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.
Bro relax. It was a joke
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.
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.
Whoosh that’s were the DV came from.
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.
appeal to ignorance.
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.
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.
it gives retail a free card to jack prices
so blame the corpos for that. not your neighbour stealing some chicken.
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
Corporate gaslighting be like:
Netherlands :)
This says much about respect and social competence in this society when the first instinct is to mock and abuse someone with different priorities than yours.
When they are that rude and stupid they have it coming
You mean “rude” in asking for a cashier? Not sure I understand
You mean demanding special attention rather than using the self-checkout like everyone else? Not sure I understand.
I expect that the management is responsible for adequate staffing. Self-checkout typically doesn’t even work. Not a boomer, not USian, YMMV.
Self checkouts don’t work where you are? Odd.
Typically they need attendant attention, to be reset to be usable. Which makes it rather pointless. My expectation that checkout lines are to be adequately staffed with cashiers. This is, however, increasingly not a safe assumption, in Germany. I expect the situation to further deteriorate. As does everything else.
Here there are like 10 self-checkouts per 1 employee and they’re just there if the machine gets confused about a weight. It’s much better, and faster than waiting in the queue for a manned checkout. I can’t imagine wanting to go backward, where’s the benefit?
“service” is no “special attention” but I get to the conclusion our misunderstanding might be a socio-cultural thing
asking for a cashier?
That would be normal
“I don’t work here”
Is a rude response to the question whether they would like to use the self-checkout.
Ehhhhh very mildly rude if at all. Like it’s not the most polite response but people are allowed to express themselves too
I would rather someone be rude and fight for what’s right then someone nice that’s propagating a system of injustice because “my 15 mins are valuable”
They didn’t ask.
service is not something the client has to ask for but something the vendor provides. Just like you hold a door open for someone entering behind you, you provide that service, unasked. Having to ask for service is a failure in itself, it’s just “no service”.
Can’t you read or do you just want to be right?
I live here in Toronto.
When I go to a store, I pay with cash.
I pay with Canadian money, because I’m a Canadian who buys from stores in Canada.
That was easy to do in Ontario Wal-Mart stores.
But then they put up self-check-outs that only accepted credit and debit cards—maybe because they’re in cahoots with the banks and the NSA/wp:CSEC.
Then I had to use a cashier.
So I went to Wal-Mart fewer times as I didn’t like to wait (as well as the increased prices during and after Covid-19).
Now they have a person at the self-checkout who will scan my stuff and accept my cash.
It seems that Wal-Mart adapted—somewhat—to people like me: people who pay with cash.
Still, I do more purchases at Food Basics and Dollarama because their self-check-outs accept cash, including pockets full of loose change that I purposely carry when I go there.
I get being mean to walmart because corporations are bad but being needlessly rude to random employees rubs me the wrong way. Most of us can’t get a job anywhere better despite having a degree. We have to deal with the mental abuse of people constantly treating us like dog shit just because we exist. The job situation is so fucked right now. I should not be having to compete with people that have masters degrees and decades of experience for tech support jobs that pay $15 an hour. Fuck this broken society.
The last time I was not underemployed was 2018.
Maybe your decades of failure is just obvious to everyone but you
So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven’t worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc), they’ve lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.
(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
They are HUGELY advantageous to shoplifters. My local grocery store did it for a few years and stopped all together.
Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that the mighty MBA class are actually just short-sighted, trend-hopping, avaricious shitbags?
Yeah, if you can’t pay people enough to notice and/or care if I steal from you, I get to steal from you. Them’s the rules.
“If you aren’t able to stop me, I get to rape you. Them’s the rules.”
That’s how fucking stupid you sound.
So, to be clear, are you saying that stealing from a corporation is equally as bad as raping someone?
For me it’s not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it’s the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I’m walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.
Scandinavia?
That sounds amazing! Can I ask where that is?
Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
I’m a lot faster at bagging when I’m not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.
Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items
In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?
- If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
- With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
- If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.
the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc)
What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.
The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.
In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
- Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
- Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
- In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
- The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
- The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don’t have bar codes.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
Self checkout isn’t supposed to be for more than 10 or 15 items in most stores… obviously it would be less convenient in those cases.
Self checkout works fine for large amounts of items. You grab a portable scanner at the entrance and scan items as you put them in your cart. When you arrive at checkout you already scanned all your items and all you have to do is pay.
self checkout cannot remove anti-theft devices.
I’ve never seen anti-theft devices on items in a supermarket.
on clothing and tech???
Clothing and tech in a supermarket?
near the letters and hygene products?
Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
Age verification happens asynchronously and causes zero delay for anyone who doesn’t look like a teenager. The employee overseeing the self-checkout gets an alert on their tablet-thingie, they take one look at me and press approve. You can just keep scanning items while this happens. Usually the ‘your age may be checked’ alert disappears within seconds.
Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
They can where I live.
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
The conveyor belt slows things down. You take an item out of your basket, scan it and put it in your bag in one go instead of it being two separate actions. You’re only handling each item once instead of twice. Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items.
If you scan while you add items to your cart it takes less than 10 seconds to check out, regardless of how many items you have
That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
My local supermarket has a grand total of 1 regular cashier, versus 16 self checkouts. If you go during a busy time you have to stand in line. Since the regular cashier is basically only used by people who don’t want to or can’t use self-checkout for some reason (that is: usually elderly people) this line doesn’t move very fast.
When it’s a quiet time of day there often isn’t a regular cashier at all and you have to ask the person overseeing the self-checkout who then has to call someone to help you out as they cannot leave the self-checkout isle unattended so you end up waiting for a cashier to arrive.
Self checkout is always faster, by an order of magnitude.
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time. This is to try to prevent theft. If you have more items than will fit into one bag, you have to periodically remove that bag and start a new bag. If you bump something or move things around while you bag (there’s very little room to work with), you often get one of these errors.
Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
I’ve never been in a store that has this. What stores in what country are you referring to? The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts. It probably has to use RFID or something and be able to effectively compare all items you’re walking out with to what all was in the transaction. Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
Anyway, I think most of the people who are raving about how great self-checkout is are those who only buy a handful of items at a time, probably not stocking up on groceries or buying enough for a family.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them, people with full carts and the lines move very slowly compared to the ones with a cashier, where for the same length of line, my wait time is much shorter and then someone who’s better at it than me, with a conveyor belt and ability to scan quickly does it, and there is usually also another person bagging, or if not I can bag as they scan (depending on the store).
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time.
Sounds like a stupid system.
What stores in what country are you referring to?
Pretty much every supermarket in the Netherlands.
Here is a video of it in action
The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts.
There is no anti theft system other than randomized bag checks where they check up to 10 items from your bag to see if you scanned them. Takes about 1 minute and with daily supermarket visits this happens maybe once a month or so. (I think there is some kind of reputation system linked to your store loyalty card).
Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
You scan your receipt af the exit gate (you can also scan a barcode from the store’s app or choose a tiny receipt that only contains the exit barcode). You have to go through one or these gates regardless of wether you go through self checkout or not.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them
There are almost never lines at self checkout. There are 16 self checkout stations vs only one regular cashier. Self checkout is super fast and even if they are all occupied one usually frees up in less than a minute.
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
I use self checkout at certain stores, and avoid it at others.
And the store that this whole post is about, Wal-Mart, is definitely one of the stores I’ll avoid self checkout at. Their system sucks.
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
It basically is implemented the exact same way in every supermarket in my country.
So we’re having a conversation about the Wal-Mart style self checkouts, which you’ve not only never experienced, but apparently can’t even imagine.
To borrow from an earlier comment of yours, we’re in an “alternate reality,” so your conversation should be grounded in that understanding.
The system you describe sounds good, however, it’s nothing I’ve ever encountered. May I ask where you live?
I just like the feeling of privacy. When the staff redirects customers to the cashiers because there’s less queue than at the self checkout, I pretend not to hear with my headphones on.
Same. I’m one of the few people that prefers self checkout. Covid was a magical time for me while grocery shopping. No one awkwardly had to smile after eye contact, everyone gave space and avoided each other, just get in and get out without ever taking out my headphones. Self check out is always faster where I’m from too.
As a hermit forced to live and work in the modern world, COVID is the high I’ll never get again.
Ditto. Then, when we went back to “normal,” I felt like I had to pretend to hate it because everyone else hated it so much. For me, it felt like freedom and relief.
I only prefer self checkout when I’m buying rubbers and lube. Anything else I’d rather have the checkout person scan and bag for me.
If you have social anxiety, the checkout person conversation is one of the easiest interactions for you to practice those skills on. “Hello, here are my items, thank you” is about the gist of what’s necessary.
I don’t need practice. I can do it fine. I just do not want to.
Oh I have absolutely no social anxiety, I just prefer to keep what I’m buying to myself when I can, rubber or not.
I LOVE self-checkouts for small shopping. No human interaction bullshit. Just beep your stuff, whip out your card and go. Rarely do I encounter technical problems.
Self checkout is great for stealing!
It’s not stealing, I paid for that six-pack of bananas and two steak shaped bananas!
Because the store is packed, they only have 2 cashiers on shift and I want to go home.
It’s almost as if they do underman the tills on purpose to force people to do the checkout work themselves for free …
Yeah, I wish they’d staff more tills too.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t imagine a judge taking a case where someone unwittingly stole something
Depends how white you are
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.
Do you live in the US? I do and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that happens here
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.
Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item
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.
That number is between 0-2 depending on how many cashier lanes there are.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
Never understood that argument. I want to be in and out as quickly as possible. Self checkout makes that happen.
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.
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 don’t understand the hate for self checkout it’s faster and easier
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Boomer uncle literally drives his electric bill payment to the local office to pay it when they have a perfectly fine online portal.
Same exact response ‘that’s someone’s job’ like the employee actually has a say.
What about the jobs of the people that maintain the online portal though??
Most of them are useless and horruble ti use. Don’t get me wrong I love the cinvinience, but they need to hire competant designers/dev.
Well…fuck em, I guess!
If they’re charging so much that the local govt needs to pass that on in the form of a $5 fee on a $9 payment, they’re either gouging, or have an unsustainable business model.
Either way, fuck 'em.
Most corporate bill portals I’ve personally used were terrible and charged me a significant convenience fee for using them.
You’re kidding, right? Are You trying to tell me, You physically walk somewhere to pay Your electricity bill? Are You also using cash to do it?
None of my utilities charge a fee. Seems foreign to me. Usually only the bmv charges one online.
Well, the funny thing is… it IS somebody’s job, and they get paid for it. There more they push “self service” the less workers they’re hiring and paying wages to, and the more your ever-increasing grocery bill just goes to pad some executive’s bonus so they can buy a bigger boat or whatever.
There’s no justification from a pure convenience standpoint, but I could respect the pettiness if the electric company ran their shit like one local government office in my hometown, where there was this small annual fee they charged like $9 for…but then to pay it, you could either mail in a check, hand deliver cash or check or card…or pay online…where they added a $5 “convenience fee” to a sub-$10 payment.
You bet your ass that I paid that shit in person every year, in loose change, and requested a receipt (which they had to write up manually because they didn’t have a system to process and print one).
My city’s water bill went from a free online portal to a shittier one with a fee. I pay it by check now out of pettiness.
Yeah I refuse to pay a “convenience fee.” I’ll mail a f*ing check if they try to charge me.
No fee for the portal. His only justification was it is some human interaction, which is fine. Just feels like a boomer mentality.
Hell, you can even pay through a check via the banks online portal. Dude doesn’t have a cell phone and never has.
I live by this philosophy
If you charge me more to make both our lives easier, I will make both our lives harder out of spite.
It will cost you more than the fee you tried to squeeze out of me, and I will have spent nothing.
Now do Ticketmaster
I would but arson is a crime
