I would LOVE to use the self checkouts since the grocery chain near me has been replacing all the human cashiers. But the damn things treat you like a thief, make you wait 2-3 seconds between scans, you can’t scan your whole cart of groceries without going down and bagging them when the conveyor gets more than half full, etc.
They’re horrible. I just wait in line for one of the human cashiers every time.
I just scan my shit and go, it’s the most pain free experience ever. I don’t get how you are having such difficulty with it.
It can vary depending on how the store sets the machines up. I’m on the wrong continent to use Walmart ones, but there’s definitely variation in how paranoid and slow they are set here.
I feel it’s one of those cases where if you’re familiar with them and can think like the person who designed/programmed them, it can work pretty well. If you get confused by unfamiliar card terminals or a phone doing an update, you’re in trouble.
E.g. it uses an expected weight and tolerance for products going into the scales. If this is produce you’ve just weighed, it’s going to be pretty precise. Same goes for something really light like a toothbrush; a 50% margin on tens of grams is still not much. If it’s a prepacked bag of oranges, then the weight could be way off (add a whole orange over the expected weight) so it won’t alarm on e.g. you putting a reusable shopping bag on the scale with the oranges. This lets you skip the annoying use-your-own-bag process.
Knowing and remembering which is the next button to hit helps a lot.
I find they’re fine for <5 items especially if the store is busy, but for a full trolley, you’re better off with a lane just for staging reasons.
I used to treat them like the 15 item or less lane, but over the last year they have gotten worse as in you’re forced to scan more slowly than before, scales are even more sensitive, can’t pull the whole drop your reusable bag with the first scanned item anymore or it starts screaming about unexpecteditem in bagging area. It’s like they’ve gone full blown over the top anti theft settings to the point that it’s so frustrating to use them now that I hardly ever do anymore.
That sounds entirely like a store configuration thing.
UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA!!!
Yeah the CVS self checkout software is horrible. The Target version is great.
One time, i triggered some sort of shoplifting detection when I put my credit card up in my purse after paying. I guess the camera thought I did it in a sketchy way?
The experience depends entirely on which shop you go to, how much space there is for your trolley, which model of self-checkout you encounter, how well the touch screen is calibrated and cleaned, which software version is installed and when the last time was that maintenance was done on it, not to mention what state the previous user left it
In other words, it’s a stressful and moving feast that many, myself included, absolutely detest.
Different countries, different areas and even different shops have different machines and different systems in place.
I mean they work fantastic where I live. They don’t have to be horrible
Lol, yeah, they definitely don’t have to suck. When they first put those in, they were actually pretty fantastic. But Kroger Corporate said “not on my watch” and cranked up the security to obscene levels and made them horrible. There’s just not another decent grocery story close to me, so I’m stuck. Yay food deserts 🫠
Even better was for a while in NZ we had an app for scanning your groceries on your phone then you just scan a qr code on your phone at the checkout and pay. Not quite as amazing as the amazon “ai” (anonymous Indian) powered one, but still pretty great and didn’t require a team of actual humans to manually run it(apart from the customer). Too bad they had to cancel it for theft prevention shortly after they jacked up the prices of everything by about 250% in what seemed like one week…
Why not use the 2-3 seconds to put your item in the bag? Solves your conveyor problem and your waiting problem.
Because the bagging area is like 9 feet away at the end of the conveyor.
They’re basically reversed from what the cashiers use where you load your items onto the conveyor to be scanned. On these, the scanning platform is a little, tiny table on one end where you scan your items and then you put it on the conveyor that takes it to the bagging area.
When the belt gets a little less than half full, the machine makes you go bag some stuff.
All the while, my groceries are melting lol.
Edit: Like this
The other style where you can bag as you go (pictured below) also make you wait 2-3 seconds, but if you’re scanning a lot of little items (seasoning packets, yeast, those little water flavor enhancer things, etc), they don’t trigger the scale and you have to wait for it to realize you’re not stealing or something. Either way, they’re not suitable to scan a whole cart of groceries. Like, if you fill up the carousel and try to set some bags down until you can put them in your cart, it’ll call for backup and you have to wait for the single cashier that’s attending to 12-15 of these abominations to come and verify you’re not trying to steal.
The one I know from here in Germany looks the same, but instead of the conveyor, it’s the same arm as the one you put your groceries on, before scanning.
So you don’t have to move at all, just move your groceries from the left to the right.
Edit - like this:
The one in your pic must be a struggle
It absolutely is. Almost like it was designed to be as frustrating as possible for some kind of social experiment.
God damn that conveyor thing is a stupid idea. The ones in my local have a small bagging platform or a large platform depending on how much you’ve got to deal with. Or you can use the handheld scanner or phone app while you walk around the store and just pay at the end without the faff.
Malwart.
Is the image edited or the paper itself?
I don’t know if the letter is real, but this was my parents. They refused to use the self-checkout because they didn’t work there and it might take away jobs. Meanwhile, they’re the same people who complained that pretty much any basic customer facing job shouldn’t pay a living wage.
They exist.
The letter isn’t real in the sense that it says Malwart at the top. Otherwise it does exist.
I can’t believe my brain didn’t catch that. I instantly saw the walmart brand symbol and looked no further.
You know you can take the good part and discard the second one?
I wonder what their reasoning for “customer facing job does not deserve living wage” is.
I bet it includes the phrase unskilled labour.
When “I don’t think this job deserves a living wage” meets “no one wants to work!!11!1!1!”
There are still business owners in my city whining about a lack of workers. The jobs they’re offering? Part-time with constantly changing but always horrible hours, no compensation besides the minimum wage. Yeah I guess everyone is just lazy?
Remember that multibillion dollar corporations are pushing you to self checkout because they are too cheap to pay someone minimum wage to work a register. The boomers are right.
Alternatively, self-checkout is a great way to shoplift from big corporations destroying civilization and the habitability of the planet.
Doo Doo Doo… Doo! 🌠
I refuse to voluntarily pay for bags. How many bags did I use? Zero, motherfucker!
You wear shoes to go grocery shopping, right? Do this once, then keep the bags next to your shoes so you remember to reuse them maybe a half dozen times.
Boom now you’re saving the environment and money.
Saving the fucking environment. LMFAO
ur no fun take a joke
some people don’t want it wait for a million years for the person in front of them with 600 items to get through.
Some solutions are not just about solving one thing or a personal attack.
Like you’re not waiting for the person in front of you in self-checkout to fumble their way through scanning those items? Who do you think is faster at it, the boomer in front of you in line or someone who does it all day? You’re just buying into the bullshit narrative you’re being fed.
Self-checkout has almost always been faster for me. No bullshit narrative, just actual experience.
When’s the last time someone checked you out?
never 🥲
Don’t remember. All I know is that the average time I’ve spent waiting for when doing self-check is shorter than the average time waiting when not.
Next time your feeling social or not it a rush have someone check you out. Hell you can even do it if there’s a cute bean working.
Tell that to people that could have had jobs as a cashier that those machines have taken away.
May the hammer of Enoch do it’s work.
Doing less work has been the primary motivating factor behind basically all of human progress. The problem is that the savings is lining shareholder pockets instead of reducing employee workload.
Yep, hence the Luddite reference.
I will, no problem. Luddites have no place today, thank you.
Heck, cashiers are still wprking where I live. One of them just gets assigned to 6 or 8 self checkouts instead of normal register.
Oh no, automation getting rid of shit jobs people didn’t like already, the horror
Just learn to code right bro. You dumb ass libs always assume everyone is as skilled as you and every job you don’t want to do is lesser. Some people like being cashiers.
Get back at me when you learn some labor theory and intersectionalize more.
Just learn to code right bro
Lol, no, don’t put words in my mouth, dickhead
You dumb ass libs
Swing and a miss
assume everyone is as skilled as you
Even BIGGER miss. I’m an asshole and assume most people are far less skilled than me, and am regularly proven right
and every job you don’t want to do is lesser
Your words, not mine, I don’t consider cashier’s to be lesser to me in any way unless they, as an individual, give me reason to
Some people like being cashiers
Yeah, you’ll notice you said “some” and not “most”, so what’s your point, exactly?
Get back at me when you learn some labor theory and intersectionalize more.
Get back at me when you learn how to discuss what was said and not prop up a shitty strawman
There is no automation getting rid of a shit job. The customers now have the privilege to do that job for themselves.
Pick one: it’s losing people their jobs, or it’s not
Quite prefer doing it myself, none of my local stores have any of the issues listed elsewhere on the thread. Must suck for them but that’s not a reason to not progress
That is definitely one of the reasons to skip self checkout.
We should strive to automate as many jobs as possible. Not try to keep tedious jobs from disappearing.
Those multibillion dollar corporations will have to keep adapting to the world, one way or another. They should be able to handle an automated world, Or we might need to bring out the torches and pitchforks.
That’s one of The reasons I don’t use the self checkout. Also since I want to pay with cash and can’t do that at the self checkout.
And that is why I stopped using them. Actually, I just order online for most things and curbside pickup.
Just wait until bots or drones just deliver it to our doorstep. I will never need to see another human again!
Edit: /s, to be clear. I want to see how many people actually agree/disagree.
People can deliver to our door without us having to interact.
I only use checkouts with people. The Malwart near me refuses to open any registers other than self checkout. There are always ladies at the front wanting to check receipts. So, I just abandon my purchase a lot.
If they can’t hire people to open a single register than they can hire someone to put back the items in the cart.
Arguments:
“But POTOOOOOOOO you are being an asshole!”
I helped build POS machines. I know how often they are inaccurate and if they think you made an error stores are quicker to trust the POS machine more than the person.
The POS machines at self check outs have a ton of cameras and most want you to pay with a credit card. Some machines won’t flag you for shop lifting until after the fact. Then they will be able to cross reference the credit card that paid for it.
“You’re being paranoid”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/walmart-shoplifting-lawsuit.html
TL;DR: Don’t use self checkouts.
I can’t even begin to understand the “you are being an asshole” argument. Am I an asshole because I protect jobs? Am I an asshole because I don’t want to pad the earnings of a multi-billion dollar corporation at the expense of workers? No, dude, I am 100% with you. I have abandoned my purchases as well, and I actively avoid stores that push self checkout.
I’ve stated similar things on Reddit. Someone flipped out at me for creating food waste and staffing issues for making them put away things.
I don’t buy food at malwort if I can help it.
Protecting jobs is the stupidest possible reason to be anti self checkout. I don’t care much about the other points but that one I find really stupid. I guess we should also remove all automation from manufacturing and use hammers and nails to build cars as well. Let’s also destroy all calculators since we can just go back to people crunching out numbers on paper.
Look at all these poor women that lost their jobs because of big calculator.
Self checkout is not automated, you fool. you are doing the work for the company. It is not a new technological solution. A human is still working the till.
The thing is you’re distributing that time onto a lot of people. Instead of a person having to sit at the register 24/7 now people spend 1 minute longer at the store because they have to scan stuff themselves, which is negligible. In fact, you’re (or at least I am) almost always faster at shopping because now you don’t need to wait for a register to open up. Now you have an entire human being that’s free to do something else.
Another important fact is that for me at least the difference between when a cashier checks out goods for me and when I do it is maybe 30%, which again doesn’t count the fact that you don’t have to wait for a free cash register or the wait is much shorter most of the time.
Another thing it helps with is when you have a grandma fidling with her coins trying to find exact change for 5 minutes blocking everyone behind her. You can just go to a different self checkout instead of waiting for the single open till to free up.
You may be faster at the till than I am. I admit I lack practice. You make a good point about waiting in line behind slow customers, though. One of the biggest advantages of the self checkout is the single queue. Having six lineups for six checkouts never made sense.
I stepped into a Fred Meyer the other day and was fucking horrified by the amount of cameras and face recognition around the self checkout section. It’s dystopian. I just left and went to a different store.
I was in a malwart for the first time in over a decade last week. There wasn’t a single register open like you said. I also walked out without purchasing anything. Maybe I’ll try in another ten years.
I’ve asked them to open one and the employees have stated “no use self checkout” absolutely insane.
I have mixed opinions on self checkout… but the best is when I go to buy beer, and only beer. Someone that works there has to ID me and plug my birthday into the computer anyway so it’s like shrodingers self check out.
On a more serious note, I enjoy not having to make small talk with the cashier but also would rather not be watched like I’m a thief when I ring out my stuff.
Also, it’s kinda nice to eat all organic fruits and vegetables and only pay the prices for the GMO versions.
Surely you can find human connection than just at a checkout. We don’t have to inconvenience everyone and refit everything in our world just so someone can have a conversation with someone else. I mean we still have public areas other than a shopping place that’s meant to stand around and have convos that doesn’t plug up everyone else’s time.
Haha like the ONLY good thing about self checkout is the potential for stealing. As for the small talk thing: the most I’ve ever had to say to a cashier was “hello” and “thank you”. I can handle that.
They make you let them scan your ID half the time anyways, why not just let you scan your own ID?
In case it’s someone who looks plausibly old enough but who “borrowed” Mom’s ID. I doubt they have facial recognition to match ID to face on those cheap POSs.
Did shrodinger also buy beer at self checkout? Maybe all that drinking made him forget if the cat was dead or alive
Burn all the self checkouts, what do I get out of this lazy " automation " I’m not touching one till I get a discount for don’t someone else’s job
PS let me smash those stupid one way gates at the entrance with a hammer
You transport yourself to the store, walk around the store, pick the items up off the shelf, take them around the store, take them with you to checkout, take them to your car, bring them into your house, and put them away. But moving the item 36 inches from your basket to your bag is something you’re too enfeebled or important to do yourself?
Sorry man but what do get out of that extra effort how ever small it is, “oh no I’m going to wait a bit longer while I’m on my phone”, maybe it’s because in from a small town and such things are pretty recent but they just feels like there’s dishonest about them
Ok, boomer.
Ok, bitch.
I don’t want to be a 30 year old boomer
They’re way, way, way faster for me and funny enough at the same time I have peace of mind in that the person next in line isn’t breathing down my neck while I’m putting stuff in my backpack.
You know these things are for Your convenience, right?
These things are so they don’t have to pay people to check out your groceries anymore. There’s not much convenience in them when you’re buying produce and have to go through multiple pages to find the item you’re scanning in or god forbid the barcode doesn’t read or put something in the bagging area too quickly and then you have to stand there looking stupid while an employee comes over to help you because the machine encountered an error and won’t let you continue scanning your stuff.
You know, You don’t have to go to a self checkout, right?
Sometimes that’s all they have open (Home Depot) so you do have to go to them. If these companies can save a buck by having you ring yourself up, they will.
I’d rather walk out with nothing
I heard they are trying to charge for self checkout now, it was already a no thanks, now it’s a fuck no.
If I hear that, I’m dropping my shit where I stand and going to the grocery store down the street.
Don’t do that, it’s not effective feedback. Ask for a manager, explain to them that you’re dropping your shit where you stand and going to the grocery store down the street, and why. Should be a brief conversation, and if multiple people do that then it’s more likely to trickle up to corporate.
What, charging for access to something that has minimized their front labor needs? Are they going to still stay with just one cashier open a time even during rush periods?
And for some reason they now restrict to only a few of the many self checkout registers at a time. Like they have ten counters, and I get sometimes one may be not working…but they only have three open at a time with a long line forming for self checkout. I’m not sure what the goal is there.
Oh? Where is that?
I hate the self checkout at my local Kroger because it works like fucking dog shit. Always playing a patronizing voice telling me to put the item in the bagging area even though it already is. Always has an inadequate amount of space in the bagging area.
If the purge happens everyone is going to be looting and murdering. I’ll be the person burning down Kroger.
I went to self checkout at Costco cause I was borrowing my sister’s card and didn’t want the cashier to check it, unrelated but self checkout does gave uses
My experience with self checkout at Costco is very much that they still do 80% of the work if you have more than 2 things. Like they’re flipping things and scanning them in my cart and I’m just handling pushing buttons and paying on the touch screen. It’s kinda bizarre but not bad imo.
The real trick is they don’t have the weight sensor and cameras that flip out over every move. Like damn I told you I was putting 3 bags in the bagging area; they are not unexpected items.
Never understood why people struggle with the bagging area thing. You’re doing something wrong. Here’s a hint: Every item in the store is weighed, and the bagging area has a scale on it that measures that weight. If you accidentally put more or less weight into the bagging area, it’ll complain.
Scan, immediately bag within 3 seconds, and don’t let anything touch the bagging area, not even your hands. Utilize the “skip bagging” button for items that take more than 3 seconds to bag (but don’t hit "skip bagging more than 3/4 times or it’ll complain). Immediately remove any excess weight (such as your arm or a bag) after bagging. I promise you’ll almost never have another an issue again.
I know how to bag groceries, you fucking condescending asshole. The Walmart and Home Depot self check work every time for me. Kroger has defective ones. Maybe their scales suck. Maybe they need different values for their timers. I am not going to debug it for them unless they pay my software consulting fees which seems highly unlikely because they’ve broken for more than five years.
Sometimes they are just broken. Bad scales, sensors, etc. Kroger’s converyor style checkouts are especially bad.
Dude sometimes those scales are stupid sensitive and even straight up busted.
My grocery store keeps empty paper bags in a pile on the scale so they are part of the tare weight. Doesn’t matter. I’ve taken a bag off the pile, opened it, and placed it back on the scale…and needed to get an employee to re-tare it so I could start scanning. This was before even scanning.
My grocery store also has cameras on top, too, watching you from above. At each register. And if they think that you put something in the bag without scanning it, it’ll call over an attendant. To review the tape with you, like getting the refs to review a play.
Plus having kids that can’t stand still. Bound to touch the scale at some point. And they love to do self checkout.
BJs has it right…they are a wholesale club like Costco. I think they are regional. They have scales but I don’t think they even use them. In fact, I don’t even have to unload my cart. I try to load my cart so barcodes are all facing up (as much as I can) so I just rapid fire zap-zap-zap. It’s very satisfying.
Upvoating because it’s funny. Not because I agree with Walmart.
Malwart
The fear of employment replacement through automation hinders creativity which would actually provide safer, better and more meaningful employment.
If people (workers, consumers, neighbours) would own or have a foot in their workplaces (i.e. cooperatives), they would care more about that.
It’s not really automation though. The store is outsourcing labor to the consumer.
The automation are the API and the security cameras.
Which, as a customer, provide absolutely no value to me.
Yeah, surveillance steals value from consumers.
Self-checkout seems better to me, because it decreases monotonous and forced public interaction (thus somewhat automated anyway): Beep. Beep. Beep. Do you want loyalty points? That’s 21.46€. Do you want the receipt? Goodbye! Beep. Beep. Beep…
It uses less space.
It is parallel instead of serial.
The work is not much more than putting groceries on a checkout lane anyway, except for unlabelled fruits and vegetables.
Self-checkout allows for smaller stores and coops, for example in villages or as kiosk.
Oh no, you had to answer two yes/no questions
The worst inconvenience in the world.
Parallel vs serial: there’s usually more than one check out lane open so idk what you waffling about.
Less space is not a convenience for me so idgaf
My local coop has regular check out lanes and it’s in a small town so idk what you waffling about.
Because in reality these businesses don’t offer better, more meaningful employment for the people they replace by making the customers work.
It’s just more people in the unemployment fodder.
My local coop refuses to add self-checkout lanes and this is why I shop there even though it’s more expensive than the alternatives.
Fuck corporate greed.
When I get called to open a checkout because some lazy fuck doesn’t want to use the self service, I take my sweet fucking time, I’ll fuck up scanning and have to re scan, I’ll just straight up stare into the void for some time, anything I can to make the situation as long and frustrating as possible.
I had one lady go " I bet I saved you from a crappy job" I just said " Nah, you’ve actually put me behind in my job and now I have to bust my ass to get back on track because you needed to be served."
The only good thing about your store being run with a skeleton crew is they are less likely to fire you for being a dick to customers.
I don’t get paid to listen to your entitled bullshit.
I have no problem serving the elderly tho, unless they’re dicks about it. Then they get treated same way everyone else does.
If you hate your job, don’t abuse the customers, just quit.
I didn’t say I hated my job, I like my job, but my job isn’t serving people on checkout, I get pulled away from my job that I like doing because of entitled customers who have this need to be served.
No one wants to work on checkout, customers need to buy their stuff, so self service is the current option.
don’t abuse the customers
Well can customers stop abusing us because of a decision corporate made? I get abused on the daily because customers are rightfully angry at the company, but wrongly attack the staff who have abso-fucking-lutely no control over the situation.
Abuse corporate, ring those assholes and make their days shit, don’t attack us underpaid shit kickers who are living paycheck to paycheck because some corporate cunt wants a bonus this year.
We’ve had customers physically attack my co-workers over this, it’s pathetic and childish, but we’re the assholes.
I don’t agree with the person you’re talking to, but in the US, “just quitting” often isn’t an approachable option.
People who think one can causally quit is more often than not luxuriating in privilege, be it family support or your own funds.
For millions of Americans, the choice is between a job that makes them want to die, or taking the next step and quitting to die in the gutter, because land of the greedy, home of the unshackled sociopaths.
Beautiful username for this post.
The major supermarket chain where I live has a “shop and go” system. You get a battery powered barcode scanner that you take round and scan items before you put them in your trolley, then hand it over to an operator at the end. They can download the list of items to the till, then you pay and leave.
They have a “random spot check” system where sometimes they pick a few random items out of your trolley and check that they are on the list. I’m imagining that some people get away with theft, but it’s probably not a lot more than people who are going to steal normally anyway
I’ve tried those a few times, what trips me up is that they don’t do well (or I don’t know how to) with -30% and the nightly -60% stuff. That stuff is vital to me
I actually like the Self-Checkout, it’s faster for me. The people who have difficulty with them just don’t want to put a single thought into things.
I can also self-check faster than waiting for a cashier but I do put thought into it; the thought is “these things cost jobs”.
While a noble goal I’m sure, same as that not allowing pumping gas yourself thing, I expect the companies behind the actual decision to give exactly no shits about your preference. Theoretically they should, realistically they don’t need to.
I think it depends on the implementation. The grocery store by me replaced 2 express lanes, of which only one was ever open with 8 self checkouts staffed will 1 person to babysit the machines and direct traffic. A wash for the employee and the owners, and a net positive for the customer.
Self-checkout lanes are anti-union machines. Theft was the only way we are getting rid of them
