: Walmart in town is pretty sketchy compared to the other places. We had someone light the chemical isle on fire on Christmas Eve that burnt down half the entire store lmao. Walmart sold itself as a low price retailer for so long that only low income people go there and with that there’s theft and then the classism of hiring armed guards during their high crime periods.
And if you're wondering which item causes the most problems, it's milk. O'Herlihy explains, "People find it hard to scan milk ... Sometimes they get frustrated and they just don't scan it."
Does milk not have a bar code?
If anything, I’d figure it would be produce items that would cause the most drama, but eventually you start to remember those codes. 4011 is bananas. 4799 is for tomatoes. 4065 is green peppers…
I love self-checkout because I bag things exactly like I want and I can get the process completed without having chat with the cashier or Karen out on the bagger for putting just two items in a large paper bag.
I don’t think I’ve ever been stopped or accused of stealing things, but then I usually choose the unit closest to the cashier and I leave all my items in the bagging area until I’m done. That said, I used to be a grocery store cashier, so I understand the process a little better than most, but it’s still easy to make mistakes.
Self checkout scanners are unbearably slow, and if you try to go any faster it’s “unexpected item in bagging area” and wait for the overworked assistant.
I refuse to be bossed around by shitty robots.
Condensation on milk barcodes causes scanning issues I've found
Probably because it sweats and the pure white nature might make the laser more reflective? Only thing I can think of.
Milk is frustrating to scan? I did it yesterday just fine...
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. People find it difficult to maneuver? Can't find the bar code? Self checkouts tend to have a hand scanner too, and they could use that.
Self checkouts tend to have a hand scanner too
I'm going to guess that this is regional or vendor specific, because I've literally never seen a self-checkout with a hand scanner. And if I ever did, I would expect it to transform into a broken, dangling cable within a few months.
Perhaps. I've seen many, and they're wireless. I suppose they might end up missing.
I know Walmart has them, it's kinda necessary considering the size of some of the products they sell.
We have hand scanners at the local grocery chains HyVee and Dillon's (owned by Kroger) that are doing just fine. Lowe's and Home Depot have hand scanners too. They have all sorted out all the 'unexpected item in baggage area' and other stuff years ago.
No idea about Walmart, but could see that type of store going cheap on the hardware and having it treated terribly.
At my Walmart the employees don’t stop people from stealing food. They told me as much.
I believe it's policy at Walmart for the regular staff to not prevent theft at all. Loss prevention handles that. They'll build a case without pursuing at first, and then being down the hammer.
I keep hearing this and I wonder about how they do this. I mean how to they keep records of every shoplifter? Do the employees recognize the people every time they come in? How many shoplifters can they keep track of? Are they like "ah yeah it's shoplifter 687, put this video in his file"? Do they bother with people stealing an occasional item like basic clothing or food? Are they watching a single shoplifter over years, like what if they only steal once in a while and it's low value? I'm curious about this, I've never actually heard from anyone who was watched over a period of time and then prosecuted.
I was busted for shoplifting as a teenager and I sort of know how this works. The general employees (cashiers, service staff, etc.) don't give a fuck if you steal and will actually get in trouble if they try and apprehend you. Almost all large companies operate this way for liability reasons. They aren't insured enough to cover all of their staff in the event that one of them gets injured or killed trying to stop someone from stealing something. Much less costly to simply budget in a line item expense for incidental theft that's bound to happen.
Instead of the employees focusing on shoplifters, they have a loss prevention agent in the back watching cameras. Those cameras all over the place in all the big box retail stores, and they don't even look like those super obvious dome cameras anymore. Most people who steal and get away with it will eventually come back to the same store to do it again. They take note of your face/features and watch for you to return (also, the large chain stores will share this information with other nearby stores). As soon as you step through the door the next time you come in, cameras are recording your every move. That's exactly what happened with me and my delinquent friends. We ripped off the same store about 2-3 times and the last time was when the guy actually made his move and apprehended us. He waited for us to actually take something without paying for it and physically stopped us at the door as we were stepping through the threshold. At that point, they confiscate whatever you stole, show you the security footage of you taking the product and walking out with it, call the cops, press charges for petty theft if under $1000, and call your parent/guardian if you are a minor.
In my case, I got extremely lucky because the cops simply never showed up after hours of waiting for them, and eventually, they couldn't legally detain us any longer, so they released us to our parents without charges. My Mom was pissed and set me straight when we got home, and I stopped hanging around the dumbass kids who coerced me into doing it in the first place. We were also banned for life from the store, but I've actually been back to that same store several times as an actual customer and they didn't recognize me anymore. Or they just didn't give a shit.
If you just steal once, especially if it's a spur of the moment thing, a very low value item, or a complete accident, it's really unlikely that loss prevention will care. If they start noticing lots of inventory going missing, they will watch those sections much closer for suspicious activity. There's always the chance that you could just be randomly singled out by the cameras.
I've heard of some places not bothering to stop food thieves because a person who steals food from a grocery store probably desperately needs it, but I imagine they all have a line that they aren't willing to let people cross.
I feel like in the future this is going to get more intense. They will have facial+ear+gait recognition combined with AI so they can detect and combine literally every instance of shoplifting, intentional or not (to say nothing of footage that only coincidentally has the appearance of shoplifting but they retain it as "proof" anyway), over decades of visits to any of their locations, and once you've accumulated over $1000 combined in unpaid merchandise, hit you with a felony charge.
Or they just ban you after the first incident straight up, and electronically recognize you and kick you out for the rest of your life afterward.
And you would have no affordable recourse because they have all the footage and lawyer money to oppose fighting it.
They have your face and whatever else information you give them when you check out. It's all covered in cameras. Doesn't take much. I'm sure they don't get everything and they have false positives. But if you become such a problem for them yeah.
I don't have any real experience with this but I think it's actually hard to catch the accidental thefts and such who they are losing so much money and starting to rethink these things.
Target will wait for you to steal serval "inflated value mind you full profit plus..." thousand dollars of stuff before pursuing you legally. It's easier when it's large sums.
That's how it works for most stores in Canada.
"theft over" (aka theft over $5,000.00) can get you 10 years in federal prison, "theft under" is up to two years in provincial jail. That's a huuuge difference.
Also, more footage, more angles, easier to convict.
Electronics, luxury items, other “nice to haves” maybe. But who wants to be the reason someone goes hungry?
Not to mention, they are getting paid dogshit wages.
And they actually can get reprimanded or fired for doing so. Fuck it.
Can confirm. Used to work for a big retailer and one day caught someone stealing (not food) and confronted them. I was a pretty solid employee who had been there for years but my manager had to fight hard to stop me from being fired; it was a really close call.
Yeah it's been 20+ years since I worked retail but we weren't allowed to confront anyone, especially inside the store. We had to wait until they left the store for a manager to approach them and we had to be 100% sure they stole something in the first place.
The worst I ever saw happen to someone is they gave it back when confronted outside the store, it was a $5 can of automotive spray paint.
I was never quite sure if this was all legal reasons or because of the blowback against the brand if someone was wrong and it made headlines.
When I was a youth, we used to go to Safeway and get donuts or "Mojo's" (wedge fries) at the bakery, then munch them while walking through the store so that they were gone by the time we got to the till to buy our cans of pop.
One of those unforgettable moments from those years was when we were finally called out by a security guy, something very casual like "you boys are gonna pay for those donuts up front, right?" and Chris who was "that guy" in our crew, bounced his donut off the mall cop's head and ran like his life depended on it
For this reason, I think it's pretty shitty they put condoms in alarm boxes. If there's something I'm okay with stealing from a Wal-Mart, it's food and condoms.
Don't think I could convict anyone stealing safety glasses either.
Jokes on them, I shoplift at the staffed checkout too.
Walmarts's self checkout is the only one in my area that doesn't frustrate the hell out of me. I've stopped going to certain other stores simply because I don't like their self checkout systems.
I'm autistic. I always apparently seem weird to people. That means any time I use a self checkout, the minders stare at me because they think I'm about to steal something. It makes me nervous, and I start getting uncomfortable and self conscious, which I'm sure makes me seem even more suspicious. And either security or the automated system have triggered the "please wait for an associate" so many times. But they always look at the video and tell me "Sorry, this thing is just sensitive/weird/whatever excuse.", then leave me alone.
I'm not going to call it discriminatory, because I don't think it is? But it feels like I have to be on my best behavior or I'll get arrested because I was so focused on trying to pass as "normal" that I missed scanning a tomato. And for the record, I've never stolen anything, even when I was low on food and really needed some stuff I couldn't afford. Hell, I have forgotten to scan something once and went back in to pay for it.
Self checkout sucks, but it's normally still better than waiting in line and interacting face to face with a cashier.
It's easier said than done, but once I learned to stop giving a shit about what NTs think about me, my life in public got a lot better. I still get that from time to time but it's a lot less often these days.
I feel like a criminal the second I enter a store, I've felt like this for at least the past decade, it's like everyone is a suspect... Like damn I'm just here to buy milk and bread..
Walmart wants to do some sort of AI surveillance shit at their self-checkouts, I noped the fuck out of that and go to their clerks now.
Weird. I generally don't mind self-checkout but Walmart's showing you a video of yourself so you can check yourself out while you're checking out yourself kinda creeps me out. And I don't even use the self checkout to steal.
The Walmart self-checkout near me doesn't use the weight sensors, they're turned off. It makes checking out much easier. Also, they flow better, for instance, at Lowe's, you need to specifically press the "Pay Now" button to pay, but at Walmart you can just shove your card in when you're done scanning, and it starts the checkout process. At Lowe's you must choose between the print or email receipt, but at Walmart you can let the question time-out while you put the groceries back in the cart, and it will print the receipt. The Smith's self-checkout is even more clunky, and very chatty. I don't like it.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Walmart, but IMO, their self-checkout works better than the others I've tried.
Don’t get it. Sam’s and BJs both have scanning apps on the phone. Most amazing tech ever! Costco… HURRY UP! Also, Sam’s and Bjs don’t check my card because I WOULDNT BE ABLE TO BUY ANYTHING WITHOUT THE CARD ANYWAYS… Costco!!
It is a dumb bit of ceremony, but the door checker just glances at the card. You could roll in with a paper print out and be fine until the registers.
Still, enough people do stupidly wait until they are in the door threshold and then block the path while digging around, so they should get rid of it.
Pretty sure the check for the door is just there to make people feel more important.
As long as shrink stays below what they save by removing cashiers they will stay. It may be location specific removals at high shrink stores.
The only reason for Costco to do this would be theft prevention or to make sure members are the only ones using their cards.
Our Costco checks your member ID before you can use the self checkout.
And they specifically want to see the picture of you on the back.
and then they sign the receipt at self check and on the way out. My guess is that this is still not accurate enough for them compared to traditional scanning. That said, it's batshit if they if they don't replace it with some express lines. Obviously most people in costco are there for a cart full of shit, but I (and judging by self check lines) often go in with a specific thing or 3 in mind.
and how long does it take you to find that thing or three?
lol kinda joking but kinda not. Every time I went in there for something, it had mysteriously moved halfway across the store and employees didn't seem to know where...
iirc that is deliberate. They move things around so you have to browse and hopefully buy more than what you came for.
a common retail tactic, but I feel like costco is the worst.
Our Costco has started doing this since the pandemic. They didn't really do it much before. The crackdown is coming at a time where the price of everything is rising and they want more people to buy the membership instead of mooching off others who have.
Literally the opposite is happening. Look at any busy store: self checkout can handle like 10 people, compared to registers which are significantly less at any given time. Registers account for much less business, and corporations are going to try and get by the minimal amount of employees as possible to function. Handling physical cash also adds more complexity with tills having to be deposited, audited, and withdrawn daily.
I just wish more stores took a hybrid approach. Like fuck, regular checkout and self checkout don't have to be mutually exclusive. But all the stores around me with self-checkout never staff more than 1 MAAAAAYBE 2 regular cashiers.
what is actually happening is far worse then either of the scenarios. Bigger retail establishments such as Walmart is doing away with the brick and mortar stores in general in favor of online only warehouses. No walk in and grab 2 or 3 items, gotta buy it online if you want the item. They were just boasting about it on the Wire (Walmart's Associate Page not the news site) a few weeks back.
Replace them with “no chit chat” lanes. I’m just buying some pasta, I don’t want to talk to you.
I avoid self-checkout as often as possible. In my mind, that’s taking a job away from a physical person, it’s a cost-savings for the retailer, but customers never see any benefit from it. I choose the person checkout everytime as my little bit of solidarity with my fellow humans.
I'm the opposite. I use self-checkout as often as possible, because it means I have to interact with as few people as possible. I loathe people being forced to ask me how I'm doing, because we both know they don't care. Or when they ask "Did you find everything?"- does it fucking matter? Either I did, which is why I'm checking out, or I didn't, in which case it doesn't fucking matter because thanks to their shitty implementation of JIT their stock has been converted from on-prem inventory to rolling warehouse deliveries every single day. Just let me get what I want and get out.
I have never seen cashiers ask such things. At most they'd ask whether I have the discount card or if I want one of the featured discounted items. Usually I don't miss anything when wearing headphones.
Same. Perhaps once upon of time, but I haven't met a cashier with that energy in years.
Which is great because I also don't like the interaction. My experience lately has been nodding and card flashing - maybe a "Credit" / "Debit".
I see massive benefits from being able to get out of the store quickly when I am done instead of getting stuck behind some old person with a ton of coupons to argue about.
It helps that they sorted out the oversensitive weight checking and still staff a couple of lanes when it is busy so people have a choice.
Self checkout is often not the quick option for me. Accidental double scans, coupons, random tests all requiring assistance who is already occupied make waiting behind an old person a more consistent experience.
Have you considered switching to pickup when you can? pick what you want from the comfort of your home, drive to the store at the designated time, an employee has picked all your goods and it is brought out to you. Same price for you, more labor for the company to pay for.
If you’re just ordering non perishable items that’s fine. Otherwise you might get nearly-expired items, over-ripe produce, etc. It’s all up to the whim of the employee, and they may be having a bad day…
So far I haven't noticed that happening. They seem to be pretty good about grabbing decent stuff. That's at my Walmart and Target at least
Glad to hear it. I know a guy who got a load of nearly expired groceries and vowed to never do it again.
I make sure that I am on very good terms with them. I help them get the groceries into the car and I joke around with them. It helps that I am sincere and they know that.
I really don’t like doing pickup for most trips because I care about the quality and ripeness of my produce and also purposefully select the furthest away expiry dates for certain things I go through slowly, it becomes a lot to ask someone else to do if there are 20 comment lines for these little details, but if I don’t it just results in wasted food and money :/
Either way the company is getting your money.
But using a real person cost the company more, in theory
I also avoid it but due to not being good at it. I would hate to be accused of shop lifting due to a mistake. It would be a hassle to straighten out.
yeeeeah. They'll have to hire people to work the checkout lanes in that case... which means paying enough to compete with other employers who offer more. Case in point, here it's like 12/hr here to work in a grocery, vs 16/hr at Amazon. But even if they do this, people will still shoplift. Self checkout didn't create the problem, it rather treats everyone like a suspect.
The grocery I go to never has more than one staffed checkout lane at any time, typically a very long line of people too old, too stubborn, or with too many items to do it themselves. During the day it's 8 or 16 self-checkout lanes (minus broke ones), and they close in the evening, so everyone is forced to use the slow staffed checkout.
I fundamentally hate self-checkouts because they were an attempt to eliminate an essential job in the company. I refuse to use them. Frustrares my wife and stepdaughter, but it is my little way to give the corporations the middle finger and force them to have to employ people.
I don't get what the issue is with eliminating unnecessary jobs. It doesn't create any extra work for the customer (you have to place all items on the conveyer and put them back into the cart either way), it isn't offloading any extra work to the other employees and it saves anyone involved a fuckton of time.
Technological advancements have the unfortunately intended side effect of corporations having less people they gotta pay to, because machines are quite the competitor sometimes. While I think OP is being a bit pedantic here, efficiency in and of itself is not inherently good – the question should be who's extracting the profit. If the increased efficiency translates into less working hours... hell yeah. If it translates into record megacorp profits, then... I see no need in eliminating these unnecessary jobs for now – the worker gets their bread and that's what I care about
This. They may be unnecessary for the company, but they are necessary for society to maintain function and for the economy as a whole to continue smoothly function. Consider an analogy for the economy to a food chain, you have to have the bottom rungs of the food chain that are plentiful and prosperous to continue to maintain the larger predators. If you start taking out the bottom rungs, it may take a while, but the apex eventually starves. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The more money the poor make, the better the economy will function.
Fair! My mom always refused to use them.
I didnt for the longest time, until the day my friend went through self c/o and took about two minutes, while I took 15 min in the slow lane. Which honestly was less about the employees and more about shoppers who cant figure out how to pay for the two carts worth groceries they got...
I am on a fierce crusade against scanning your receipt to be "granted" exit through the gates. I'm not playing their stupid fucking game, I force the gates open every time as a matter of principle.
Lol, stores think they have a right to hold me in the store against my will unless I dance their little dance? Suuuure, now watch me leave.
Wait what that’s a thing
if you pay a membership (costco, sams, etc), they are allowed to stop you at the door and 'check' your receipt.
other stores, just say 'no thanks' and keep walking, or have visible earbuds in and be jammin' out the door.
I just say no thanks have a nice day and keep walking.
I guess there is good and bad with either style. I generally prefer the self checkout because I can bag my own stuff
We really need a code of etiquette for them, though. Trip to the store this morning, and they were down to 3 self-check stations from usual 10 with literally a dozen people in line. Including one couple with a cart full of a week's groceries and one lady trying to win coupon roulette. Four other people cycled through the third scanner while those two piddled away the day.
Here in Denmark, it's becoming more and more common to be able to scan your items with your own phone using the store's app while you go through the store, and you can bag everything straight from the shelves.
You then pay by credit card, also with your phone, scan a QR at a designated exit, and you're good to go.
They have random checks, but they've only been about 1/20 for me.
I used this as a pilot program in Pittsburgh when I lived there. It was a hand scanner running some sort of Android based OS but largely the same thing. You scan your store card to unlock a scanner, scan your stuff as you walk through the store putting things in bags, then you walk to a kiosk, pay, then walk out.
I used to get so many dirty looks from people who thought I was stealing a whole cart of groceries until they saw the receipt print out.
Doing it directly via an app would have been even better!
My costco "self checkout" is really just an employee scanning your things and then you box them. Does move quicker than the standard lanes, though.
I went to Costco, did self checkout and an employee walked up and offered to do it and I was just what? Didn't really make sense to me.
Same at my Costco. They have 6 or maybe even 9 "self checkouts" and each is manned by an employee who scans everything without removing anything from the cart. Its basically a compact checkout. Recently was in another area and the Costco had true self checkouts with weight sensors messing up and requiring employee overide and all. It was a pain in the ass.
I think it depends. Sometimes they are scanning everything, sometimes they just scan the large items.
I read somewhere that this can mean they think you might steal stuff.
I think they do it for customers with bulky items that you can’t comfortably scan yourself since Costco self checkouts don’t have wireless barcode scanners like Sams so the employee manning the self checkouts uses their own that basically temporarily connects to whatever terminal the customer they’re scanning for. Very helpful so I don’t have to fuddle with big packs of paper towels or soda to try to scan their barcode on the built-in barcode reader. Kind of an oversight imo Costco… you literally specialize in bulk items lol the poor worker doing self checkout scanning assistance is always running back and forth between customers
At my Costco they have employees at every self check out. Pretty counterintuitive but eh. I treat it like a "10 items or less" sort of thing
They have the weighing thing, and then also the people who count your items at the door... so it would be hard to do. I think the thought was it's just more efficient to help if the employees are already standing there.
If they would let you use the handheld scanner and not remove things from your cart, it would go so much faster. I used to do that at Sam’s a decade ago; dunno if it changed. I still load my cart barcode up on the off chance one of the cool employees is running self checkout because they’ll scan my entire cart in 30s like I wish I could.
I always load the cart barcode up when doing 10-15 item runs at the grocery Costco (a small one that was by my house... groceries and office supplies only). I tried doing that a 'big Costco' recently and they were like what? Don't you want us to bag them? And suggested I put it all on the conveyor.
Prefer self checkout because no talking and I'm typically faster than most cashiers. Nothing sucks more than waiting 3 mins while a new cashier tries to figure out if you handed then a turnip or a rutabaga lmao.
You really think the average person knows how to ring up produce better than the cashier? I'd much rather interact with a real person anyway, it makes it feel like you're supporting an actual business and employees instead of a computer with food behind it.
Which cashier? I've seen some that are worse than me (i've only cashiered fast food which is different enough that I wouldn't expect to be good), and some that are great.
Several times, but not recently, Walmart self-checkout machines would reset after I scanned the first item, I dunno why. But I figured I did my part by scanning it, so I didn't re-scan it, even though I knew it had reset. I could just play dumb, which isn't hard for me, if anyone asked. No one ever asked, but they upgraded the software, and it stopped doing that.
The employees seem a bit happier as attendants than cashiers, so I guess that's a good thing. I don't know how many lost their jobs to the machines, though.
I'll admit that I'm happier with self-checkout, because I almost never need to wait in line anymore.
I'm not sure how many lost their jobs to the machines at all. At a glance there appear to be about 4 attendants per self-checkout area, which is at least a dozen self-checkout machines at our local Walmart, so they all stay busy enough what with telling the machine I'm old enough to buy beer and such.
Minus the self-checkout machines I could imagine 2 of the 4 clerks running the usual "not enough cashiers" play that stores got famous for, with the other 2 being sent to the back for whatever duties. Possibly they aren't hired at all.
If my questionable observations are accurate, then that means that maybe Walmart is getting more throughput, with everyone ringing themselves up, but maybe they aren't spending a bunch less on labor.
I can't see anybody going back on the self-check machines, though. Not after all that money spent, and the decade that retailers have spent waiting for customers to learn how to do the job themselves, especially the older folks. That was a bitter change to buy, so it's wishful thinking that we're going right back to human checkout only.
Hell, Aldi just installed a couple self checkout machines here. They were the one holding out, too, since an Aldi cashier zooms the groceries through so fast it's tough to justify. Oh, and they're trying to have that one person, with shoppers in front of them, also be the attendant for the self-check machines. I double scanned something by accident and the clerk had to stop their own line to help me by pushing a button from way over there and then back to scanning they went.
Come on, Aldi.
I heard about strategies to print your own barcodes and stick them on merch to get a "discount". And that was intended to fool cashiers.
Imagine if I don't have to think about a cashier doing this transaction. $2 steaks for everyone!
You’d need to figure out a similarly weighted item. The majority have a lookup table of “this barcode is this weigh range” which prevents scanning a single almond and putting a TV down.
Yes finally burn them all down let me grab my sledgehammer I'll help
I love self-checkouts.
I also absolutely hate multi-line setups. There should be one line that feeds into all register. I don't want to have to gamble on which register won't get held up by something when I'm on my way out.
Those overly negative comments often come from USA. I've never had any major problems with self checkout in Europe and I generally go there as it's faster and you don't have to race against the cashier. Of course some chains have worse self checkouts, some have better but overall many people like it a lot. Even some older people who are not tech savvy use them.
I've never tried them really I just either get help or leave once I realize self checkout is the only option
They're usually pretty simple. I became attached to them when I was living as a foreigner abroad and didn't have much language skills. But I could understand the graphical prompts and numbers on a self-checkout machine!
I hate self checkout generally, but if I can get one that just has a hand scanner and doesn't force you to put everything into the bagging area, it's about the fastest way to checkout there is
The easiest way to get self checkouts that are awesome and not time consuming is by moving out of the US at this point.
Or go to Sam's Club... Their self checkout is pretty much the only one that didn't make me feel like I was a suspected criminal and actually let me check out quickly.
Then they make me feel like a suspected criminal by re-scanning half my basket before I can leave, but I guess you win some and you lose some
I noticed that lol I was just at Sams a few days ago and only bought three items. The guy at the exit not only stared at my receipt for an oddly long time but scanned two of the three items to I guess verify? Is it that hard to read three things lol?
Yeah, I still prefer the overall experience from Costco. More crowded, I'll only use the regular checkout, but even with long lines they get you out FAST. They also never adopted that stupid hand scanner at the door, because they actually treat their employees decently and trust them enough to be able to visually verify, and oh boy is that a lot faster than Sam's method.
But Sam's did nail the self checkout. I've not tried the app to scan as you go and pay automatically because I'm not interested in putting an app on my phone for every company I do business with
I agree honestly. People don’t know how to queue at sams lol
Could just be my area but the machines always fail in some way or another.
Give me 10%off if I am doing the job of an absentee cashier... Always cool seeing many checkouts all decked out in gear with noone there to run them. Ever.
OR, even better, use some decades old tech and spend a penny to put RFID tags on everything so I can just run my cart through and verify the list of stuff and click Yes, No, Maybe.
Somewhat related.. is it just me or are liquor stores the best at this? I never even stop moving and I'm out. Then i go next door to the pet store to grab some animal chow and I stand in line for 10mins because just one register of 6 is staffed.
At least we can order everything online for the most part now.
I've never had a failure, but one chain near me is a bit annoying with its "place your item in the bagged area" setting... I'd rather just put it in my cart directly, especially when I'm running out of room.
I find it easier to sort my items the way I like and to verify prices immediately, rather than having to watch the cashier and look at the machine, then ask the cashier to stop and remove/question something that scanned wrong...
And I'm surprised at how often I've had cashiers punch in the wrong produce code to something that's more expensive than my item. Have they stopped training cashiers in hopes that they'll make up for the 4011 phenomenon? They can't be doing it on purpose, but it's just weird to me.
It's always the bagging thing that fails for me. I'm not the smartest person in the world but I can scan an item and place it in the bagging area. It's kinda out of my hands at that point. Be it calibration or incorrect data sometimes it won't recognize and after a couple attempts locks and some underpaid person has to come roll their eyes at me and swipe a card to let it go through.
I've probably just been unlucky and gave up 10yrs ago on that.
No they don't train cashiers beyond what button to press. Produce is interesting. It's been a while (love curbside service) since I've been in a grocery store but ours has tags on produce you show to a scale and it weighs it and prints out a sticker with a barcode.
And I just realized how abusable that is. I'm going shopping tomorrow!
Oh what's the 4011 thing? Doesn't ring a bell.
And I just realized how abusable that is. I'm going shopping tomorrow!
Oh what's the 4011 thing? Doesn't ring a bell.
4011 is bananas, which are one of the cheapest things by weight
I really hate this crap. Pay people to ring up and bag my groceries. Heaven knows you're charging enough for them that you should be offering me this courtesy.
Different strokes for different folks; I much prefer to quickly check myself out rather than waiting in line for someone to check my stuff out for me while dragging me into small talk and packing my bags in the most illogical way conceivable.
Meanwhile, stores all but stop manning existing checkouts, forcing everyone to line up to check out their own stuff.
Shoutout to Kroger for consistently only having one manned checkout open or two max during the busiest times forcing everyone to the self checkout line unless you want to gamble with how long the folks with the overflowing shopping carts In line at the manned checkout will take
our walmart is the same way. one lane open. sometimes two, but that's often a trainee.
I hate self-service checkouts SO MUCH. Especially as my local supermarket has phased out ones that take cash.
On the other hand it is cost-effective being able to put artisan cheese through as potatoes.
I used to hate self checkout. I was a cashier at a grocery store back in 2004-2005 and I found self check out slow and finnicky.
I've gotten used to them now and it seems like newer ones have resolved most of the speed and weight sensing issue. Now I prefer them with small trips.
My biggest problems now are that I still need a person for booze and coupons. If I could just scan my damn ID when I'm buying beer, and then scan and insert my own coupons, I'd be set.
Scanning your own ID probably won't be a thing since it won't be able to determine whether the ID belongs to you or not.
Also I would not do so because of privacy issues. The main ID in my country doesn't have scannable parts anyway, but even if it did, I would much rather not give a store a chance to record some of my personal data like that.
You'd love what one of my local stores does then - they give you the option to register your fingerprints after they check your ID for when you want to buy booze in the self checkout!
I was shocked a few weeks ago that I had to get an assistant override for buying DayQuil. I mean I guess it makes sense but I would have gone through a regular cashier lane if I had known. They should be able to scan your ID considering most of them have cameras on them now.
The dayquil thing totally threw me for a loop once, too. It was before self check out, and I thought the cashier was asking for my club card and said no thanks. It took a second for her to explain.
If you have the privilege of being able to walk to and from your grocery store then self checkout is great. I get why people hate it in suburbia tho
What? Why? I can't walk anywhere in my city and I certainly love the self checkout.
The idea is checking out with more than a basket of goods is really inconvenient. And I agree, it's much slower and there's no space for it.
Now I don't know about American cashiers but over here they're faster, waiting in line is generally faster, unless you're literally only buying three items. It's just better optimised overall: Waiting time is often cut to practically zero because you're arranging items on the belt while you're technically waiting, they're faster ringing up, and while they're doing that you can already pack so the second they're done you can pay and fuck off.
My neighbourhood supermarket has three self-checkouts, most of the time noone is using them because the one open register is always faster. In peak times they open a second one you might, in principle, find a window between that and the line of the first one becoming longer where self-checkout is faster, but I won't even consider it with a full backpack of shopping. Peak times directly before a weekend, or worse holidays are where the self-checkouts actually see use, as in you might even see someone waiting for one to be free.
Also you can't self-checkout best-before rebate stickers so there's that.
Giant Eagle stores in Pittsburgh have self checkouts connected to a full size conveyor belt. Kinda like a normal cashier, but the belt is after the scanner kiosk, not before it. That way you could scan a ton of stuff and have it move out of the way on it's own.
The rest of that company did dumb stuff, but the scanners were smart!
I rtfa. For all the wrong reasons of course, not because we’re not on their payroll so why should we give them free labor?
I like them because it means I don’t have to talk to people. Sadly they did this only to save on salaries so I guess that I’m ok with them going away since it will create jobs for people.
Good.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The backlash against self-checkout is growing, and stores are starting to dial back on the technology after it exploded over the past few years.
Customers at Booths also frequently misidentified which fruits and vegetables they were buying when prompted by self-checkout machines.
One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average.
Stores have tried to limit losses by tightening self-checkout security features, such as adding weight sensors.
But additional anti-theft measures also lead to more frustrating “unexpected item in the bagging area” errors, requiring employees to intervene.
Wegmans last year ended a mobile app that allowed customers to scan, bag and pay for groceries while they shopped after reporting losses.
The original article contains 602 words, the summary contains 132 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I like self checkout as an option, almost everywhere.
I DON'T like REQUIRED self checkout.
Same. I'm purchasing 2 small things and there's a line with the creepy incel cashier? Yep self checkout FTW. I have an entire cart full of stuff and the store doesn't even have a cashier? FML.
Ya, having a lot of items, or odd items like vegetables or bulk items at a grocery store that need to have a code entered or need to be weighed suck at self checkout.
I would also say large items, but home depot and costco provide wireless scanners which work very well. Can just roll your cart up grab the scanner scan and go without taking stuff off.
That and age-gated items like alcohol and [some] medicines. If the one human managing the self-checkout horde is busy, you're just left waiting.
Somehow Costco has managed this well (as has Sam's Club).
Costco always has sufficient ID checkers in the self-checkout, and Sam's checks your ID as you leave the store if you do the Scan-as-You-Go feature.
Quick and easy for both.
They really need to just pay for extra cashiers. And* can’t they also have “express lanes?”
I don't mind self checkout. It turns out i can be so incompetent that the self checkout watcher has to scan everything for me.
Is this a real tweet?
Because if it is, it's brilliant!
No clue! XD
Sounds like something Collinsville would say for sure.
O green peppers are 99 cents each but red and yellow are 1.29? That's so weird all these peppers I'm buying are green.
Fuck you, I'm the cashier now.
Bill Burr: "what're you gonna do? cut my hours?"
Also
Oh, something didnt scan and you walked out without paying for it?
Enjoy your broken spine as cops appear in full swat outfit and tackle you to the ground and beat you with clubs because you are shocked and arent immediately calm and compliant.
Clearly a joke, but they will start a record for you till they can get you for a felony...
Start a felony charge for a loaf of bread?
give me a break. These companies cut corners every where they go. You think there stocking up on hard drives and algorithms to cut up and record people?
Look up the target method. They can automatically connect your face/payment ID to items you haven't scanned. They get you after you've racked up enough cumulative value that you haven't paid for to count for a felony.
So no, they aren't sticking you with a felony charge for a loaf of bread. They're sticking you with a felony charge for enough loafs of bread to value a serious theft charge.
It's not going to effect you if you only ever stole one loaf of bread. Waiting until you commit enough theft is the cutting corners part you're talking about.
My husband had a nasty cold and the self scan he was using we later found out should have had an out of order sign on it. After missing the fact that it wasn't dinging for every item because he couldn't hear well, they pulled him and had him arrested. His total was off by $100 and he should've realized it, admittedly, but he just wanted to get home. We were able to get them to drop the charges because the self check out was malfunctioning but he's still banned from Walmart.
and getting banned from walmart is more devastating than most people realize, cause in a lot of places walmart has run out the competition, so if you cant go to your walmart due to a mistake on THEIR part, that means you might have to drive an extra hour to some not-walmart place.
Its complete and utter bullshit.
I hope that store burns down with the manager that made that decision trapped inside.
Yeah I'm not paid to use your stupid machine properly. I generally avoid self-checkout and never use it if I have a manually entered item. When there are no full service registers or only one, you know I'm going to be extra sloppy with the self-checkout.
At a certain point you're just denying yourself the savings. Go get that informal employee discount!
I'm against what Walmart especially has done by remodelling stores and removing their checkout lanes and replacing them all with self checkout.
but I have nothing against a store having a couple self checkout lanes.
Cause they are nice to have if you only bought one or two things, and don't want to wait behind a full cart.. or if you are buying something you are personally embarrassed about and don't want to have a cashier see.
Self Checkout should be a very minor option valuable to a select few.
not the primary means of checking out for everyone.
Oh for sure, if I gotta guess I'm picking the one that's best for me every time.
Self checkout wants my opinion I'll give it :)
At Costco it's great minus the membership checks. Thanks this was a quick process, now let me stop and take my card out so you can see I'm not stealing deals.
Walmart, fuck you hire more cashier's why am I waiting 10 minutes to checkout at self checkout when you have 50 closed fucking lanes!
I straight up said this the last time I was there to one of the managers watching the self checkout after I heard them complaining about the long ass line. Maybe if you actually turned the other 20 lanes on instead of only having 3 the lines would go by quicker, ya dumbasses.
You expect them to pull 20 extra people put of their ass?
If they offered a living wage it wouldn't be a problem. They can afford it, without raising prices.
No no no no no, HOW could they afford that?
Tell me how they could afford it as a giant multi billion dollar company.
It's not even possible to pull out billions to shareholders and CEO's each year if they did that.
Why don't anyone ever think about the poor ultra rich?
Whether they have them all open or just 3, they still only have 2 or 3 employees watching over it all. For some reason, they're all open in the morning when there aren't any customers, but then in the late afternoon, they turn everything off when the store is flooded with customers. It's ass backwards.
Probably some power-mad manager saying "employees must get up early to learn discipline".
Having worked at a grocery store, it has to do with inventory stocking. All the trucks show up in the morning, so you need more people around to do intake and stock the shelves. Sometimes they go help in the front in the downtime. Despite what the antiwork folks say, most managers are not power mad assholes, they're workers playing their role in the system. The owner class however...
...so the truck drivers are also forced to get up early? Don't let me down I want to be jaded today.
If you're genuinely curious, a lot of it has to do with traffic management. I will blindly assume that you live near a large city in north america.
Trucks are big and cumbersome, especially semis. They're fine ok the highway, but on city roads around busy places like grocery stores they're like one man traffic jams.
Your typical American grocery store moves literal tons of product every single day, very little of which is produced locally. They require constant, daily replenishing, and it has to be done without disrupting the flow of shoppers and surrounding traffic.
The solution is to start your night at a store or distribution center in a major city. Pick up your trailer of paper products or whatever, make your first stop in town, then hit the highway. Stop at towns and cities along the way, dropping off a pallet or two at each until you reach your final stop in another major city where you swap trailers and take a nap before doing it all again. Many grocery stores employ a small team of (frequently underpaid) workers to process all this at odd hours in the night.
Supply chain is 24/7
So you mean the mad managers are actually sitting in urban design, not building public transit? Rush hour over here is when there's enough cars on arterial streets so you can't walk across them wherever you want, there's no actual jams.
That doesn't sound very efficient, over here they consign full lorries at distribution centres to stock up one particular supermarket or two, or maybe half a lorry if it's been a slow day and the supermarket didn't get a delivery in the last what three days depends on what they're missing (customers can survive one of five crisps flavours being out of stock, all toothpaste, not so much). The Swiss have it really nailed down, any business of any significant size over there has to have rail access so the likes of IKEA don't put a single lorry on the road, and supermarket distribution centres receive containers on rail and then maybe send out lorries: If a village has a train station chances are the village supermarket is within forklift distance. They have absolutely no qualms about pulling a freight car or two with a small passenger train set.
In North America our rail and highway systems are designed specifically with freight in mind, particularly in the west. 40% of freight in the US is moved by rail vs less than 20% on average in Europe. These rail lines rarely branch out or carry passengers however. Some of this is because of greedy assholes, but a lot of it is also due to history and geography (in much of the country, the train tracks predate the cities).
American freight movement follows a production line philosophy. Trains travel in long, straight lines between freightyards, where their cargo is offloaded onto trucks. Each trailer is loaded with one genre of goods (produce, paper products, milk, etc.), then drops one stores' worth at each stop along the way. This method has a variety of benefits and drawbacks.
I'm intrigued by this concept of loading directly from a train car to a retail store, that's something you don't often see over here.
The thing I really hate about it is that where I live, they don't have bags at the self checkout. Cuz you know, someone might steal a fucking plastic bag. 🙄
Where I live (Montréal, Canada) plastic bags are banned everywhere. You either bring your own or buy a reusable at the cash. Some places (like grocery stores) also sell paper bags. You get used to it. If you have a car you leave a bunch of reusables in the trunk, if you don't you just have to remember to bring one with you. The also sell some super thin ones you can carry in your pockets that are sturdy and large enough for a small run at the grocery store.
The only thing I’d hate about that, is if they don’t have a recyclable option and you always have to buy the reusable ones. At some point they just become garbage because you forgot them for the last 20 trips, and who needs 100 reusable bags?
Or how about you forgot to bring them in with you but don't realize it until everything is unloaded on the conveyor?
Most grocery stores still offer paper bags and personally I love them to pack everything I want to bring to the recycling bin
It's not that I care what they're made of. Here they're required to charge 10¢/bag. I would happily take a paper bag. The thing I don't like is being treated like an extremely petty criminal.
As an aide though, everything I've read supports the conclusion that the bag bans only lead to more waste. IIRC, a generous estimate would mean you need to reuse a bag at least 20x in order to break even on resource usage... Which basically never happens. It's an excellent example of a feel good solution that sounds good until you run the numbers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That said, I'd be perfectly happy to see us eliminate almost all uses of disposable plastics.
I like the aldi model with no bags—when you forget a bag you look for an empty box. Not ideal for people who walked though.
It's different here (at Walmart at least), they leave all their reusable bags at the self checkout where you can just buy them. But there is a lot of staff and the area is like a bullpen, so there is only one exit and there are employees looking at the carts' contents.
As for the bags, for sure it's a contentious topic. And I agree with you. As I mentioned in another reply, I see a lot of the sturdier reusable bags for sale at thrift store, they have to roll them up and put them in a bin they have so many...
I’ve definitely used my reusable bags more than 20 times. Why don’t people use them more than 20 times?
In the before times, when you could still find baggers at checkouts, paper bags were provided. I know the cost was figured in to the prices but it is B.S. that they now charge for them.
Neverminding that we have to scan the cards to even begin scanning the (soon to be our) stuff.
My Costco has had “self checkout” for about a year now. There’s a Costco employee that waves you over and scans all your items. I really don’t get it.
The Costco self checkouts can only do a certain amount of weight per square inch before they shit the bed. Which is bad, because it's costco. Unloading the entire shelf while you haven't paid can't be done, so you have to scan, hit the weight limit, pay, unload, then scan and load the shelf again...and then pay again. Idiotic design that multiplies the wait times considerably, lol.
I have no sympathy for companies losing money due to theft at self-checkout, it's a cost saving measure that's bitten them in the ass.
They also suck for alcohol, or anything that doesn't have a barcode, as mentioned in the story. I never buy either of those products at self checkout.
That said, I really liked the opportunity to not have to socialize with someone
Ha,, I once got booted from a Safeway in my early 20's when I was trying to buy beers and the lady who was supposed to be verifying ID was shooting the shit w her coworker. She clearly saw the thing flashing, but wanted to finish her story. I tried waving at her to no avail. She had a very I'll get to you in a minute vibe, but she clearly wasn't talking about work stuff. I had worked at a Lucky previously and they used the same self checkout system system. I knew I just needed to type my bday on their terminal to get it to sell, so I went n did it lol. Hey, self check out amirite? I figured fuck it, I'll do that part too I guess.
She finally noticed like right before I paid and took my beers and wouldn't let me pay. I was like here's my ID, I've been waiting like 5 minutes to show you. Manager showed up told me to leave, and never come back, it was a whole thing. Granted, I was 100% being a young , dumb prick, but I was annoyed with the lady not doing her job, and wasting my time. Having been on the other side of that terminal before, knowing how easy it was to do, I was super annoyed that she wasn't even acknowledging me trying to get her attention. Fun times lol.
I would have done the same.
Self checkout is useful when you only want a few things. Much faster.
If you're getting a full trolley, you'd need a barcode scanner to take round the shop with you. If you don't have that, it's faster to go with a manned checkout.
A grocery store near me has the self-scan as part of the app. It's pretty good, but honestly it's not that bad to do a full trip through the self checkout.
Wegmans tried that at first but failed and removed it. No one wants to scan products with their phone while shopping.
Oh dang, I love it. It's awesome to be able to see what my total cost is as I shop. I definitely buy less when I do it that way, and added bonuses include everything already being bagged the way I like it and not having to talk to people (at least usually). I did it all the time during the pandemic.
I do. It’s kinda new here in Germany, but I think it’s working pretty well.
I did when Smith's had it. I found a lot of coupons that way.
The theft is a feature, not a bug in my eyes!
Alcohol isn't so bad where I'm at, I just scan it first to give the worker some time to scan their badge and let me continue
I honestly only use self check out. I don't buy a ton in a single shopping trip and I just find it easier to do it myself since I bring my own bulky bags that go on the side of my bike. A lot easier for me in general and sucks some places are getting rid of it.
Interesting! Alcohol doesn't have a barcode there?
Here it does. But the self checkout lamp will go to red instantly and a clerk has to come to approve your age.
It has a barcode, but most places haven't figured out the "show ID to a human" flow yet.
Trying to tell the pears and their variants and potatoes and their variants apart is such a pain in the ass without a barcode. Especially since the example pic is usually quite different, and like 10px on a 480p greased up, airgapped touchscreen. I hate self checkout. The only time I use it is when the store is open late at night. Which, I actually do like. Having stores open till 1am or 3am can be extremely handy, especially if you have an office job during the day and do night classes.
After a few times I memorized where the bread or fruit (w/o barcode) I usually buy is in the menu and am almost equally fast as an employee would be. So it just took me some time to adjust personally.
I bought beer last time I went through self checkout and of course it called some teenage girl over to check my ID; I'm pushing 60. I just said "No. I'm old enough to be your grandfather." She was fine with that.
Remember kids, if you see someone shoplifting or switching the barcodes at your big-box self-checkout: No you didn't.
Preach!
I'm lucky enough to not need to take the risks involved in order to get by, but I'll be damned if I'm going to fuck over someone that may be unluckier than me. Idgaf what it is, I'm fucking sergeant Schultz.
The way I see it, you're doing a public service...
You're creating jobs in loss prevention.
You're helping make the case for retaining more checkout workers.
You're keeping those minimum-wage checkout supervisors safe by not putting them in a position to intervene with desperate people trying to feed themselves.
You're helping the store avoid wage theft by having you play unpaid, untrained, unqualified security guard.
You're helping the needy feed themselves.
Give yourself a pat on the back, you local hero! 🫡
My grandmother snitch on some poor bastard stealing crystal light at walmart. If someones stealing fucking crystal light from walmart theyre clearly in way worse than I am.
I worked at a supermarket in a wealthy area for years - no one stole more than the wealthy old crones from the retirement village next around the corner.
The funny thing is she ain't wealthy, ffs we live in the same house. She's just got a really stupid and weirdly conservative and at the same time progressive sense of morality.
But the self-checkout cameras sure did.
Genuine mistake, I can't be expected to do a job I wasn't trained for. All those apples look the same to me
Everything is an apple for the untrained eye
Thats why you follow safe Covid Precautions. 😁👍
If I cared enough, I'd tell someone because I hate thieves, but I generally prefer to mind my own business. Same philosophy if I saw someone stealing from a small business.
Walmart and their ilk steal far more in wage theft than they lose to shoplifters.
"These companies don't pay their employees enough, in my opinion, so I'm ok with people stealing from them."
Just say what you mean.
I'm not OK with people stealing from them because they don't pay people enough.
I'm OK with people stealing from them and they don't pay their employees enough, and they still steal more in wage theft than is shoplifted from them.
Why do you feel compelled to play unpaid security guard for a bunch of billionaires? They neither need nor appreciate your help.
If you hate thieves, you should love shoplifters. The real thieves are at the top scheming more ways to fuck the poor.
Especially when these people aren't shoplifting big-ticket items like TVs. They're shoplifting things they're desperate for like food.
No they aren't they are gonna lean in even harder what a dumbass story. One time fixed cost will always win over paying people in perpetuity
Yeah I have trouble believing this. They just remodeled the Walmart near me and I bet there's 60 self checkout machines. There's like maybe 3-5 normal checkout lines in between the self checkout.
I saw a grocery store put in the best self checkout lanes I've seen, then take them out a couple years later because their customers didn't like them.
Things be weird sometimes.
My favorite is still having them closed when low staffed because they still need a person dedicated to helping them.
Just amazing how much trouble management goes to to make experiences for customers worse
Exit gates you need a receipt to go through. That shit isn't even legal, I've been waiting for someone pushing that to the SC so they'll have to dismantle them nationwide.
Ppft, stores thinking they can hinder my free movement in society? I'll go violent over that, that's where I draw the final line, no more of this capitalist surveillance shit, you put barriers in my way I'll stomp them to pieces.
So if I go in, don't find what I'm looking for and go out, am I unable to open the door?
Kroger here just added two more lanes of self-checkout. We won't use them. We're a family of 3. We buy a lot of groceries. Doing it by ourselves would take so much more time.
Our Kroger had two rows of mini self checkouts, 2x3, and adjacent it was a cashier checkout. They removed one of the rows of minis and replaced it and the subsequent with a conveyor self checkout instead, so 3 minis and 2 conveyors.
Now there are fewer places to check out, and the belted checkout is annoying as all hell to use. If you have 3 items it's wasteful to use it because you have to walk 5 feet to fetch your bags, and if you have a large cart of groceries you wouldn't want to self checkout anyway because it's a hell of a lot easier to have help.
I keep seeing stories every so often on Facebook about this. I feel like these stories just pop up to bring up engagement on the site. most stores in my area (Florida) have increased self checkout
Yeah I think they saw a couple of examples Of stores taking out the self checkout lanes and ran with them. Although you could say the theft that the self checkout lanes allow is a recurring expense, but that's probably not nearly as much as the saving that the machines give.
It isn't. Or at least it isn't as big of a problem as they are letting on. https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numbers/699107/
Shrink has hovered around 1.5% (that's 1.5% of total sales...) And the NRF has been coy about the fact that 1/3 of that shrink is "administrative" issues - lost product, mis allocated, warehouse issues, broken in transit, etc.
Additionally, a little less than a third is from employee theft, and a the remaining 36% is external theft.
But since they lump mistakes and general admin issues in with theft, they get to claim a higher number whenever they complain very loudly so that they can redirect the conversation away from the massive increase in profits they have had, along with the increase in wage theft cases they are losing, as well as trying to cover up the fact they are closing "under performing" stores in poorer neighborhoods (which not limits access to people in those locations, but the store doesn't care, they dont buy stuff anyway...).
unexpected item in the bagging area. place items in the bagging area. unexpected item in the bagging area.
Even worse, here in Canada at the Sobeys owned stores, you can opt to use your own reusable bag (plastic grocery bags are now outlawed) but if you do they prompt an employee to come check your bags. They never actually check, but if there isn't an attendant around you just have to wait there until they notice and end the prompt. I waited for 10 minutes the other day because the employee went off for a break or something.
Edit: spelling
Oh man I nearly gave my SO an aneurysm because I started scanning items while she set up the reusable bags. Both of us were so over that stupid machine getting made about those bags sitting there!
Oh same note too! If you dare start doing something before you've gotten those bags ok'd, or if you plunk down a bag before it prompts you to do so it's like you're committing a felony.
You gotta time it with a heavy item. Some machines have tolerances for weight (or so it seems). So I always pick my heaviest item and put it down at the same time I put the bag down. Basically bagging it and placing it down at the same time. That "tricks" the machine into not realizing the extra weight is from a bag since the bag should be within the weight tolerance of the heavy item.
I've never had it fail.
You know, around the 5-7 minute mark I'd be dumping my reusable bags and walking out.
I would've but I had just spent an hour getting a cart full of groceries and I wasn't about to go do that again somewhere else. Plus I couldn't imagine, at the time, they'd be gone that long.
I'd keep the bags. You get what you give.
I'm thankful pretty much every store here deactivated that sensor shortly after installing self checkouts.
A Kroger near me recently updated their self checkouts and now they're way more sensitive, they view any hand movements on its little camera as "you just slipped something into the bag I'm calling the employee over", and you can't mute them anymore which is the lost infuriating for me. I have trouble doing things with a lot of noise, and having a loud ass computer yelling about everything it's doing makes my checkout take easily 3-4x as long. There is no benefit to disabling the mute button, it still screams for employees when something went wrong, and it only frustrates and irritates everyone who can hear it, employees included. I can't count how many times I've heard the employees complain about it too.
Yeah the Meijer by us is sensitive like this and when it starts inevitably flashing with approval needed an employee comes over, scans their badge and an overhead security camera clip of me scanning the last item displays on screen.
Which is so awkward to have to stand there with this employee who I'm sure is just as sick of the process as I am.
I don't shoplift and I enter all produce honestly, it makes me want to start scanning my avacado as bananas.
Legit!
I'm already being treated like I'm doing shady shit, might as well actually pullshady shit.
Practice your sleight of hand movements. I’ve figured out how to make it look like I’ve just scanned one thing but moved two at both Walmart and Kroger self checkouts without any alarms going off. Helps a lot with my getting my employee discount for having to run a register.
Ugh I had a grocery store with great self checkout and then they added the dumb sensor. Became worst experience. I assume it was intentional sabotage to the self checkout experience. Least that is what I would do.
Item removed from bagging area.
In my experience, self-checkout started with the weight sensors, rather than adding them later. I've noticed some stores have a system now without the weight thing, which probably cuts down on confusing and time-consuming error situations, but it makes it seem chaotic. My parents use them in the most fucked up way - leave everything in the cart, scan stuff, bag it, then put it in the cart, and I'm just WHAT? Aren't they going to accuse you of stealing? Some walmarts aggressively pursue claims of theft from self checkout, like in the case of this lady who was awarded 2.1 million after being accused of stealing, which she said was not true. This article details the story of a lady who said she was arrested after not scanning things by accident, and the article notes "Sixty-two other people were cited and released by police at the same Tucson Walmart between January 2021 and April 2022."
Walmart also is starting to use 'AI' to detect self checkout theft, which I'm sure will be foolproof and work out great.
What?
Anyway, I'm sure they love not paying employees to do this, but it seems like more trouble than it's worth.
From Tucson here: Walmart in town is pretty sketchy compared to the other places. We had someone light the chemical isle on fire on Christmas Eve that burnt down half the entire store lmao. Walmart sold itself as a low price retailer for so long that only low income people go there and with that there’s theft and then the classism of hiring armed guards during their high crime periods.
Does milk not have a bar code?
If anything, I’d figure it would be produce items that would cause the most drama, but eventually you start to remember those codes. 4011 is bananas. 4799 is for tomatoes. 4065 is green peppers…
I love self-checkout because I bag things exactly like I want and I can get the process completed without having chat with the cashier or Karen out on the bagger for putting just two items in a large paper bag.
I don’t think I’ve ever been stopped or accused of stealing things, but then I usually choose the unit closest to the cashier and I leave all my items in the bagging area until I’m done. That said, I used to be a grocery store cashier, so I understand the process a little better than most, but it’s still easy to make mistakes.
Self checkout scanners are unbearably slow, and if you try to go any faster it’s “unexpected item in bagging area” and wait for the overworked assistant.
I refuse to be bossed around by shitty robots.
Condensation on milk barcodes causes scanning issues I've found
Probably because it sweats and the pure white nature might make the laser more reflective? Only thing I can think of.
Milk is frustrating to scan? I did it yesterday just fine...
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. People find it difficult to maneuver? Can't find the bar code? Self checkouts tend to have a hand scanner too, and they could use that.
I'm going to guess that this is regional or vendor specific, because I've literally never seen a self-checkout with a hand scanner. And if I ever did, I would expect it to transform into a broken, dangling cable within a few months.
Perhaps. I've seen many, and they're wireless. I suppose they might end up missing.
I know Walmart has them, it's kinda necessary considering the size of some of the products they sell.
We have hand scanners at the local grocery chains HyVee and Dillon's (owned by Kroger) that are doing just fine. Lowe's and Home Depot have hand scanners too. They have all sorted out all the 'unexpected item in baggage area' and other stuff years ago.
No idea about Walmart, but could see that type of store going cheap on the hardware and having it treated terribly.
The condensation over the barcode/potentially warped shape of the milk often makes it not scan on the first go. Seen it many times haha.
At my Walmart the employees don’t stop people from stealing food. They told me as much.
I believe it's policy at Walmart for the regular staff to not prevent theft at all. Loss prevention handles that. They'll build a case without pursuing at first, and then being down the hammer.
I keep hearing this and I wonder about how they do this. I mean how to they keep records of every shoplifter? Do the employees recognize the people every time they come in? How many shoplifters can they keep track of? Are they like "ah yeah it's shoplifter 687, put this video in his file"? Do they bother with people stealing an occasional item like basic clothing or food? Are they watching a single shoplifter over years, like what if they only steal once in a while and it's low value? I'm curious about this, I've never actually heard from anyone who was watched over a period of time and then prosecuted.
I was busted for shoplifting as a teenager and I sort of know how this works. The general employees (cashiers, service staff, etc.) don't give a fuck if you steal and will actually get in trouble if they try and apprehend you. Almost all large companies operate this way for liability reasons. They aren't insured enough to cover all of their staff in the event that one of them gets injured or killed trying to stop someone from stealing something. Much less costly to simply budget in a line item expense for incidental theft that's bound to happen.
Instead of the employees focusing on shoplifters, they have a loss prevention agent in the back watching cameras. Those cameras all over the place in all the big box retail stores, and they don't even look like those super obvious dome cameras anymore. Most people who steal and get away with it will eventually come back to the same store to do it again. They take note of your face/features and watch for you to return (also, the large chain stores will share this information with other nearby stores). As soon as you step through the door the next time you come in, cameras are recording your every move. That's exactly what happened with me and my delinquent friends. We ripped off the same store about 2-3 times and the last time was when the guy actually made his move and apprehended us. He waited for us to actually take something without paying for it and physically stopped us at the door as we were stepping through the threshold. At that point, they confiscate whatever you stole, show you the security footage of you taking the product and walking out with it, call the cops, press charges for petty theft if under $1000, and call your parent/guardian if you are a minor.
In my case, I got extremely lucky because the cops simply never showed up after hours of waiting for them, and eventually, they couldn't legally detain us any longer, so they released us to our parents without charges. My Mom was pissed and set me straight when we got home, and I stopped hanging around the dumbass kids who coerced me into doing it in the first place. We were also banned for life from the store, but I've actually been back to that same store several times as an actual customer and they didn't recognize me anymore. Or they just didn't give a shit.
If you just steal once, especially if it's a spur of the moment thing, a very low value item, or a complete accident, it's really unlikely that loss prevention will care. If they start noticing lots of inventory going missing, they will watch those sections much closer for suspicious activity. There's always the chance that you could just be randomly singled out by the cameras.
I've heard of some places not bothering to stop food thieves because a person who steals food from a grocery store probably desperately needs it, but I imagine they all have a line that they aren't willing to let people cross.
I feel like in the future this is going to get more intense. They will have facial+ear+gait recognition combined with AI so they can detect and combine literally every instance of shoplifting, intentional or not (to say nothing of footage that only coincidentally has the appearance of shoplifting but they retain it as "proof" anyway), over decades of visits to any of their locations, and once you've accumulated over $1000 combined in unpaid merchandise, hit you with a felony charge.
Or they just ban you after the first incident straight up, and electronically recognize you and kick you out for the rest of your life afterward.
And you would have no affordable recourse because they have all the footage and lawyer money to oppose fighting it.
They have your face and whatever else information you give them when you check out. It's all covered in cameras. Doesn't take much. I'm sure they don't get everything and they have false positives. But if you become such a problem for them yeah.
I don't have any real experience with this but I think it's actually hard to catch the accidental thefts and such who they are losing so much money and starting to rethink these things.
Target will wait for you to steal serval "inflated value mind you full profit plus..." thousand dollars of stuff before pursuing you legally. It's easier when it's large sums.
That's how it works for most stores in Canada.
"theft over" (aka theft over $5,000.00) can get you 10 years in federal prison, "theft under" is up to two years in provincial jail. That's a huuuge difference.
Also, more footage, more angles, easier to convict.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-334.html
Honestly, can you blame them?
Electronics, luxury items, other “nice to haves” maybe. But who wants to be the reason someone goes hungry?
Not to mention, they are getting paid dogshit wages.
And they actually can get reprimanded or fired for doing so. Fuck it.
Can confirm. Used to work for a big retailer and one day caught someone stealing (not food) and confronted them. I was a pretty solid employee who had been there for years but my manager had to fight hard to stop me from being fired; it was a really close call.
Yeah it's been 20+ years since I worked retail but we weren't allowed to confront anyone, especially inside the store. We had to wait until they left the store for a manager to approach them and we had to be 100% sure they stole something in the first place.
The worst I ever saw happen to someone is they gave it back when confronted outside the store, it was a $5 can of automotive spray paint.
I was never quite sure if this was all legal reasons or because of the blowback against the brand if someone was wrong and it made headlines.
When I was a youth, we used to go to Safeway and get donuts or "Mojo's" (wedge fries) at the bakery, then munch them while walking through the store so that they were gone by the time we got to the till to buy our cans of pop.
One of those unforgettable moments from those years was when we were finally called out by a security guy, something very casual like "you boys are gonna pay for those donuts up front, right?" and Chris who was "that guy" in our crew, bounced his donut off the mall cop's head and ran like his life depended on it
For this reason, I think it's pretty shitty they put condoms in alarm boxes. If there's something I'm okay with stealing from a Wal-Mart, it's food and condoms.
Don't think I could convict anyone stealing safety glasses either.
Jokes on them, I shoplift at the staffed checkout too.
Walmarts's self checkout is the only one in my area that doesn't frustrate the hell out of me. I've stopped going to certain other stores simply because I don't like their self checkout systems.
I'm autistic. I always apparently seem weird to people. That means any time I use a self checkout, the minders stare at me because they think I'm about to steal something. It makes me nervous, and I start getting uncomfortable and self conscious, which I'm sure makes me seem even more suspicious. And either security or the automated system have triggered the "please wait for an associate" so many times. But they always look at the video and tell me "Sorry, this thing is just sensitive/weird/whatever excuse.", then leave me alone.
I'm not going to call it discriminatory, because I don't think it is? But it feels like I have to be on my best behavior or I'll get arrested because I was so focused on trying to pass as "normal" that I missed scanning a tomato. And for the record, I've never stolen anything, even when I was low on food and really needed some stuff I couldn't afford. Hell, I have forgotten to scan something once and went back in to pay for it.
Self checkout sucks, but it's normally still better than waiting in line and interacting face to face with a cashier.
It's easier said than done, but once I learned to stop giving a shit about what NTs think about me, my life in public got a lot better. I still get that from time to time but it's a lot less often these days.
I feel like a criminal the second I enter a store, I've felt like this for at least the past decade, it's like everyone is a suspect... Like damn I'm just here to buy milk and bread..
Walmart wants to do some sort of AI surveillance shit at their self-checkouts, I noped the fuck out of that and go to their clerks now.
Weird. I generally don't mind self-checkout but Walmart's showing you a video of yourself so you can check yourself out while you're checking out yourself kinda creeps me out. And I don't even use the self checkout to steal.
The Walmart self-checkout near me doesn't use the weight sensors, they're turned off. It makes checking out much easier. Also, they flow better, for instance, at Lowe's, you need to specifically press the "Pay Now" button to pay, but at Walmart you can just shove your card in when you're done scanning, and it starts the checkout process. At Lowe's you must choose between the print or email receipt, but at Walmart you can let the question time-out while you put the groceries back in the cart, and it will print the receipt. The Smith's self-checkout is even more clunky, and very chatty. I don't like it.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Walmart, but IMO, their self-checkout works better than the others I've tried.
Don’t get it. Sam’s and BJs both have scanning apps on the phone. Most amazing tech ever! Costco… HURRY UP! Also, Sam’s and Bjs don’t check my card because I WOULDNT BE ABLE TO BUY ANYTHING WITHOUT THE CARD ANYWAYS… Costco!!
It is a dumb bit of ceremony, but the door checker just glances at the card. You could roll in with a paper print out and be fine until the registers.
Still, enough people do stupidly wait until they are in the door threshold and then block the path while digging around, so they should get rid of it.
Pretty sure the check for the door is just there to make people feel more important.
It's to make sure they didn't forget the card at home/in the car/etc, and not realize it until checkout
BJ’s doesn’t check anyone going in. You’re free to browse without a membership you just can’t buy anything.
It’s so that you can’t share your card with friends. You specifically have to live at the same place and have proof when you add them to the account
As long as shrink stays below what they save by removing cashiers they will stay. It may be location specific removals at high shrink stores.
The only reason for Costco to do this would be theft prevention or to make sure members are the only ones using their cards.
Our Costco checks your member ID before you can use the self checkout.
And they specifically want to see the picture of you on the back.
and then they sign the receipt at self check and on the way out. My guess is that this is still not accurate enough for them compared to traditional scanning. That said, it's batshit if they if they don't replace it with some express lines. Obviously most people in costco are there for a cart full of shit, but I (and judging by self check lines) often go in with a specific thing or 3 in mind.
and how long does it take you to find that thing or three?
lol kinda joking but kinda not. Every time I went in there for something, it had mysteriously moved halfway across the store and employees didn't seem to know where...
iirc that is deliberate. They move things around so you have to browse and hopefully buy more than what you came for.
a common retail tactic, but I feel like costco is the worst.
Our Costco has started doing this since the pandemic. They didn't really do it much before. The crackdown is coming at a time where the price of everything is rising and they want more people to buy the membership instead of mooching off others who have.
Literally the opposite is happening. Look at any busy store: self checkout can handle like 10 people, compared to registers which are significantly less at any given time. Registers account for much less business, and corporations are going to try and get by the minimal amount of employees as possible to function. Handling physical cash also adds more complexity with tills having to be deposited, audited, and withdrawn daily.
I just wish more stores took a hybrid approach. Like fuck, regular checkout and self checkout don't have to be mutually exclusive. But all the stores around me with self-checkout never staff more than 1 MAAAAAYBE 2 regular cashiers.
what is actually happening is far worse then either of the scenarios. Bigger retail establishments such as Walmart is doing away with the brick and mortar stores in general in favor of online only warehouses. No walk in and grab 2 or 3 items, gotta buy it online if you want the item. They were just boasting about it on the Wire (Walmart's Associate Page not the news site) a few weeks back.
Replace them with “no chit chat” lanes. I’m just buying some pasta, I don’t want to talk to you.
I avoid self-checkout as often as possible. In my mind, that’s taking a job away from a physical person, it’s a cost-savings for the retailer, but customers never see any benefit from it. I choose the person checkout everytime as my little bit of solidarity with my fellow humans.
I'm the opposite. I use self-checkout as often as possible, because it means I have to interact with as few people as possible. I loathe people being forced to ask me how I'm doing, because we both know they don't care. Or when they ask "Did you find everything?"- does it fucking matter? Either I did, which is why I'm checking out, or I didn't, in which case it doesn't fucking matter because thanks to their shitty implementation of JIT their stock has been converted from on-prem inventory to rolling warehouse deliveries every single day. Just let me get what I want and get out.
I have never seen cashiers ask such things. At most they'd ask whether I have the discount card or if I want one of the featured discounted items. Usually I don't miss anything when wearing headphones.
Same. Perhaps once upon of time, but I haven't met a cashier with that energy in years.
Which is great because I also don't like the interaction. My experience lately has been nodding and card flashing - maybe a "Credit" / "Debit".
I see massive benefits from being able to get out of the store quickly when I am done instead of getting stuck behind some old person with a ton of coupons to argue about.
It helps that they sorted out the oversensitive weight checking and still staff a couple of lanes when it is busy so people have a choice.
Self checkout is often not the quick option for me. Accidental double scans, coupons, random tests all requiring assistance who is already occupied make waiting behind an old person a more consistent experience.
Have you considered switching to pickup when you can? pick what you want from the comfort of your home, drive to the store at the designated time, an employee has picked all your goods and it is brought out to you. Same price for you, more labor for the company to pay for.
If you’re just ordering non perishable items that’s fine. Otherwise you might get nearly-expired items, over-ripe produce, etc. It’s all up to the whim of the employee, and they may be having a bad day…
So far I haven't noticed that happening. They seem to be pretty good about grabbing decent stuff. That's at my Walmart and Target at least
Glad to hear it. I know a guy who got a load of nearly expired groceries and vowed to never do it again.
I make sure that I am on very good terms with them. I help them get the groceries into the car and I joke around with them. It helps that I am sincere and they know that.
I really don’t like doing pickup for most trips because I care about the quality and ripeness of my produce and also purposefully select the furthest away expiry dates for certain things I go through slowly, it becomes a lot to ask someone else to do if there are 20 comment lines for these little details, but if I don’t it just results in wasted food and money :/
Either way the company is getting your money.
But using a real person cost the company more, in theory
I also avoid it but due to not being good at it. I would hate to be accused of shop lifting due to a mistake. It would be a hassle to straighten out.
I don't use self checkouts because I hate trying to get those fucking bags open.
Also give cashiers chairs.
just bring a backpack or some other bag.
That's a great way to have LP follow you the entire time
Cool, new friend too!
If that's a problem for some reason, they make bags that fold down to nearly nothing and you can stick in a pocket as well.
Also, "Loss Prevention" for anyone else who needs it.
I say, let them waste their time on me!
yeeeeah. They'll have to hire people to work the checkout lanes in that case... which means paying enough to compete with other employers who offer more. Case in point, here it's like 12/hr here to work in a grocery, vs 16/hr at Amazon. But even if they do this, people will still shoplift. Self checkout didn't create the problem, it rather treats everyone like a suspect.
The grocery I go to never has more than one staffed checkout lane at any time, typically a very long line of people too old, too stubborn, or with too many items to do it themselves. During the day it's 8 or 16 self-checkout lanes (minus broke ones), and they close in the evening, so everyone is forced to use the slow staffed checkout.
I fundamentally hate self-checkouts because they were an attempt to eliminate an essential job in the company. I refuse to use them. Frustrares my wife and stepdaughter, but it is my little way to give the corporations the middle finger and force them to have to employ people.
I don't get what the issue is with eliminating unnecessary jobs. It doesn't create any extra work for the customer (you have to place all items on the conveyer and put them back into the cart either way), it isn't offloading any extra work to the other employees and it saves anyone involved a fuckton of time.
Technological advancements have the unfortunately intended side effect of corporations having less people they gotta pay to, because machines are quite the competitor sometimes. While I think OP is being a bit pedantic here, efficiency in and of itself is not inherently good – the question should be who's extracting the profit. If the increased efficiency translates into less working hours... hell yeah. If it translates into record megacorp profits, then... I see no need in eliminating these unnecessary jobs for now – the worker gets their bread and that's what I care about
This. They may be unnecessary for the company, but they are necessary for society to maintain function and for the economy as a whole to continue smoothly function. Consider an analogy for the economy to a food chain, you have to have the bottom rungs of the food chain that are plentiful and prosperous to continue to maintain the larger predators. If you start taking out the bottom rungs, it may take a while, but the apex eventually starves. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The more money the poor make, the better the economy will function.
Fair! My mom always refused to use them.
I didnt for the longest time, until the day my friend went through self c/o and took about two minutes, while I took 15 min in the slow lane. Which honestly was less about the employees and more about shoppers who cant figure out how to pay for the two carts worth groceries they got...
I am on a fierce crusade against scanning your receipt to be "granted" exit through the gates. I'm not playing their stupid fucking game, I force the gates open every time as a matter of principle.
Lol, stores think they have a right to hold me in the store against my will unless I dance their little dance? Suuuure, now watch me leave.
Wait what that’s a thing
if you pay a membership (costco, sams, etc), they are allowed to stop you at the door and 'check' your receipt.
other stores, just say 'no thanks' and keep walking, or have visible earbuds in and be jammin' out the door.
I just say no thanks have a nice day and keep walking.
I guess there is good and bad with either style. I generally prefer the self checkout because I can bag my own stuff
We really need a code of etiquette for them, though. Trip to the store this morning, and they were down to 3 self-check stations from usual 10 with literally a dozen people in line. Including one couple with a cart full of a week's groceries and one lady trying to win coupon roulette. Four other people cycled through the third scanner while those two piddled away the day.
Here in Denmark, it's becoming more and more common to be able to scan your items with your own phone using the store's app while you go through the store, and you can bag everything straight from the shelves.
You then pay by credit card, also with your phone, scan a QR at a designated exit, and you're good to go.
They have random checks, but they've only been about 1/20 for me.
I used this as a pilot program in Pittsburgh when I lived there. It was a hand scanner running some sort of Android based OS but largely the same thing. You scan your store card to unlock a scanner, scan your stuff as you walk through the store putting things in bags, then you walk to a kiosk, pay, then walk out.
I used to get so many dirty looks from people who thought I was stealing a whole cart of groceries until they saw the receipt print out.
Doing it directly via an app would have been even better!
My costco "self checkout" is really just an employee scanning your things and then you box them. Does move quicker than the standard lanes, though.
I went to Costco, did self checkout and an employee walked up and offered to do it and I was just what? Didn't really make sense to me.
Same at my Costco. They have 6 or maybe even 9 "self checkouts" and each is manned by an employee who scans everything without removing anything from the cart. Its basically a compact checkout. Recently was in another area and the Costco had true self checkouts with weight sensors messing up and requiring employee overide and all. It was a pain in the ass.
I think it depends. Sometimes they are scanning everything, sometimes they just scan the large items.
I read somewhere that this can mean they think you might steal stuff.
I think they do it for customers with bulky items that you can’t comfortably scan yourself since Costco self checkouts don’t have wireless barcode scanners like Sams so the employee manning the self checkouts uses their own that basically temporarily connects to whatever terminal the customer they’re scanning for. Very helpful so I don’t have to fuddle with big packs of paper towels or soda to try to scan their barcode on the built-in barcode reader. Kind of an oversight imo Costco… you literally specialize in bulk items lol the poor worker doing self checkout scanning assistance is always running back and forth between customers
At my Costco they have employees at every self check out. Pretty counterintuitive but eh. I treat it like a "10 items or less" sort of thing
They have the weighing thing, and then also the people who count your items at the door... so it would be hard to do. I think the thought was it's just more efficient to help if the employees are already standing there.
If they would let you use the handheld scanner and not remove things from your cart, it would go so much faster. I used to do that at Sam’s a decade ago; dunno if it changed. I still load my cart barcode up on the off chance one of the cool employees is running self checkout because they’ll scan my entire cart in 30s like I wish I could.
I always load the cart barcode up when doing 10-15 item runs at the grocery Costco (a small one that was by my house... groceries and office supplies only). I tried doing that a 'big Costco' recently and they were like what? Don't you want us to bag them? And suggested I put it all on the conveyor.
Prefer self checkout because no talking and I'm typically faster than most cashiers. Nothing sucks more than waiting 3 mins while a new cashier tries to figure out if you handed then a turnip or a rutabaga lmao.
You really think the average person knows how to ring up produce better than the cashier? I'd much rather interact with a real person anyway, it makes it feel like you're supporting an actual business and employees instead of a computer with food behind it.
Which cashier? I've seen some that are worse than me (i've only cashiered fast food which is different enough that I wouldn't expect to be good), and some that are great.
Several times, but not recently, Walmart self-checkout machines would reset after I scanned the first item, I dunno why. But I figured I did my part by scanning it, so I didn't re-scan it, even though I knew it had reset. I could just play dumb, which isn't hard for me, if anyone asked. No one ever asked, but they upgraded the software, and it stopped doing that.
The employees seem a bit happier as attendants than cashiers, so I guess that's a good thing. I don't know how many lost their jobs to the machines, though.
I'll admit that I'm happier with self-checkout, because I almost never need to wait in line anymore.
I'm not sure how many lost their jobs to the machines at all. At a glance there appear to be about 4 attendants per self-checkout area, which is at least a dozen self-checkout machines at our local Walmart, so they all stay busy enough what with telling the machine I'm old enough to buy beer and such.
Minus the self-checkout machines I could imagine 2 of the 4 clerks running the usual "not enough cashiers" play that stores got famous for, with the other 2 being sent to the back for whatever duties. Possibly they aren't hired at all.
If my questionable observations are accurate, then that means that maybe Walmart is getting more throughput, with everyone ringing themselves up, but maybe they aren't spending a bunch less on labor.
I can't see anybody going back on the self-check machines, though. Not after all that money spent, and the decade that retailers have spent waiting for customers to learn how to do the job themselves, especially the older folks. That was a bitter change to buy, so it's wishful thinking that we're going right back to human checkout only.
Hell, Aldi just installed a couple self checkout machines here. They were the one holding out, too, since an Aldi cashier zooms the groceries through so fast it's tough to justify. Oh, and they're trying to have that one person, with shoppers in front of them, also be the attendant for the self-check machines. I double scanned something by accident and the clerk had to stop their own line to help me by pushing a button from way over there and then back to scanning they went.
Come on, Aldi.
I heard about strategies to print your own barcodes and stick them on merch to get a "discount". And that was intended to fool cashiers.
Imagine if I don't have to think about a cashier doing this transaction. $2 steaks for everyone!
You’d need to figure out a similarly weighted item. The majority have a lookup table of “this barcode is this weigh range” which prevents scanning a single almond and putting a TV down.
Yes finally burn them all down let me grab my sledgehammer I'll help
I love self-checkouts.
I also absolutely hate multi-line setups. There should be one line that feeds into all register. I don't want to have to gamble on which register won't get held up by something when I'm on my way out.
Those overly negative comments often come from USA. I've never had any major problems with self checkout in Europe and I generally go there as it's faster and you don't have to race against the cashier. Of course some chains have worse self checkouts, some have better but overall many people like it a lot. Even some older people who are not tech savvy use them.
I've never tried them really I just either get help or leave once I realize self checkout is the only option
They're usually pretty simple. I became attached to them when I was living as a foreigner abroad and didn't have much language skills. But I could understand the graphical prompts and numbers on a self-checkout machine!
I hate self checkout generally, but if I can get one that just has a hand scanner and doesn't force you to put everything into the bagging area, it's about the fastest way to checkout there is
The easiest way to get self checkouts that are awesome and not time consuming is by moving out of the US at this point.
Or go to Sam's Club... Their self checkout is pretty much the only one that didn't make me feel like I was a suspected criminal and actually let me check out quickly.
Then they make me feel like a suspected criminal by re-scanning half my basket before I can leave, but I guess you win some and you lose some
I noticed that lol I was just at Sams a few days ago and only bought three items. The guy at the exit not only stared at my receipt for an oddly long time but scanned two of the three items to I guess verify? Is it that hard to read three things lol?
Yeah, I still prefer the overall experience from Costco. More crowded, I'll only use the regular checkout, but even with long lines they get you out FAST. They also never adopted that stupid hand scanner at the door, because they actually treat their employees decently and trust them enough to be able to visually verify, and oh boy is that a lot faster than Sam's method.
But Sam's did nail the self checkout. I've not tried the app to scan as you go and pay automatically because I'm not interested in putting an app on my phone for every company I do business with
I agree honestly. People don’t know how to queue at sams lol
It's funny how divided a topic this is.
Could just be my area but the machines always fail in some way or another.
Give me 10%off if I am doing the job of an absentee cashier... Always cool seeing many checkouts all decked out in gear with noone there to run them. Ever.
OR, even better, use some decades old tech and spend a penny to put RFID tags on everything so I can just run my cart through and verify the list of stuff and click Yes, No, Maybe.
Somewhat related.. is it just me or are liquor stores the best at this? I never even stop moving and I'm out. Then i go next door to the pet store to grab some animal chow and I stand in line for 10mins because just one register of 6 is staffed.
At least we can order everything online for the most part now.
I've never had a failure, but one chain near me is a bit annoying with its "place your item in the bagged area" setting... I'd rather just put it in my cart directly, especially when I'm running out of room.
I find it easier to sort my items the way I like and to verify prices immediately, rather than having to watch the cashier and look at the machine, then ask the cashier to stop and remove/question something that scanned wrong...
And I'm surprised at how often I've had cashiers punch in the wrong produce code to something that's more expensive than my item. Have they stopped training cashiers in hopes that they'll make up for the 4011 phenomenon? They can't be doing it on purpose, but it's just weird to me.
It's always the bagging thing that fails for me. I'm not the smartest person in the world but I can scan an item and place it in the bagging area. It's kinda out of my hands at that point. Be it calibration or incorrect data sometimes it won't recognize and after a couple attempts locks and some underpaid person has to come roll their eyes at me and swipe a card to let it go through.
I've probably just been unlucky and gave up 10yrs ago on that.
No they don't train cashiers beyond what button to press. Produce is interesting. It's been a while (love curbside service) since I've been in a grocery store but ours has tags on produce you show to a scale and it weighs it and prints out a sticker with a barcode.
And I just realized how abusable that is. I'm going shopping tomorrow!
Oh what's the 4011 thing? Doesn't ring a bell.
4011 is bananas, which are one of the cheapest things by weight
Preach
I really hate this crap. Pay people to ring up and bag my groceries. Heaven knows you're charging enough for them that you should be offering me this courtesy.
Different strokes for different folks; I much prefer to quickly check myself out rather than waiting in line for someone to check my stuff out for me while dragging me into small talk and packing my bags in the most illogical way conceivable.
Meanwhile, stores all but stop manning existing checkouts, forcing everyone to line up to check out their own stuff.
Shoutout to Kroger for consistently only having one manned checkout open or two max during the busiest times forcing everyone to the self checkout line unless you want to gamble with how long the folks with the overflowing shopping carts In line at the manned checkout will take
our walmart is the same way. one lane open. sometimes two, but that's often a trainee.
I hate self-service checkouts SO MUCH. Especially as my local supermarket has phased out ones that take cash. On the other hand it is cost-effective being able to put artisan cheese through as potatoes.
I used to hate self checkout. I was a cashier at a grocery store back in 2004-2005 and I found self check out slow and finnicky.
I've gotten used to them now and it seems like newer ones have resolved most of the speed and weight sensing issue. Now I prefer them with small trips.
My biggest problems now are that I still need a person for booze and coupons. If I could just scan my damn ID when I'm buying beer, and then scan and insert my own coupons, I'd be set.
Scanning your own ID probably won't be a thing since it won't be able to determine whether the ID belongs to you or not.
Also I would not do so because of privacy issues. The main ID in my country doesn't have scannable parts anyway, but even if it did, I would much rather not give a store a chance to record some of my personal data like that.
You'd love what one of my local stores does then - they give you the option to register your fingerprints after they check your ID for when you want to buy booze in the self checkout!
I was shocked a few weeks ago that I had to get an assistant override for buying DayQuil. I mean I guess it makes sense but I would have gone through a regular cashier lane if I had known. They should be able to scan your ID considering most of them have cameras on them now.
The dayquil thing totally threw me for a loop once, too. It was before self check out, and I thought the cashier was asking for my club card and said no thanks. It took a second for her to explain.
If you have the privilege of being able to walk to and from your grocery store then self checkout is great. I get why people hate it in suburbia tho
What? Why? I can't walk anywhere in my city and I certainly love the self checkout.
The idea is checking out with more than a basket of goods is really inconvenient. And I agree, it's much slower and there's no space for it.
Now I don't know about American cashiers but over here they're faster, waiting in line is generally faster, unless you're literally only buying three items. It's just better optimised overall: Waiting time is often cut to practically zero because you're arranging items on the belt while you're technically waiting, they're faster ringing up, and while they're doing that you can already pack so the second they're done you can pay and fuck off.
My neighbourhood supermarket has three self-checkouts, most of the time noone is using them because the one open register is always faster. In peak times they open a second one you might, in principle, find a window between that and the line of the first one becoming longer where self-checkout is faster, but I won't even consider it with a full backpack of shopping. Peak times directly before a weekend, or worse holidays are where the self-checkouts actually see use, as in you might even see someone waiting for one to be free.
Also you can't self-checkout best-before rebate stickers so there's that.
Giant Eagle stores in Pittsburgh have self checkouts connected to a full size conveyor belt. Kinda like a normal cashier, but the belt is after the scanner kiosk, not before it. That way you could scan a ton of stuff and have it move out of the way on it's own.
The rest of that company did dumb stuff, but the scanners were smart!
I rtfa. For all the wrong reasons of course, not because we’re not on their payroll so why should we give them free labor?
I like them because it means I don’t have to talk to people. Sadly they did this only to save on salaries so I guess that I’m ok with them going away since it will create jobs for people.
Good.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The backlash against self-checkout is growing, and stores are starting to dial back on the technology after it exploded over the past few years.
Customers at Booths also frequently misidentified which fruits and vegetables they were buying when prompted by self-checkout machines.
One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average.
Stores have tried to limit losses by tightening self-checkout security features, such as adding weight sensors.
But additional anti-theft measures also lead to more frustrating “unexpected item in the bagging area” errors, requiring employees to intervene.
Wegmans last year ended a mobile app that allowed customers to scan, bag and pay for groceries while they shopped after reporting losses.
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