this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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They let me avoid human interaction if I choose, AND they’ve hurt these big retailers while showing them the value of giving people more shifts/hours?
Spectacular success if you ask me! It would be fun to have worked on this tech and then see it helping others by failing or being sabotaged, lol. That’s not a feeling you usually expect when you launch a product.
I used to like them for this at least, but now my local store has someone come talk to you and do the whole "did you find everything OK?" and loyalty card conversation while the other machines in the background need their attention and people are getting impatient. if you have headphones in they'll literally just keep trying and wait until you remove them to say "yep, nope, no thank you, don't need the pamphlet, thanks, nope, yep all good".
I avoid them entirely now, there's no value and only drawbacks. I'll wait in the long human checker line as long as I need. the human doesn't stop scanning randomly half way through the slow scan, bag, wait loop and start emitting loud alarm noises for an employee to come over (sometime in the next 10 minutes) and be forced to review a video of your whole self-checkout process titled "CHECK THOROUGHLY FOR THEFT" before they can unlock the machine and stop the alarm.
Around here you cannot use coupons without assistance, and each one needs a 3 button confirmation sequence.
Did you get 2 or more of the discounted breads? Whoops, those gotta get individually checked to make sure you didnt secretly duplicate the coupon! Grab the meat that expires next week for tonights dinner, which gets a lil price slash to make sure it sells? Nope, sorry, that one also needs to stop the cart and call for help too.
None of this in a regular stand, those scan coupons like normal. I guess theyre afraid I know how to make these discount codes at home?
Not even that, really. There's always a cashier or two who needs to hover over my shoulder to check an eye or protect against shoplifting or help with a malfunctioning device. The change is in their role. Cashiers are no longer helpfully bagging your groceries, they're just functioning as underpaid rent-a-cops.
The original check-out lanes were already incredibly efficient. Self-checkout is comparatively clunky and time-consuming, which is why you're encouraged to use lanes for more than 15 items.
I wouldn't call it particularly helpful, even from a labor standpoint. Everyone is functionally more miserable than they were ten years ago. What we've got with this technology is a sunk cost that businesses are loathe to write off as a failure.
I hate when cashiers bag my groceries. I have the large reusable bags, and they put like 4 things in each. Why? I always tell them I’m going to bag my own at this point anyways just to get my grocery bags full.
Even when they had plastic bags here, I'd be surprised at how little they'd put in some bags. Those things can handle more, fill them up!
That's the part I like the best about self checkout. I can set up a couple of bags and then optimize what I scan. Put all the freezer stuff together, fridge stuff, soft things on top, heavy stuff at bottom. Helps that they got rid of the weighing where I shop, that shit was so annoying plus it limited your total space to however big the weighing table was (unless you got someone to reset it so you could remove some bags back to your cart).