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.
Or maybe they need to actually be trained and educated on things pertaining to their job by a corporation too busy sucking the very life from their bodies.
i used to carry a backpack all the time when i lived in the city and rode the bus or train everywhere, including to grocery stores, target, walmart and the like. never once had a problem from workers in a store. this was the 80s-90s, times were 'different' then, as people would say. of course, looking 'mostly' caucasian probably helped somewhat. today, though, i would probably get hassled at most stores in those same cities, if i carried a backpack while i shopped.
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.
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
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!
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?
I have about what, five reusable bags. One is always in the backpack to use both as a basket replacement in case the supermarket doesn’t have any (or they’re all at the exit and none at the entry), or as overflow container for the backpack, one is generally holding onions and yet another potatoes (both hanging), that leaves – yep, one as backup and the awkward small one is stuffed with three dirty dish towels waiting for hot wash to accumulate.
Do consider cloth bags simply because it’s easy to actually give enough of a fuck about them, just like you give a fuck about a t-shirt. Oh and keeping potatoes and onions in plastic would likely not end well. The only plastic bags I buy are bin liners.
If you’re shopping with a car the standard over here is to have a fold-up box in your boot.
I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’m saying that I’d hate situations where my choice is “carry loose items” or “buy new bags” if I’ve forgotten my already owned bags at home. I don’t dislike reusable bags, I own quite a few actually, but when I forget them I’d rather buy paper bags than be forced to buy yet more reusable bags.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
This really is it. I managed a grocery store for years, and the problem these companies have is thinking that the self checkout can replace too many cashiers. Note that it can take the place of 1 or 2, but really, the boon of the self checkout is to really function as the best express lane ever. It should take the heat off your normal cashiers and provide an option best suited for quick purchases under 10 items.
But what ends up happening is schedulers drop their usual front end down from 4 cashiers to 1 and a self checkout host and completely nullify any gains their customers would have gotten from the enhanced service options. People really do like self checkouts but resent the hell out of being forced to use them as a blatant cash grab.
Walmart in my area was pretty famous for dropping all cashiers at certain times of the day, and splitting the self checkout “watcher” with customer service. Bit of a clusterfuck but they kept it up for years before 2020 made them shake things up.
This is so key. If they don’t have enough regular lanes (which at times is just 1), the old/slow/large/complex orders are much more likely to go through self-checkout. Now they’re annoyed that they “have” to use the machines, and so is everybody behind them that has to wait for them. Congratulations: you’ve managed to piss off literally everyone!
I will put one other mistake in there, is self checkouts with too many prompts. I avoid using self checkout at a few stores because the minimum number of prompts is higher than 3.
Good: scanning starts the process, select done AT MOST asks for how many bags, then payment type, swipe and pay (optional email receipt on pin pad).
Bad: Cant’ start till you tap start, asks for member ship card up front, asks if you want to donate, scan, asks if you want to use your rewards, asks for number of bags, also would you like an email receipt?
Do you have the overhead camera that tries to detect theft, and vaults your scanning to have an employee come over and review the footage before you can continue scanning? That’s my favorite.
so glad walmart here turned off the bagging scales. you can just take the wireless 'gun' and 'shoot' everything in your cart and toss 'em into your reusable bags as you go.
One cool thing I’ve found is that you can scan your card on the reader at any time.
I walk up to the machine, scan my first item, tap my card, then do the rest of my scanning. When I hit “done”/“pay” it just processes the card and prints a receipt
My favorite kind is where you just get a scanner when you walk into the store. Scan stuff when you put it in your bag, scan the scanner at the end, pay and leave. No futzing about moving stuff from cart to bags or anything like that, and it’s way more convenient to use my own bags because I’m loading them as I go, instead of being rushed at the very end.
I stopped shopping at a local grocery store because the damn self checkout made you scan everything and place it on the stupid scale. I couldn’t put my own personal bag there as it would upset the whole system. It ended up wasting more of my time. If they want self checkout to be used more they need to understand someone isn’t stealing and paying at the same time. Sure something might get missed on accident, but I’m not scanning $100 in groceries to steal some arbitrary amount.
Also, Home Depot took self checkout to the extreme and it sucks ass for it.
No no no, people definitely steal and pay at the same time. I was guilty of doing so when i was younger and more stupid. Older self checkout were so easy to scam by tag swapping or only scanning some of my items and not others.
You were going to steal in the first place. This doesn’t change anything. Ethically ambiguous people “stealing” by purchasing something at a slightly lower price doesn’t equate to a company therefore making it so I have to use weighted systems. It’s part of the cost of doing business. Odds are good they still broke even after profit margin. Im not going to argue any of that, but it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have to put my stuff as I’m scanning on a scale. Either trust me to ring it up correctly or put the proper amount of people on checkout.
I actually really dislike it. I hate how it takes away lots of jobs from people. For example, there used to be a lot of retarded people who did bagging. That was an awesome way to get them into the workforce.
I understand some people don’t like social interaction and like self check out, but they should suck it up.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Grocery store self checkout machines can be infuriating. The weight sensors are way too tightly monitored and often have the incorrect weight programmed. Every time I go to the main grocery store near me I need help from the employee due to their terrible sensors not detecting the weight of lighter items in the bagging area.
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…
I stopped taking my phone out at WalMart after I learned that their security cameras are so good that they can zoom in on your phone and read your text messages.
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.
I’m an AI enthusiast and I don’t know why people are down voting you here. Automated systems are great, but you run the risk of just doing the status quo faster, and removing the social element.
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…
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.
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