Self checkout
I used to use it and then I had one too many instances in which I grabbed an item that didn’t quite work well with the U Scan system. So, now I avoid whenever I get seasonal produce. But, I’d never thought of this:
GroceryCo Inc. hasn’t started paying him to be a cashier.
Interesting take. Of course, 20 years ago, the clerks loaded the groceries in your car for you. Self-checkout may go the same way, particularly if the minimum wage gets ridiculous.
November 12th, 2014 at 2:03 pm
My store let’s me scan the groceries as I shop. If I don’t have any coupons I’ll do self-checkout, but generally the more items I run over the scanner the better the chance of the system having an error. Used to be fine when they had one cashier running say a bank of 4-6 self-checkouts, so if you needed help, help was generally right there.
Now if you need assistance, it will ALWAYS be faster to go through a regular lane.
November 12th, 2014 at 2:07 pm
Haven’t used a live cashier at my regular grocery store in years. Never had a hangup or delay except waiting to show ID if buying alcohol.
November 12th, 2014 at 2:31 pm
Walmart self-checkout lines remove about 50% of the frustration involved in checking out there, at least for me.
Grocery stores in our area have a 20 item limit for self-checkout, and produce is handled well by the user interface. One oversight store cashier can handle 4 checkouts easily, and people have adapted to it quickly.
I used to use the old “I am not a paid cashier here” argument, too, before I learned what amazingly small margins grocery stores have.
To keep the price of my hotdogs and canned beans from climbing any higher, I’ll forgo as much service as necessary. Just pile the boxes from the tractor trailer in the parking lot, I’ll load ’em in my pickup, and toss cash in the centrally located barrel.
November 12th, 2014 at 2:33 pm
I’d rather DIY than have someone else slow me down, typically.
My time ain’t free, either, and I don’t especially luxuriate in someone else packing a bag for me, half the time poorly.
(It does not help that our local Supreme Soviet, er, the Portland City Council, decided unilaterally to ban plastic bags at grocery stores.
To save Baby Gaea, I now have to use crappy paper bags that usually don’t have handles.)
November 12th, 2014 at 3:51 pm
You could always buy a box of the plastic bags they used to use in your grocery stores. Take some with you to the store and bag your groceries in plastic, then watch the heads explode.
November 12th, 2014 at 3:54 pm
My big beef with self checkout is that the programs seem to have never heard of non linear programming. I’ve yet to encounter one that would let you take one item out of a batch and scan it the right number of times while you just place the rest of the same items in bags. Or if you pick up two or three things from the cart you have to scan, place in bag, scan, place in bag, etc. I suppose it’s some misplaced idea of keeping people honest to force that kind of sequencing.
November 12th, 2014 at 4:40 pm
First and Last time I used self checkout, I bought a faucet at Lowe’s. everything was fine until the cashier chased me half way across the parking lot. apparently the anti-theft screamer was triggered, and they needed to drag the box all the way back to the store. Never bothered to check my receipt, just brought the box into the store to deactivate it and handed it back to me.
November 12th, 2014 at 7:04 pm
I like to bag my own. Lots of reasons. No jar of pickles on top of the hot dog buns. No Ajax with the lettuce. Frozens with frozens; bath soap with the toothpaste. Plus, I have to negotiate two flights of stairs and three doors to carry it into the house. And I don’t like other people … touching my food.
November 12th, 2014 at 8:03 pm
Self checkout doesn’t work for me. I seem to queue behind the self-scanners who 1) never used a touch screen before, 2) visually check five sides of every box before finding the barcode on the sixth side, the bottom [it’s always on the bottom!], 3) purchase clothing without hang tags, and 4) insist on paying cash despite the big signs stating ATM or CC Only. Ugh.
November 12th, 2014 at 9:55 pm
My self checkout experience is limited, because it always goes like this:
-Go to self checkout with 5 items
-Scan item and place in bag
-Attempt to scan next item. Fails.
-“Please place item in bag.”
-Look dumbfounded as to why it thinks I didn’t place the first item in the bag
-Attempt to scan the second item again. Fails.
-“Please place item in bag.”
-At this point, having scanned exactly one item which is currently in the bag it’s asking me to put it in, remove the item from the bag and put it back in.
-(SIRENS) “AN ITEM HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE BAG. PLEASE WAIT FOR THE CASHIER.”
-Cashier comes by, resets everything, and checks me out themselves.
I’m under 35 and have a master’s in information systems. The system should not baffle me.
November 13th, 2014 at 12:47 am
In fact, the barcode is not always on the bottom.
November 13th, 2014 at 1:38 am
My wife has deployed the “I’m not a paid cashier here” bit since these started.
As far as I’m concerned, self checkout is simply the real express lane; I use them for quick egress with a small number of items. There’s a secondary speed benefit; the demographic most likely to avoid them is also the one most likely to grind regular checkout lines to a halt by paying with a check. I don’t even know if that’s possible with the machines.
November 13th, 2014 at 8:48 am
I wonder when the Feds will start charging the computer for FICA taxes..
November 13th, 2014 at 8:58 am
Since no one has spoken up for the segment of the population for whom that weekly face-to-face with the checkout clerk is their most significant human interaction, I’ll be that guy. I’m fun at the bank too.
Paying with a check: one way of Sticking It to The Man. I have a truly daunting lawn, and you’re in range, boy.
November 13th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
I’ve found the express lane with cashier to be quicker than self-check out… 🙂
November 13th, 2014 at 3:44 pm
I shop the same Publix store all the time. They are friendly, helpful, decient job of bagging and will take the bags to your car if you wish. They don’t have a self checkout lane in my store and I am good with that.
November 13th, 2014 at 4:24 pm
Self check out is OK if you gotta make a quick stop for a couple of things.
November 13th, 2014 at 5:40 pm
Every time I’ve tried the self-checkout, something goes wrong. I do most of my shopping online, and spend all day on a computer at work, but the self-checkouts I’ve tried just don’t seem reliable.
November 13th, 2014 at 5:52 pm
I’m with nk on this one. They may not be paying me to be a cashier, but I’m more than making back the piddling investment of my time and labor by being able to pack the bags according to my convenience – items that go in the same cabinet go into the same bag, my bread doesn’t get crushed by the canned goods, and I can double bag the stuff I think is too heavy for the micron-thin bags to handle without breaking. It makes for a much improved experience when I get home and have to unload everything.
Of course, I’m also in agreement with Tam – it’s one less person I have to
put upinteract with.November 13th, 2014 at 6:11 pm
Here in my little corner of my beloved Clownifornia, we’ve been living with the plastic bag ban for about a year now. I’ve taken an inordinate amount of pleasure in bringing my own plastic bags in lieu of those hippie e-coli reuseable bags at the local Trader Joes. You can almost see the steam coming out from under the dreadlocks when I whip ’em out.
It’s either that or patchouli fumes, but I just smile and cheerfully carry on. 🙂
November 13th, 2014 at 6:32 pm
I was a cashier once, in a shop far far away. So scanning at once of those is a no brainer, and I can do it usually faster than the clerk. If only their payment systems were faster. Nothing annoys me more than a bunch of people who can barely operate a doorknob approaching these. Go to the self checkout island at walmart some time and see what I mean.
“Must have IQ this tall to ride” should be posted at the entrance.
November 13th, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Advantage: I will (probably) not put bread in the bag first – not that in almost 70 years I have had that happen.
.
Disadvantage: the person next in line will ALWAYS start sending stuff through into the bagging before I have even taken the three steps to the bagging area.
.
Years ago, before banning [plastic] bags was a thing, one store I used saved a bit of money by having customers do their bagging, preferably with their own bags. But they did it well: the “bagging area” actually did not accumulate items but instead fed them into an empty cart (their carts were countertop level, with a drop-gate like a pickup tailgate). As you moved away with cart, the cart you had used while shopping moved to become the receptacle for the next customer.
November 17th, 2014 at 9:28 pm
I’m not, by default, hostile to self-checkout. Still, I tend to avoid it most of the time.
Of the stores I go to, there are really only two chains tend to offer self-checkout, those being Wegman’s and Home Depot. The systems are probably both equally frustrating to use in terms of non-linear processing (more specifically their inability to do it), but the local Home Depot always seems to have an attentive, personable, and reasonably competent employee staffing the self-checkout stations, my average purchase is generally limited to a very small number of items, and using the nearest full-service checkout involves more waiting, and significantly more walking. With Wegman’s (a grocery chain) I find the system so frustrating that I’ve taken to only using it when I have a very small number of items (ideally only one), and/or when using a full-service checkout would involve a significantly longer wait; I value my time, but I’m usually willing to sacrifice some small amount of it to avoid frustration.
As far as Walmart goes, I can’t remember ever seeing one with self-checkout, and I’ve been to multiple Walmart stores, including locations in at least ten states. Universally, they tend to have far too few cashiers in place, typically three, to handle a typical customer load of 20-30 people continually lined up. I don’t typically buy much at Walmart, so I typically try to just check out in sporting goods, since I always tend to end up there to see if they have any ammo for reasonable prices.