I’d rather “work” than wait behind people with 100+ items. I can be out the door in 2 minutes.
even faster if u skip some items from being scanned
Based
I don’t know where you live but here this would be a crime and very antisocial and despicable.
it gives retail a free card to jack prices
so blame the corpos for that. not your neighbour stealing some chicken.
I don’t know where YOU live but Walmart is one of the biggest thieves in the USA. People working there still have to collect government assistance because they pay too little to live on.
Bro relax. It was a joke
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re being facetious.
I thought you were fully serious, but then I hit the line
Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices,
And assumed you were just poking fun and the poor widdle corporations and their giant profit margins, but then you continued with your paragrap, and now I’m not sure again…
But maybe you can explain where all the downvotes come from, because I don’t understand.
Is thievery good? Only when thieving from companies? Is is socially acceptable to take what is not yours from others? Only from companies? Or from a stranger who has more than you? From a friend? What’s this all about?
Fuck the corpos, choom.
Yeah, it’s completely ethical to steal from big corporations. They steal from you every single day. Their entire existence is based on the amoral exploitation of other humans. Other people, small businesses, a very very very few medium-large corporations, it’s not ethical to steal from, they’re not a disgusting blight rotting away the foundations of society. Nor a friend, or stranger, or small business, etc. for the same reason.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly hard concept.
The answer is… It depends. Stealing food or diapers because you or your child are starving is based. Stealing someone’s car… Not so much.
appeal to ignorance.
Whoosh that’s were the DV came from.
No, I’m serious in all statements. Corpos will jack prices on any occassion that offers itself, so keep the number of those low.
Don’t worry, even if we don’t give them the theft excuse they’ll just lie about it anyway and do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of our input or reality. If a retail corporation wants to raise prices, they will raise prices. There is nothing you or me or anyone else can do about it.
The only winning move is not to play the game.
Why bother going through the checkout at all, the fastest way out is straight through the door. Unrelated, the weather is changing so I’m thinking of buying a really big coat, and I’ll want pockets for my keys and other essentials.
Shoppin’ with Hoffman
I don’t understand the hate for self checkout it’s faster and easier
My only issue is how loud and obnoxious the prompts/alerts are at some stores who have their volume cranked to max.
Nah like actually they trying to deafen us
European here. Our self-checkouts make no sounds and don’t have any of that unexpected item bs. The experience is great. If your experience is like what I’ve read here, I begin to understand why it’s disliked.
Also European here. They do. Certainly in the shops I’ve been in. Probably a country thing.
My local king soopers always allowed a super low volume setting if you clicked it, now there’s only two, yelling and screaming. People were probably setting that and the beep couldn’t be heard on the camera or something
It’s not faster, but it can be easier if you really don’t want to talk to people. Don’t kid yourself: someone who spends hours per day scanning barcodes knows where they are on each product and can do them faster than you.
I am faster on self-checkout than the people working the register 100%, except Aldi. If Aldi scanners had to bag, it would be a tie.
It literally is faster for me as I worked at Walmart for awhile but some the people they got in there now are slow af
It depends on the store. There are places where the self checkout lanes are dysfunctional and end up requiring waiting for a checkout worker (who are usually understaffed) to come and scan a code to fix it.
It’s faster for me, slower for the other 799 people in line before me who have never stepped foot in a grocery store before today.
Obvious hyperbole but some days it doesn’t feel like much of an exaggeration.
Not always though. But regardless if you agree there, they are slowly replacing humans with machines and that has negative implications for workers and for the economy
Instead, try saying “well, then they don’t pay you enough to scan everything now do they?”
Y…yes? They don’t? That’s not a very good comeback you got there.
Okay and what if I, believe it or not, actually already knew that they dont pay customers to scan things and wasn’t on Walmart side?
- I don’t work here. Stop trying to get me to do the job for free, either pay a cashier to check me out or fuck off.
- There’s an epidemic of these machines not working and then the shopper getting charged with shoplifting over it, Wal-Mart is the worst at doing this.
I mean, both are right. Clients shouldn’t have to do the cashier job.
But clients should stop going there to send a message instead of harassing the minimum salary employee.
I enjoy turning this one around. “Oh, you’re one of those socialists who wants everybody else to do your work for you, too lazy to lift your own groceries. Nobody wants to work anymore!”
i’m sure you use that zinger all the time
I like hanging out in parking lots at Walmarts and to scam boomers coming back with a load of groceries
I’ve only been mistaken as an employee in one store I used to frequent. I was very disappointed when all three of those other customers actually accepted I didn’t work there.
I was in the camping section checking out the flashlights and the idiot that actually worked there wasn’t expected to learn what those lights will actually do. Told the customer it runs at the maximum output for the runtime of the lowest output because the employee only looked at the simplified status on the side of the box.
I had to show the customer the chart on the back of the box where the runtime and brightness of each mode is listed there and talked at length about all the different lights on display that I saw and was familiar with.
When I stepped away three different customers asked me about stuff in different departments of that store and I told them I didn’t work there. Some of them gave me a dirty look, others were more chill about it.
You can make anyone believe you’re supposed to be somewhere if you just act like you know what you’re doing. But in this case I actually did know more about those flashlights than the employees did.
I actually prefer self checkout. Idk. I get it though.
Reading the comments, do people not like self checkout? Is it another one of these American things, that baffle the rest of the world? Like grocery baggers. I’m European, living in Poland and Denmark and if given the choice, I will always pick the store with self checkout. It’s simply faster. Only old people don’t use self check out, not because of boomer ideology, but because they need the cashier’s help.
Self checkouts that just let you scan items without issue and accept payment are a nice enough idea for a bag or less of shopping, my problem with them is how they are implemented in reality (in Australia anyway). The first implementations I encountered I considered an useful addition but both the machines and the staffing changes due to them have steadily gone downhill in terms of user experience.
Instead of a quick painless experience you get a horribly touchy weight sensor which can’t reliably handle particularly small items, particularly large items, or non-standard bags (and there are no longer standard bags due to plastic bag bans), a machine which demands assistant intervention at the slightest issue (and the assistants are understaffed so never arrive quickly), and when you finally get to payment it makes you click through an annoyingly slow interface to tell it you don’t have a rewards card and don’t care to donate to some charity before it will activate the card reader. To make things worse the manned checkouts are never staffed at a level - if any are even open - to cater for people with full trolleys so these end up clogging up the self checkouts (which have tiny bagging areas and are not intended to handle a trolley load) and making everything slower.
The icing on the cake is the self checkout treating you like a thief and throwing errors if the camera system thinks you didn’t scan something in the trolley or letting off an alarm like you’re trying to make off with something when you just want to buy a can of paint.
Yeah, I would rather wait for the one active checkout rather than have to go through the rigmarole of scanning one item, putting it in the bag, waiting for it to register before doing the next. The employees get to scan multiple things at once and do things like “scanned item x6”. Until self-checkout technology advances to the point I can do the same, it can fuck right off.
Don’t forget the commercials before and after you pay FML
The minute they start playing ads in my country, I’m out. I’ll just start shop lifting to avoid standing in lines.
I’m European too, living in Russia and I’ve never seen self-checkout that accepts cash. Despite seeing many vending machines that accept only cash.
I recently moved, and my now nearest store does not have self checkout. It’s horrible. I spend more time waiting in the line than actually finding my items in the store. During the three years i used my previous local store, I only had to wait for an unoccupied self checkout maybe two times.
I’m from France living in Sweden and I’ve seen people not wanting to use self-checkout because it’s used to cut cashier jobs. Where you’d get 4 cashiers, you just get one person watching the self checkout. I’m personally ambivalent about because I do find it faster and convenient, but it is indeed a loss of jobs
Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don’t even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?
That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “boomer” on the opposite side of the word “sucker”.
Exactly! Back in my day, people used to fill up my gas for me and carry my things up to my hotel room. Young people are getting lazy and entitled! Makes it hard to humiliate the poors if they make ME do the work.
Tbh back then the pay was more fairly in line with cost of living for some of the jobs. however, it has been a good 20 or so year since it was more fair. Nowadays, it is absolutely scary the cost of living. it’s down right criminal.
Okay boomer
Refuse to do free work for a company—insist that the grocery store employees go and gather the items on your list from the shelves for you! Never set foot on the sales floor, do pickup orders online only!
Background: It used to be that the proprietor of a store brought items you requested to the counter for you. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly pioneered a new grocery store model, requiring/allowing the customers to pick items off of the shelves themselves. Not only did they not give you a discount for doing their work for them, they raked in more money from impulse purchases. The increased sales more than offset the increase in shoplifting losses. A cynical, corporate ploy to bleed customers dry, and we just think it’s normal now!
That is to say, the purpose of a grocery store is to provide food in exchange for currency. There’s no law of nature that I know of that says that having an underpaid teenager drag your food across the scanner is the only proper way to do check-out, just like there isn’t one that says only a store employee can pick items from the shelf.
In other words, race to the bottom is race to the bottom.
Those jobs were not cruel and demeaning as you seem to imply. In fact plenty of industries still operate that way (auto parts etc.) and they served a valuable purpose, to give work experience to that underpaid teenager.
In fact if you go to a butcher shop, fishmonger, farm market etc. you will have your food handed to you by a human as well. And most people highly rate both the service and quality at such shops, with the employees usually being paid significantly more than at supermarkets, and having proper work hours and job security.
So yes, I suppose Piggly Wiggly made food margins a little thinner. But considering I get better meat prices at my butcher than at a supermarket, who do you think benefited from that move the most? Most likely the same ones benefiting from the move towards a fully automated store like Amazon tested.
Maybe you can go the warehouse and pick it up from the boxes, drive down to the farm to het the produce or, even better, grow your own food ALL THE WHILE STILL PAYING FULL VALUE TO THE SUPERMARKET.
“People used to have even more done for them and now they don’t and pay the same” is not the powerful argument for us having even less done for us that you think it is.
The self checkout is a perfectly viable option, so long as Walmart can find the strength inside themselves to open 3-6 manned tills on a Sunday for folks with large carts or children. Nothing is more demoralizing than getting up to the checkouts after a huge shop and finding there isn’t a single till open whatsoever. Throw in a four-year-old who wants to help scan every item and you’re ready to burn the store down by the time you leave.
I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.
At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.
I don’t mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you… but they are not a replacement for cashiers.
Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.
It’s cute that you think 25% of your sale is going towards labour, even before self-checkouts became so commonplace.
Its cute that you are trying to twist what I said into something that I didnt say.
No wait, not cute. the opposite of that.
I said I want a 25% discount for doing their job and saving them the labor. Not that their labor is 25% of my bill.
I’m sorry you’ve taken offence to my throw away comment, as no offence was meant.
Is it actually “cute” that this person allegedly overinflates the worth of checkout labor, or were you being condescending?
Just curious, I have no idea what the real number is, what do you think it is?
I have no clue. I guess you can look at the profit margin for a supermarket (Walmart is around 2%, I just checked), then figure out the average full food shop spend, and finally see what the average hourly wage is for a worker and how long it would take to ring up a full shop.
Although, this also highlights why they can’t give OP 25% off as their margin isn’t anywhere near this figure. I guess we should also factor in handouts that companies like Walmart get from the government to subsidise their staff etc.
From reading a few reports, after looking this up, it seems walmart spend about 7% of it’s revenue on hiring, and about 32% on payroll. The other costs towards labor seem to vary greatly from source to source, depending on exactly what they take into consideration as a labor expense. So it is somewhere between 39% and 60% of the revenue.
So that other person was probably being super condescending for no reason? That’s kind of the impression I got when they said they had no idea the actual number.
Apparently they spend about 7.67% of their operating budget on labor. Just in case anyone was wondering. Source.
I would wager that a significant piece of that is centered around the logistics and distribution element. Cashiers are probably rounding errors.
Thanks for posting this.
You don’t get to be 3 of the richest people on the planet by paying for labor
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.
I also faced that scenario once and walked out of the store leaving my $400 worth of groceries sitting in front of the abandoned cashier lanes. The profit from just my purchase would have paid for a full cashier shift that day. Instead they got to pay for restocking and ruined frozen food and meat.
I’m 100% against self checkout.
They’ve put the burden of sale on you instead of themselves. If you fail to check something out accidentally, you are liable for theft.
If they don’t have a cashier, I go to customer service and tell them to ring me up even if it’s one item.
Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item
I can’t imagine a judge taking a case where someone unwittingly stole something
Don’t need to get to a judge. They can just tresspass you and then you have to drive 30 miles to another supermarket cause you cant ever set foot in that one again.
Thats enough to fuck shit up for a lot of people.
I admire your faith in our legal system but despair at you lack of imagination.
They’ll prosecute a bag of money for potentially being involved in a crime.
Depends how white you are
Do you live in the US? I do and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that happens here
NAL, but i believe that they have to show intent in order to prosecute. As long as the legal system works properly, they would have to prove that you’re lying when you say “I forgot that was down there”
Which is why I’m against making people do big orders through self checkout, cause thats when an accident can happen.
Not when you’re getting your genital itch cream.
A lot of the grocery stores near me have a limit of 15 or 20 items for self-checkout. Safeway says “about 15 items” which is strangely vague. Any more and you have to go through a regular checkout.
i would say even 10 items is to much for self checkout, but thats better than walmart expecting you to take a cartful of monthly groceries through self checkout.
Walmarts keep the same number of cashiers before and after self checkouts are installed.
not in any walmart where i’ve witnessed the changeover.
I’m just basing it off of being married to a Walmart manager for 10 years but hey, maybe outsiders’ anecdotal feelings on the topic are more accurate than observed first hand experience.
Walmart is ALWAYS hiring cashiers.
Yeah, and you know where they are? stocking shelves and picking for the online pickup orders. Not running checkout lines.
That number is between 0-2 depending on how many cashier lanes there are.
Yeah and then I had a lady ask to check my receipt because there’s not enough room to put everything on the fucking thing all at once so I told her no and walked out.
What’s so bad with self checkout I run through it faster then a cashier does
If you have more stuff than will fit in the weighing platform it’s a logistical disaster. Hence why the belts and bagger system were invented in the first place.
I haven’t seen a Walmart with one of the weighing platforms in years, actually
They all use larger flat plastic coffee-table bits attacked to the machine now, there’s actually about as much room on it as is in a cart, and it’s really nice
You beep, beep, beep, and never have to worry about UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING ARE or anything like that
Not really you leave it in the cart and bag it as you scan it
And then put the full bags back in the cart right on top of the stuff you still need to scan?
There’s usually a platform you can leave 5-6 bags on till your cart is empty enough to through them back in there as you scan the rest
Yea no shit. Not everyone has the luxury of shopping as often as you do and we have to actually fill our carts. Also it sure seems like you are still using disposable bags which is a shame.
You act as if it doesn’t work the same way with a full cart cause it does, so what if I am that wasn’t even the subject
I was once mistaken for an employee somewhere and my sleep deprivated response was to say “I am wearing pants so clearly I dont work here.” I have no fucken clue what that means but I think it was a threat.
We’re you at a strip club?
Pretty sure I was at an Ace hardware or some shit. Like I said I was severely sleep deprived and was looking for something, pretty sure it was duck tape for reinforcing an air conditioner.
Frankly speaking once I got to my car and realized what I said I started laughing my ass off since it was such a non sequitur.
Self checkout in the PNW rules.
Self checkout in South (east) Florida sucks.
Why? Because the volume is on 11, and the customer base is as dumb as a rock. Seriously, stand at any self checkout in SF for 10’ minutes and watch.
In 11 minutes you will either want to kill them or yourself, sometimes it’s a tossup.
Even though ya specified south Florida I still read it as fucking San Francisco.
