So is this a US specific thing or not? The article doesn’t really make that clear.
Is it possible there are less businesses doing it because many companies have already done it? I know a lot of people aren’t in favour of self-checkouts, but decisions go to where the money and convenience are. We don’t go to tellers or the few gas stations that serve because of convenience. We troubleshot our computers and do our own renovations because hiring workers would be too expensive. If you don’t like self-checkouts, don’t use them. It’s as easy as that.
Mayor Mamdani said self checkout should, by law, provide a ten percent discount. That might have helped.
Because self checkout should provide a discount. And grocery store workers should be unionized.
I do enjoy self checkout, but yesterday one demanded that I put my bag of rice back in my cart before I could continue. Something about heavy or fragile items. The problem was that I didn’t have a cart, but I did have several more items.
“things have gotten so bad that it has made many people need to steal, so we can’t keep self checkouts open”
They’d rather change their operations than lobby for the poorest to have enough money and not have to steal.
They’d rather change their operations than lobby for the poorest to have enough money to not have to steal.
They’d rather change their operations than
lobby for the poorest topay their employees enough money to not have to steal.I thought surely an organization of GROCERS would lobby vociferously for SNAP benefits (food stamps), at a time when onerous work requirements throw people off SNAP and overwhelm local food pantries.
Instead we get a bit of the pearlescent extraction of the meat cylinder via suction:
Although I fully agree with you, there is no gotcha here. They are greedy and want the most for themselves, that’s it.
Paying people a fair salary is other companies problem
There’s a Walmart near me that I just never bother going to because like 80% of the non-grocery items are locked behind plexiglass. There are 4 self-checkouts and 2 employees assigned to just stand there watching people to make sure they don’t shoplift. They’ve made shopping so hostile that it barely makes sense for it to be a department store at all. Might as well just go back to the old model of telling the employee what you want and then they go get it for you.
I wanted to buy some razor blades and the poor teenager at the Walmart just couldn’t get his magnet key thingie to unlock the plastic lock on the hanger holding the packages. I waited patiently for like 5 minutes and was like look I’ll fix it. I pulled down on the packaging, tore the little cardboard piece and freed the blades in like one try.
I then still paid $40 for them like a good citizen and ignored how much I was getting ripped off.
All while being watched by a million store cameras, three people at the self checkout, the camera reflecting my own image in the self checkout machine, the greeter giving me a dirty look and the detectors at the door.
Its more absurd than airport security how pointless it all is.
Which is basically what they are doing with grocery pickup.
Never thought of it that way… But yes.
Good news, new jobs opening to fill the cashier roles. But watch they will just implement a ticket system and checkout will take 3 hours.
Yeah but tickets cost money so they will make you sign in virtually on their app
Shhhhh don’t give them any ideas
Ticketmaster execs just perked up
You have to do 2 shots of crude oil to enter a lottery for a ticket to be able to pay for a ticket so you can checkout for groceries.
How do I do that on my Linux phone?
Hopefully everyone in the place at any given time will start stealing then. Not one person is going to wait 3 hours to pay for their groceries while cold shit thaws or only for a few items because they want to keep raising prices and enshittifying every damn thing.
I’m here with your regular reminder that is you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.
I don’t understand. I’ve never seen someone steal food in a grocery store. I’ve helped plenty of people get more food from a grocery store than what they thought they had in their cart though.
Also you didn’t see me at the grocery store and if you did it wasn’t me
Pretty sure the self checkout isn’t where most people steal, why not just walk out the door with whatever you want?
You don’t steal all of it, you just miss the barcode on a couple items for the camera, so it looks innocent if somebody stops you.
Or you weigh more expensive fresh fruits & veggies as cheaper ones.
Well, it’s just a simple fact When I want something, I don’t want to pay for it I walk right through the door
Jane, were you caught stealing again?
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As someone who finds interacting with register attendants painful, and doesn’t steal, this is unfortunate news.
As someone who also doesn’t enjoy interacting with register attendants, but does steal, I too find this to be unfortunate news.
I’m a introvert and hate dealing with people, but for some reason I don’t like using the self-checkout. I don’t know why. But anyway, I recommend moving to Finland. My interactions are as follows:
A very quick eye contact with a nod as a hello.
I pay, receive the change, say thank you.
I go away.
There is no small talk or push for registering for their bonus card systems, etc, here. You go in, do your thing, say thank you, go away. And saying anything is optional. I do it because I feel like that’s the least I can do for the poor person who has to deal with humans all day. But often I see people not even look at the checkout person, just stare at the register until it gives out a number, pay and bugger off.
I’m sure you know the old joke:
How do you spot an extrovert Finn?
When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.
Indeed I do :)
Cool :)
A Swede is visiting his Finnish cousin. They are sitting in a boat, drinking beers and fishing. After the 8th beer, the Swede asks “so, hows the family?” And the Finn replies “did we come here to drink or to talk?”
Haha, thanks, I didn’t know that one. I would honestly love to visit Finland someday.
I can recommend it :P
Just skip Helsinki, 'tis a pointless place to spend any more time than necessary.
That’s pretty much the interaction I expect in New England.
And, it’s better than waiting around for the self-checkout attendant to fix the error when the self-checkout kiosk doesn’t detect the reusable bag I brought correctly.
I know I’m lucky that I live in a country that has 17 people living in it, I don’t remember the last time I was in the checkout line for more than 5 minutes. Also, we have shops that are open until late at night and most of the hyper-markets are 24h. So I just go shopping at around 23:00 or later, when there is 2 people in the shop.
There is no small talk or push for registering for their bonus card systems, etc, here. You go in, do your thing, say thank you, go away
As it should be! The exaggerated fake politeness I’ve encountered in the US is fucking horrible and makes everything worse.
Agreed. Devastating.
Pulling back doesn’t necessarily mean cancelling all existing self check-out systems. It probably means they will have both, which is how it’s supposed to be, to be honest. Sometimes I just want to scan three items and leave and other times I want someone else to deal with it.
We introverts pay the price 😭
Or those who shop while stoned…
Agreed. I am sad.
They don’t interact bro
That’s sometimes part of the awkwardness. My additional gripes are completely pedantic, but hear me out:
None of the grocery chains in my area offer bagging services, so I have to wait for the attendant to scan my items, bag them myself, and then shuffle back to the register to pay. None of this is a problem, except that the human attendant rarely ever scans the items in the order that makes sense to bag them. So there’s the weird dance of waiting, pushing items aside, etc.
If I’m doing self-check, I can scan and bag using my own patented autistic process ™ that is quick, makes sense, and doesn’t crush things, and I can do it in one shot.
This is why I unload them onto the belt in the order they must be bagged
I use this method, mostly works, cashier sometimes reaches past items when scanning. 🤷 I have observed others just reloading the cart and bagging once at their vehicle in the parking lot. Only downside i see is when having weather.
I suppose that’s a solution, but you’re also doubling your responsibilities, and the price of the groceries still stays too damn high.
It doesn’t really feel like work, I just sort by weight+size in descending order
I go by uncrushable first, fragile last.
Today I learnt doing what most of the world has been doing is “doubling my responsibilities”
You can pay after they scan the first item. It won’t go through until they finish the transaction. So put stuff on conveyor. Wait for them to scan first item. Tap your card. Go pack up your bags while they’re scanning. When they’re done you’re done.
This seems highly location/payment system dependent. You can’t do it where I live, the CC terminals require the final amount to be sent to them before it will accept a card, if you scan your CC before the final amount is sent to the terminal it just gets ignored and a CC will still be requested once the cashier has sent the final amount to the terminal.
Self checkout was great for me because I’d have like 3 items and breeze on out. Now people come to them with overloaded carts because they don’t have any actual checkouts.
I swear every time I pull into a manned checkout lane at one specific store I get the nastiest look from the cashiers. There are 3 functional self checkout kiosks and the scale on all of them is slightly under a single square foot. I’m not buying a thanksgiving feast, but forgive me if my regular shopping trip is more than a single cup of yoghurt and a TV dinner, and consequently cannot all fit on the self checkout scale. It’s not like I’m asking them to open a lane just for me, they’re just upset I’ve interrupted their scrolling session.
I try not to go there often, but sometimes my goto location is closed or doesn’t have something I know I’m going to need. I know it’s not all stores or employees because my normal one is pretty good and I can generally use the kiosk without issue, but it’s so frustrating that the culture has shifted to expect all people to use the self checkout regardless of their situation. And I say this as someone who uses them regularly.
Same here - I bring one bag from home and when it gets full I stop shopping. Even waiting behind one half full shopping cart in a cashier line is slower than waiting for an available self-checkout.
Yeah, checkers are so slow. Self checkout lets you slam everything across in like 5 seconds, swipe, leave.
Easy.
Shitty thing is they won’t hire more cashiers when they shut these off.
Guessing they’ll also raise prices when they simply return to previously normal operations.
Thur raised prices when they put them in, they will raise prices when they remove them.
All actions lead to raising prices.
I really wonder who these retailers are. Like, my grocer typically has 2 human and 12 self checkout open, and it’s no question which of those is going to be faster for someone pushing less than a full cart. They don’t even have the floor space to build twelve more full service checkouts. Reminds me of the bad old days when I’d go to the store and they’d have every human checkout line open, every one of them with 5+ people in line, and it’d take 30 minutes just to check out. If you’re a retailer that only processes a couple dozen patrons an hour, then yeah, I can see where a few self-checks wouldn’t be any benefit.
Feels like we’ve reached the enshittification phase of self-checks: big stores are now so beholden to the technology that the vendors can jack up their prices to where self checks cost the store more than a full-service checkout, but they can’t go back because there’s no staff and no space.
My local grocery had self checkout for about a year before ripping them out and putting normal ones back in. They don’t seem to be understaffed.
Not all stores are awful on all fronts. They don’t have chairs for their checkout people yet though.
They aren’t bringing back cashiers, they’ll have one cashier with a massive line as a deterrent to get you to download the scan as you go app on your phone so you supply the bar code scanner at your expense and they track your phone and change the digital price tags based on your Palantir profile as you walk up.
Or the other option is Walmart has started remodeling their stores into primarily warehouses. The main entrance is badged only for picker workers to hand orders to Doordash or put app orders in people’s cars. The legacy experience entrance will be a temporary secondary option until they get enough robots to make the building fully lights out and automated. Shambling automatons will emerge from the black hell portal in the surface of The Edifice with your tampons and then run facial recognition on you and sniff your car for drug and explosive residue.
I’ll do a big shop, look shocked at the line up and just walk out. Have fun dealing with my cart.
There’s no way I’ll get an app. I get they’ll have methods to entice people but I held off getting Facebook when it was the big thing, I’ll be ready for when corpos want to fuck around.
In fact I welcome it to see how I do.
Trouble is, all you’re doing by dumping a full trolley is inconveniencing someone who’s paid minimum wage.
I agree that’s not good. What else would I do if I had todownload an app to checkout or have to navigate their self checking that’s just a shit show all the time. If the store is being cheap, not properly hiring people and paying a good wage, that is not my responsibility and I’m not going to have to get some app so I can do my purchase and I’m absolutely not going to take my time to put the items back, and nor would the employees want that either.
I have no responsibility to do free labor for profit hungry criminals.
I’m pretty good at not buying from Safeway when they have an item I want on app-coupon sale.
But since tje new Trump order I’ve gone completely anti-consumerist, only getting stuff I immediately need.
I have done that a few times.
You’re just silly.
Your car itself will sniff you for drugs and explosives every time you start it and every 30 seconds thereafter, not the Walmart robot.
Didn’t realize self checkouts were such a divisive topic, like wtf I’ll take that any day of the week over standing in line behind people who have seemingly never been to a supermarket before and their shit is still standing there all over the place while the cashier is already scanning my products. I get that it keeps someone employed but I think the answer to that is better welfare, not sticking to the old ways just so someone gets to do menial shit for a living.
I think this weird anti-self-checkout crowd is just young people who don’t remember the times before self-checkouts. Even if every checkout was manned it was still completely normal to wait upwards of ten minutes, even when it wasn’t that busy. I remember my Mum excitedly running to a checkout because there was only one person queueing there. Nowadays I totally expect there to be no queue at all and I feel hard done by if I have to queue for more than one minute.
Um, no. There are many other categories of people who have issues with self-checkouts. Like anyone who’s legally or by the store’s rules due a discount or tax waiver (people with Indigenous status aren’t required to pay sales taxes in some jurisdictions, for instance), since the software often fails to account for these. Anyone paying cash. Anyone who knows anything at all about UI design or has wrestled with a self-checkout that just doesn’t function properly.
I’ll wait in line rather than deal with a machine that’s broken by design, thanks. Fortunately, the stores around here mostly have reasonable staffing practices, so the wait isn’t long unless some idiot tries to price-match against a flyer or something else weird and unusual.
Jusy FYI - I think self-checkouts can accept cash, but sometimes and sporadically do not, because I often see signs, permanent as well as improvisory, that they don’t.
My problem with the self checkouts is they do require quite a bit of wrangling from the person on staff and that sometimes, depending on the time of day, that person has entirely fucked off to another corner of the store. I’ve abandoned a near-completed self-checkout for the safe harbor of a human-staffed register on more than one occassion.
My experience is that maybe a third of them are set up to accept cash. The others tend to have permanent “Credit or debit only” signage. (I pay in cash quite often, although I’ll grant you that I’m an outlier.)
Yes, and sometimes they count drawers before close, so those registers are closed or card-only.
They can accept cash but those that do work like ass, and also attract less tech-savvy customers. So they need to keep them separated from card-only self-checkouts, otherwise it bogs down everybody. And yes, at that point they might as well convert them back to manned checkouts, because more often than not they require a person to stand by and help the customers with the cash.
Weird brag to admit you can’t figure out the self-checkout and Fisher Price level UI that audibly shouts at you what to do next.
You mean you’ve never run into one that’s got buggy software or non-obvious broken hardware? Lucky.
My only complaint were the ones I experienced in Japanese konbini, which has you scan your purchases, but you had to wait until after payment to bag them. Once this really patient, wonderful local couple showed me what I was doing wrong, it was okay. But still an unfortunate hiccup in their process.
The worst one I’ve run into appeared to be cobbled together from two different systems that barely talked to each other. At some point the main unit passed control to the other without any indication it was doing so, or that different instructions would be appearing on the smaller, monochrome screen that never showed up on the main one and had to be followed before following the next step on the main screen (no audio cues for anything on the secondary screen either, as far as I could tell, so anyone with vision issues was SOL). I don’t know what the hell the designer of this monstrosity was thinking, and I don’t care to know, but my cat could have done better. It wasn’t impossible to figure out, but it required time and brain cells that I wouldn’t have needed at a manned checkout. (Name of the store withheld to protect the guilty, but it was a major North American chain.)
That’s only relevant to… I think just one country where self check outs exist. Namely America.
The thing about Indigenous tax breaks? Also relevant in Canada, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover there was something similar in Australia or New Zealand. It’s only one possible issue of several in that category, anyway. For instance, there’s a drugstore chain in my neck of the woods that provides discounts for seniors on one day of the week . . . but their self-checkouts can’t handle it and anyone who’s due a discount has to go to a cashier. Stuff like that.
I’m over 50 but the queue has to be huge for me to go to self-checkout.
I do not enjoy waiting for someone to come and check if im stealing. I do not enjoy waiting for a go-ahead for goods that are age restricted. I do not enjoy doing unpaid work (wheres my rebate??)
Also - I think cashiers deserve a job.
Same, and exactly all of this. If they want me to do the work that they usually pay someone for, they better offer me a significant discount.
I worked in grocery stores as a teen and I just want that to remain available.
I also do not like the self checkout machine. They have an unacceptable number of steps to pay. They’re horribly programmed. I don’t like the small baggage areas.
I think this weird anti-self-checkout crowd is just young people who don’t remember the times before self-checkouts.
What crowd? As far as I can see, the article is talking about retailers who want to do this, not customers.
Boomers still line up at the cashier and will wait 15 minutes when self checkout is empty. But they also buy loto tickets and cigs.
The Aldi by me went self checkout. They lost enough business because of it they brought back cashiers. I definitely stopped going because of how clunky it was. The couple times I went I used the single cashier that had a line instead of self checkout which did not.
Have they tried adding AI? 3D printing? Quantum computing? Space based solar power?
This seems very US coded. In euro they’re doubling down even with self scan on the phone or with a tool they give me. I scan them as I put them in my cart and at checkout I just pay and leave. It’s awesome.
Hmm I like self checkout because I don’t like dealing with retail people. I’m introverted by nature.
Just get me the F in and get me the F out. Charge the correct price and give me correct change. Machines do this SO WELL.
.
They could have saved so much time and money by just paying the cashiers a living wage.