Should get a discount or something
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if i've learned anything from this thread it's that y'all have awful self-checkouts.
I never understand the press they get. As someone that doesn't want to have a chat with a stranger about everything I buy, self-checkouts are amazing. I don't consider it extra work. OP should look at the history of supermarkets. We didn't use to pick items off the shelves either.
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"Don't you hate it when you walk into a grocer and they expect you to pick out the items yourself? I don't work here, I just want to say "1 pound of ham and 2 loafs of bread" at the clerk, pay and pick them up. I've been to this new Piggley Wiggly, can't find anything, spent like an hour to find beans. Imagine if I was paid for that time, I would have made 15¢!"
OP in 1925, probably.
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I mean, it's security theatre what actually does save the store money. Hence why walmart had greeters all those years ago. They found people were less likely to shoplift if they just knew that someone was watching them.
I always just call the bluff. Offer them the receipt before they ask and they're totally ok with you walking off with half the items unbought.
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Cashiers aren't paid enough to deal with customers. At least when I'm using the self checkout they don't need to engage with me.
So, your solution for a corporation underpayying their staff is to offer to do their job for free so corporate can just eliminate the position altogether?
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I never understand the press they get. As someone that doesn't want to have a chat with a stranger about everything I buy, self-checkouts are amazing. I don't consider it extra work. OP should look at the history of supermarkets. We didn't use to pick items off the shelves either.
Same with pumping gas. Self serve is the norm in so many places.
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Amusing that you think the employees scanning shit aren't also the ones bagging it.
But to answer your question, I'm faster because I have an incentive to get shit scanned and bagged, vs just riding the till for 8 hours.
OK, so the reason is because in the situation with two people, you fail to make use of both to make it go faster, and instead just stand around.
So if speed were the priority, I have a suggestion for you.
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Because I care about leaving, so I do everything I can to be faster. In economics, this is known as the principle-agent problem. At my local walmart, it is known as "I'm not a septuagenarian who's been hitting a vape pen for the last 5 hours."
I have maybe once checked out at an in-person check-out where the person scanning was twice as slow as me on my own at a self-service checkout.
Normally at an in-person checkout, I am in fact the bottleneck placing stuff in bags. I'm already motivated to do that as quickly as possible, and the person scanning is still faster than that. Are you like the other person and just standing around while the cashier bags your groceries? If you "really care about leaving" you could do something about that.
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If you feel this way then you should never complain about the length of the lines or the speed with which you get through them.
Nah, they should hire more people. It isn't my problem to solve. I don't work there.
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So, your solution for a corporation underpayying their staff is to offer to do their job for free so corporate can just eliminate the position altogether?
I like how you've taken a self deprecating comment that tries to empathise with other people and turned it into a confrontational jab at making one of the many failings of neoliberalism my direct responsibility.
I actually use self checkouts because I don't want to have to engage the social parts of my brain for what is essentially a tedious chore. However this means that staff also don't have to deal with me under those circumstances, which is a nice bonus.
To counter your jab, your solution to the failings of neoliberalism is to create needless busywork under dehumanising conditions rather than address the systemic failings?
You don't have to answer that, I was just making a point about how I didn't come to this thread to fight anyone. Put the knife down.
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I never stop for them. I'll say "no thanks" or "I'm good, thank you anyway."
Definitely helps to have headphones in.
My favorite is "Thanks, you too
" and just keep walking -
I honestly don't hate the self checkout, I hate it when they do it poorly.
Oversensitive scales, improperly weighted products, stuff without barcodes, tiny little bagging areas that can only hold two bags. No belt for unloading groceries. Please remove the item from the bagging area, help is on the way. (Help is never on the way)
The grocery store where I used to live had a bunch of regular lanes, You threw your crap on the belt, Scan it over the sensors and send it down to the collection area where you could bag it. It was honestly pleasant.
I went to Target in the evening once, had an entire cart full of groceries. I push it up front there's no cashier's open only the self checkout. I look at the person manning the self-check out and say
Why aren't there are there any registers open?
Sorry just the self checkout.
This is going to be like 8 bags.
Yeah, sorry.
I shrug leave the cart there and start walking out the door.
No, wait: The cashier goes and opens the closest register to the self checkouts
I shrug leave the cart there and start walking out the door.
No, wait: *The cashier goes and opens the closest register to the self checkouts
Honestly this would piss me off more. Oh so you just lied to me and expect me to forget about it that quickly. If that's how they treat customers I wouldn't ever return. There's too many options for me to put up with that bs.
I know not everyone has options, but exercise them if you do.
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I shrug leave the cart there and start walking out the door.
No, wait: *The cashier goes and opens the closest register to the self checkouts
Honestly this would piss me off more. Oh so you just lied to me and expect me to forget about it that quickly. If that's how they treat customers I wouldn't ever return. There's too many options for me to put up with that bs.
I know not everyone has options, but exercise them if you do.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I kind of get it. It's one cashier monitoring four checkout stations. Staffing isn't her fault. And if someone comes up to the checkout stations while she is checking me out and has a problem she's now doing another person's job worth of work. She's got to run double duty, and that sucks for her.
What I presented her with was a no win situation. If somebody doesn't check me out they're going to have to put away an entire cart full of groceries and probably waste a fair amount of perishables.
I was by no means happy with them at that point but my time is not worthless either and I had just spent the better part of an hour picking out a grocery order.
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Same with pumping gas. Self serve is the norm in so many places.
I pass the time ignoring the dangerous substance I'm handling untrained by thinking about how we stopped employing a specialists so that someone's quarterly profits could go up a bit more.
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here they don't talk, don't weigh, don't time out, and can be cleared remotely when you buy age-restricted stuff and don't look like a twink. my only gripe is that some of them won't allow you to delete duplicate scans without help.
Thats great for you, and your area.
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I never understand the press they get. As someone that doesn't want to have a chat with a stranger about everything I buy, self-checkouts are amazing. I don't consider it extra work. OP should look at the history of supermarkets. We didn't use to pick items off the shelves either.
I don't hate self checkouts, I hate the people who use self-checkouts. The mom with a cart filled with food to feed 4 people for a week, holding a baby in one hand and trying to scan and bag with the other. The guy apparently shopping for his whole apartment complex, scanning 4 items, paying for them, then scanning 6 different items, slowly working his way through an overloaded cart. The Gen-Z narrating each item into their phone for some reason, also struggling to bag items single-handed.
One of them isn't bad, but two of them will strangle the entire kiosk farm, and make it seem like everyone is a self-absorbed idiot. Never go grocery shopping on a weekend morning.
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Self checkout is the greatest thing ever and I will never understand why so many people seem to prefer waiting in line for a few minutes instead of just using the self checkout.
No human interaction, usually faster because I don't have to wait. What's not to love? Sure occassionally you might get selected for a random check and have to wait a bit, but that still beats the line.
They used to be awful here 10-15 years ago, with a scale for your scanned items that would complain over nothing all the time, but now everywhere I've been has done away with that in favor of random controls and the receipt for opening the gate. I think my highlight so far was the clothing store where you didn't even have to scan, you just put your items in a box and it told you what you have to pay.
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We had those handheld scanner at the store I usually go, but they removed them as the theft rate was supposedly higher.
Can't have nice things..
Ever since I saw that the grocery store near the train station in my city (which is famously one of the worst in the country in terms of crime) had self checkout without even a gate to scan your receipt for a while (they added it now) and has the handheld scanners, I've been assuming that the added theft from either really can't be that bad, or is a result of poor security. Clearly it's worth it for the higher customer throughput for that store, so I kinda doubt it could be that bad especially in safer areas.
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Y'know that grocery stores could simply staff enough checkout registers and then all this self-checkout time-savings goes away, right? The stores - following the airline model - created a problem for the consumer (long checkout lines due to understaffing) and then effectively sold the customer the solution (you do your own labor, but grocery prices stay the same).
Back in the day, I shopped at the one grocery store in a bit of a food desert. They'd have all...I don't remember 10? 12?...checkout lines open all day, and you're still guaranteed to spend half an hour in line. If they could have replaced 2 checkout lines with 6 self-check kiosks, or 4 & 12, it would have helped a lot, but they hadn't been invented yet.
Now, I shop in a better neighborhood where they have 6 kiosks, one staffed checkout, and 8 lanes closed. Start with a technical solution to a real problem, and some MBA is going to come in and figure out how to turn it back into a problem.
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If you feel this way then you should never complain about the length of the lines or the speed with which you get through them.
Maybe if all the cashier lanes are staffed. But if I have a cart full of groceries, the grocery store is full, and there's only two cashiers working (also, gotta bag your own groceries) then I'm considering switching stores at that point.
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You people don't have self scanning? Pick a barcode scanner at the entrance, scan everything when you put it in your bags in the cart, and just pay at the exit and walk out (unless you get a semi-rare random check). One of the favorite features of the store I use is that I fill the shopping list at home in the app (that can be shared with other accounts) and then I see the list in my phone or the store scanner, sorted by the order of sections in the store, so eg. all fruit and vegetables will be next on the list when I get to that section. I also like that you see your total in real time and the scanner reminds you if there's a "3 for 2" or other offers.
