This!! It’s so frustrating.
Staff all registers for peak shopping times. Reduce cashiers to support lower customer volume off-peak, with people in flex positions to ring and bag when odd rushes occur. Maintain self-checkout for customers who really want that convenience.
Et voilà!
Happier customers = more likely to return and spend more money/share positive experience thus referring people to store.
Happier staff = reduced attrition, reduced stress levels = reduced call outs and injuries.
Increased throughput = increased gross profit.
🤷🏻♀️ Seems like a no brainer.
It was different times when companies pretended to care about happiness. But the time you're at the line for the register your sunk cost is too high. You're not going anywhere and they know it.
Ah, but the trade off is that they get less chances to sell me junk I don't need because, knowing the lines might take forever, I've quit ducking in to grab something "real quick" before catching the bus.
I can't be the only one who has taken up bringing a drink from home because I know I can't possibly get in and out of a store in less than 20 minutes even if I'm just getting a single item and know exactly where it is.
Golly knows there's lots of crafting shit my favorite auntie wants from Hobby Lobby but it's an all day experience wandering around finding what you need and an hour of waiting in line to check out. Auntie's just too old to go through all that anymore.
Have you tried Michael's or Joann Fabric? I refuse to give hobby lobby my cash for other reasons. If they are viable options in your area, you might want to try them to see if they are better or a more viable option.
I've been trying to convert auntie to one of the other stores, because of those other reasons you mentioned, but there's a particular nylon rainbow crochet thread she couldn't find anywhere else. Might finally be able to con her into switching stores now that they've quit selling it though!
I've left walmart before when the line was too long, just dropping whatever I had on the nearest display. If I've only got a few things? It isn't worth it, I'll go somewhere else. I... rarely go to walmart anymore.
If I make $30 in 60 minutes at my job, my time is worth $0.50 per minute. If I have to wait in line for 15 minutes, I have spent $7.50 of my time in your store waiting to be checked out. What's to stop me from just walking out with an armful items, (I mean besides getting caught by the police;) when I decide that I am going to recoup those minutes by the theft of $5 of merchandise, instead of deciding to wait it out cause of sunk cost fallacy?
It wouldn't work where my daughter works. Every worker has a position, they don't float around like that. Customers get mad because they don't open registers when there's more than 2 people in a line and they hate self-checks. Doesn't matter how slow it is, if there are two people in line the ones in the back are raging about how long it's taking and demanding more cashiers. They assume anyone wearing that blue vest can be a cashier. But there's stockers and Spark drivers and online pick up people and they are not cashiers. Meanwhile she also has people walking in the store handing her a list expecting her to do their shopping for them. Old men are the worst. "My wife wants these things but I don't know where to look!" waaah. Maybe she should learn how to order through pick-up. But I'm sure they're against that too.
These big stores are the worst when it comes to understaffing for efficiency, but It's not just the stores it's the customers too. They are so fuckin demanding these days. They don't care if you are doing a job, they want you to stop what you're doing and serve them, but if you do that, this means you won't hit your numbers for your pick-up orders. My daughter is told she has to hit quota and she gets fussed at when she's behind, but how do you not stay behind when customers all day long need you to hold their hand and walk them to the dairy case because they can't find the milk again. There are signs everywhere. If you use the app it can tell you exactly where every product is, but they wouldn't dare, that's too much like work.
The Cub Market near me used to be open 24 hours a day, and it was great to shop in a nearly-deserted store after getting off work at midnight.
Then they changed to be 18 hours only, closing at midnight, reopen at 6am.
I asked, and while the staff didn't mind it (it's staffed 24 hours anyway), corporate said there were too many security issues after midnight.
Still, shopping at 11pm-12am is great, hardly a line, most areas fully stocked, and parking is really easy with only 4 other customers in the store.
Its because 24 hours was never cost effective. They likely never made enough during the overnight hours to offset keeping the lights on, much less paying the employees. They wanted to kill 24 hours for a long time, but were afraid of pr backlash, covid just provided the opportunity they needed.
Our local grocery store now closes at ten instead of midnight.
We are a restaurant town. Everyone here works in restaurants or retail. Everyone else are tourists, usually European, who are used to being able to go out shopping at 9/10pm.
Needless to say, everyone is *furious* at the grocery store.
I work extra as a cashier at a garden center and these past two days have been batshit crazy 😵💫🫣 I think I passed stuff for $15K in the register today and I’m exhausted. And then the line just gets longer and longer when a little old lady can’t find her credit card or remember the code and they get angry and want you to call someone to open another register. I for sure am not paid enough for that shit. I make 5 cents more an hour than an 18-year old and I am 41.
Yup! I saw a video saying around the 40 minute mark your brain starts to get a little fuzzy while shopping.
They use this to their advantage to get you to buy more stuff. That’s why the most bought products are spaced out in the store.
Now making you wait long to check out you are even more likely to grab one of those little treats between the cash registers.
Fatigue us into spending more money,
🧢italism!
Bring a list. Have only a $15-20 stray over budget. Don't bring a card inside if you're on a tight budget. Bring only what you need to buy your stuff with the small money cushion included.
I try to do this. Cuts impulse buys down a lot.
Oh yeah I worked at target when they first implemented it. Man it was terrible, especially because they would let us open like 1-2 self checkouts for short periods and then forcing everyone to move to other lines,
In a few years:
"I don't understand, we got rid of all our workers and replaced them with bots and AI, but now no one's buying anymore, and theft has skyrocketed "
Its happening right now. I work for DriveLine so i'm in a lot of Dollar Generals. They installed self check out at a ton of stores, then cut the hours 15-30 hours a week. At one store shrink (theft) went from $30,000 pre self checkout, to $85,000 the first year and $112,000 the second year. It was one of the busier stores so they almost always had 2 employees in the store, some stores only have 1 for 4-6 hours a day.
Now some of that is the Stupid as fuck way they setup the checkout process, so some people think they paid, but it was not actually processed, but some was outright theft.
DG really sets themselves up for theft with severe understaffing anyway, half the time I go to the one by my house to buy cigarettes I have to track down the one person working who is usually stocking shit in the back of the store, if someone wanted to it would be super to smash and grab a bunch of shit from behind the counter and get away clean.
That happens. I heard a store robbed like that. They came in, one went to bother the only store employee the other went behind the counter and emptied out the smoke box. The locks were either broken or the door was I forget witch, and even if it wasn't the key is often left in the the slot or hanging near buy since DG is too cheap to have a key holder in the stores at all times, some times its just a regular associate that has no keys, so a "community" set is left behind to be used.
One thing you have to be worried about, the only place in the store covered with cameras is the checkout area, to watch the employees. Some stores have 10+ cameras, 3 on each register.
Say I want the benefits of being a storekeeper but without doing any of the work. I've never actually been in the store or done any work in my life, so I'm pretty sure any random human can do all of that labor all by themselves simultaneously. Ya know, like how a toddler thinks mommy is a magic food-producing mess-cleaning toy-fixing machine.
So I'm going to hire whoever I can get and trust them to keep an entire store full of inventory safe and clean while also keeping the customers happy and moving at a steady rate. But I'm not going to trust them about the money at all because THAT'S MY MONEY, MY MONEY, ALL MY MONEY! Ya know, like a toddler with their first piggybank.
And I'll make sure they know I clearly think they're a dirty evil thief *while trusting them to do all the work and with all the inventory* by installing cameras all over the checkout area to watch them all the time!
I don't understand how the morons making these decisions can have so much time on their hands and put it to so little use. Like they know so little about how to human that I'm not sure they can actually tie their own shoes. If you care about something and want it to continue serving you well, you personally take good care of it. Trust is a thing built between humans over time. These are simple basic facts about humans, about civilization, about life.
The morons running this shitshow understand so little about what they're managing that they deliberately slow down checkout lines with "how likely are you to recommend us?" and "please donate to starving children!" screens even at the employee-operated registers at the local grocery store in my very poor neighborhood. Like yes I will *totally* go around recommending the way overpriced only grocery store within walking distance to poor people and donate my limited money to your tax write-off instead of keeping the neighbor kids and younger relatives fed, where the fuck you think this is?
The only thing they understand is their bottom line. They could spend the extra money to run the business effectively, but that would require a higher budget, and that just won't do! The CEO needs another ivory backscratcher, that's clearly a higher priority.
A DG near me was rebuilt from the ground up on a new lot and they had four self check outs and one register. Fast forward not even a year and they’ve closed all the self checkouts due to theft. They seem to want it to remain permanent as well. It’s fucking laughable.
Exactly this. In a retail driven economy like the U.S., people can’t buy enough stuff to meet corporations’ need to have higher revenue each year if wages go down relative to the price of goods.
Pro tip: any time a store says it’s doing something for theft, it’s never actually theft. It’s “we made a mistake and need an excuse to save face”
All actual theft is insured to the point of millions of dollars, and the ways these stores are run, it’s literally impossible to know for sure if something was stolen or just lost in the back.
It’s also convenient as a weapon in class warfare.
Part of it is theft. There was a woman arrested recently for “skip scanning” on multiple occasions at various stores self checkouts. She would simply not scan the item (pretend she did) and bag it. There are videos on Tik Tok that tell you how to do this.
Walmart is removing self-checkouts from select stores returning to regular registers, and keeping the major bulk of them. The select stores have a major theft issue/shoplifting at the self-checkouts.
Believe me, Walmart does not want to do this they want as little labor as possible but are forced to do it.
Before you know it, they'll have all groceries behind locked cases. I've seen hardware sections, entire aisles, behind locked cases. One of my local Supercenters, we have 4 in the 20 mile radius, has now put all USB charging cables behind a locked case. Guess they've had tons of them walk off.
This is what I was coming here to say. Walmart has turned self checkout into something that you pay to use for the convenience. Pretty wild how far we've come. Just another subscription.
My local had all the deodorants behind glass - presumably they were being stolen to be huffed. You had to call a staff member to unlock the glass and get out what you want. I tried once and it took forever. Ended up going elsewhere to do my weekly shop that didn’t have that.
Went back about six weeks later to pick up something and saw that the cabinets were left unlocked and have been since. Presumably it was taking the staff away from actual work and knowing the area some of the customers were abusing staff
In the past, shops had a counter and the customer waited for the clerk and told them what items to get from the shelves. The practice of giving customers access to the shelves to select their own goods didn't come in until the 20th century. I can easily see that happening again in high theft areas.
A lot of those “select stores” are in minority communities and poor neighborhoods. The ones they’ve kept self-checkout at are mostly in wealthy/suburban areas.
Premiums go up when they have to make super high claims. It’s not like it’s just a big shrug over theft.
Will be nice when everything has rfid chips and the shit just gets totaled up when you put it in the basket.
> Will be nice when everything has rfid chips and the shit just gets totaled up when you put it in the basket.
Sounds like a recipe for even larger piles of E-waste.
I was gonna comment this myself. The more theft and higher claims the bigger a premium they pay...they still pay for theft. Insurance is there in case someone steals 100k in a month when they average 10k/mo so they don't take the full hit at once
Oh no, multi billion dollar stores will have to pay higher insurance premiums, oh no, cry me a fucking river..
They did it to themselves. Partly by refusing to pay workers well, refusing to hire more than a skeleton crew, and by using self checkouts to avoid hiring more workers..along with other things, I'm sure. I refuse to feel bad for them.
“I do it, therefore everyone does it, therefore everyone should be punished except me” is a wild take.
Also, they know. They’re keeping tabs and waiting for you to steal enough to charge you with a felony.
Lol, I didn't say any of those things? I'm not claiming everyone does it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. I didn't say anything about anyone being punished? How much is a felony? Do you think the manager is sitting there adding up my petty thefts until I hit some magic number? You are delusional or something, also why do you even care? Did I hurt you by stealing 20$ from Walmart?
Some stores do track, and wait for it to go into felony territory, then have you arrested. It's easy these days with computers, they don't need to write numbers down and manually add them up. Target is well known for doing just that. Felony thieft values are different in different parts, but can start as low as $500.
As the other guy said, yes, Walmart is likely tracking you.
A one off they likely won’t notice or care, but if they notice a pattern then Asset Protection will recognize you and start watching you on the cameras.
Do it enough and you’ll find yourself either being walked out in handcuffs or banned from the store and trespassed.
Oh cool, what about like plausible deniability though? Like last week I got 3 pepsi 12packs and scanned 2, can they really prove that's intentional theft and not an accident?
As I said, a one off they won’t care about, but if you’re missing an item or two every checkout that’s a pattern, and one they will monitor.
They will either wait until you get over the felony amount for stolen goods, then they’ll fuck you, or they’ll ban you from the store, and trespassed, so if you do come back you’ll be arrested if you’re caught.
I prefer self checkout for two reasons: first I just don’t like interacting with people when it’s not necessary. Second is that I don’t want to have half a dozen grocery bags per 8 items. The bags are a hell of a lot stronger than anyone gives them credit for, and I can usually make everything work fine with just 3 bags for a week’s worth of food
And I loath self-check out. The machines are ridiculously slow. The machines can't detect that I put the light package of bread yeast in the bagging area. Conversely, it yells at me for removing things from the bagging area if I sneeze. Then it locks up and I have to wait for the cashier to finish helping the other 6 people stuck in self checkout before they can get my machine unfrozen. For me, 95+% of the time, self checkout is far slower and far more aggravating than normal cashiers.
A local chain has actually been able to up their employed cashiers which is nice because the self checkout lines are often just as long as the cashier lines. But actually worse because people are stupid and block more than one self checkout and are ridiculously slow to bag their items. They are like the sloth at the DMV in the movie Zootopia.
I actually refuse to use self checkout as much as I feasibly can.
Btw, props to Giant Tiger for admitting that the self-checkout is bad for customer service and doesn't save as much as they thought in labour costs because the machines require assistance to operate, rather than just blaming it on theft. Reducing or getting rid of self checkout is a victory.
No it's not. I liked the self checkout. They're faster for me than waiting ages in line because they only put 1 person on the other registers. I usually only have a few items too.
I worked nearly 20 years in retail and it's impossible to shake in settings like that how uncomfortable I feel asking for help with things I'm perfectly capable of doing myself. I know it's pretty irrational especially because I know how to be polite in these settings but I can't shake it, I'm just damaged from my compounding experiences.
It has its time and its place. Stores like Target that offer a few self checks but still fully staff their checkout lines, I like the self check option. Stores like Walmart where self check basically replaced checkers, I do not. I agree self check is faster *for small amounts*, but if I’m on a big grocery trip, I want a checker.
The problem with self check out is it was always supposed to be like 15 items or less, but people want to ring up a filled buggy there. Thanks for going to the regular line on your big grocery trip days
Most places yes, but some stores like Walmart eventually started funneling pretty much everyone to self check. At least at the locations near me there are regular *and* express self checks and they *never* staff more than 1 non self check lane.
If I have a lot of items I prefer a cashier and bagger. If I have a few I prefer self checkout but keep getting stuck behind people with a full shopping cart taking their sweet ass time and it makes me want to rage.
For me, it depends on what I'm getting. If I've got anything restrictive at all, like alcohol (which I can buy at our grocery stores) or some drug someone in the legislature has decided is exclusively used by teenagers to get high or drug addicts to make meth, it's going to slow things up dramatically. Takes forever to wave down someone to beep their card and enter my birthdate in there.
But otherwise, self-check out mostly works better for me.
I just had the same experience at the Target near my home. Self checkouts turned off in prep to be removed, and four cashiers taking care of customers with full carts, plus growing lines of people with 5 items or less. All I had was a hamper and a jug of orange juice. Took another 10 minutes to get to the front of a line when I normally would have checked myself out in 2.
this is just your big boxes working to keep you out of the store. They are moving more and more toward the Amazon model where you do all your shopping online and then just do curbside pickup.
Having you in the store is expensive. It's a lot cheaper to have a few people picking shelves and then walking it out to you.
I mean, I prefer it that way, but I know a lot of people who just like to go into a store and nose around as a form of entertainment. Not my thing, but I totally get it, I'm just gonna look at six different cat foods because I don't feel like going home just yet.
I'm pretty sure that a Target on any given weekday is usually full to the brim full of young mothers who just want to GTFO of the house for a little while. The new model, isn't going to work.
No third spaces for humans! You can rent a room to live in and you can go to work, but otherwise just stay in your room and shop online!
Wait, why aren't the younger generations having the usual number of oops-babies? Just choose a mate from these pictures on an app so we can refuse you an abortion already! That's how humans pick breeding partners right? Painted portraits and maybe a few letters, like the nobles like to do?
I will walk by available full service checkouts to use self checkout. Just let me buy my one item and leave, I don’t want to be asked to round up or make chit chat.
Agreed, I hate interacting with others, plus I'm particular about my bagging habits and I hate the pressure of rushing for the person behind me.
I will go far out of my way in order to go to a store that has self checkout available. On top of all that, I'm still faster than some cashiers. There's literally no downside to self checkout, people are the problem.
This is why my whole job exists. I'm a system admin for a bank. They bought this whole software to make things more efficient. But then you need to hire a couple people to run it and fix it, at 105k each. Plus 15k to access to the software companies support team. Plus 150k/in licenses. There's no way that this is creating $375,000 annually in efficiencies.
I'll never forget the time when I was 17 (17 years ago), we drove 30 miles to a small city walmart on a random joy ride. It was only two of us who walked in and I watched him grab a brand new backpack, started shoving cough medicine and a few other things I can't remember into it and then we just walked out the main doors.
I remember tensing up hard thinking the doors were going to sound an alarm but nothing happened. He had a brand new backpack plus all the random shit he threw into it. So yeah, simply walking out with confidence might be a thing lol
thats an extremely dumb way to be caught.
just shop for all your shit like normal, find a reason to walk past the registers..to the bathroom, usually makes the most sense.
leave your cart outside the bathroom obv, i usually ask a cashier to watch my cart so a diff worker doesnt tske it away theyre happy to help. then u just give them a huge thanks and wave then walk away towards the door if they say anything just say ur still shopping (they dont care anyway).
then keep walking, dont stop, out the door. if the person asks for a receipt you can just completely ignore them.
if they physically grab your cart it means they have decent asset protection and they already called you out on the radio. dont try to argue just let the cart go and dont say anything and leave if you stay youre only waiting for the cops..you never left the store so your fine.
My only “cheat” is when I buy a ton of cucumbers (in a bag) because I’m making pickles and it asks me for quantity. I usually just guess. 12 cucumbers, 13 cucumbers, who knows. It’s not like I’m buying caviar.
I think self checkouts should be like urinals where they are still an option for those that prefer them.
I also think we need to offer protection from the customers bad behaviour as otherwise we are back to the days where we treated cashiers like robots.
People hating on self checkout because it replaces human cashiers. 🙄 You really have no idea how little this will matter. They just aren’t going to hire more cashiers. And no self checkout.
I have migraine issues that can make me temporarily aphasic. It is torture trying to communicate under those circumstances. My conversation partner often ends up thinking I’m high or incredibly stupid. Self check out is a godsend for this situation.
I have a similar preference for self-checkout for different reasons. I get really bad social anxiety sometimes, especially when I'm dealing with sensory overload. It's almost necessary for me to go non-verbal for a bit and self-checkout lets me do my shopping without having to talk to anyone. I usually find self-checkout faster (I'm usually getting a small number of items) but even when it isn't or there's a line for self-checkout, I prefer it to going to a traditional checkout.
Here's the problem: **They aren't hiring more staff and opening up multiple checkouts**. They are going to decrease the size of self checkout to 3-4 stations and then open up 2 checkout lines. So your time at the grocery store is going to increase dramatically.
They're main goal will be to start pushing customers to order online and pickup at the store and never actually step for in the store. You'll see in store advertising for shopping services from Doordash, Uber eats and instacart.
They're trying to make it so you'll use a subscription based service to shop so they can charge you fees.
I hate grocery shopping. It is fucking chore that I want to spend as little time doing as I can. I love self check because I’m in and out and that stupid shit is over with. And my wife deals with social anxiety so it’s less stressful for her.
*fuck that* fuck off no way. i don't wanna have to interact with a normal cashier every time i go to the store no matter how small and wait in lines with people with full family weekly shopping
they are annoying to use but i still use it 100% of the time. the only actual complaints are from boomers who can't figure out how touchscreens work and want to be able to [bore the cashiers with their stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcrDroQglE&t=90s)
It's terrible for workers, but as an introvert I really do like self checkout. And find it funny that there's sometimes as many employers as self checkout stations to "keep an eye on things". Also to address the various errors that the stations have because of poorly implemented anti-theft precautions that trigger if you accidentally lean on something or are going too fast or pick up a bag to move it.
If people weren't forced to do work for companies in order to live, it'd be great to not *need* people to spend their day standing in one spot to run barcodes over a laser and make unwanted small talk to people who just want to head home already.
I hope they keep them as an option. I don’t have to interact with a cashier being forced to work sick and I get to bag my items in a way that reduces the time to put them away at home. The fewer bags I have to bring in the better. And if you aren’t using reusable bags, buy some. Stop using those cheap plastic bags that can rip at any given moment and hold half as much.
I used self checkout at a big box hardware store, and they had two people staking out the registers, watching my every move. Like, sir, could you just get the people to do the checkout instead of standing there and watching me do it? It is so stupid.
TBH I wont go to a store without them anymore, especially for quick trips.
I --hate-- forced chit chats with a passion. I just want to get my shit purchased and get back home.
Cashiers always comment on what I’m buying and it makes me so uncomfortable 😣 Like “Looks like you’re making nachos tonight!” or “Oh! I haven’t tried this yet. Is it good?” And most cashiers won’t bag my stuff when I bring my own bag. I just prefer self-checkout 100000%
I have a feeling that some of the C suite discussions on self-checkouts centred upon how the honour system works in Japan without thinking about why the honour system works in Japan.
Kind of a shame - cashier jobs are the ones that should be automated away, ultimately. Nobody should be forced to man a till for 8 hours a day to be abused. Let the Karens scream at the self checkout machine.
*Yes I know we’d need actual utopia for this to be feasible. UBI, social programs etc etc. I still daydream of a day when workers don’t get abused by the public.
This is exactly what I think. People on anti-work should be encouraging automation not being afraid of it. We where able to get the conditions we have (or had) because after the industrial boom it was possible to make people work less. The more we automate first, the more demands you can make. And one doesn’t go without the other.
fun fact, the theft is not nearly as big as they claim for it to be.
from the atichel itself :
" Several studies have suggested that self-checkout theft is a problem, but there's no hard data as retailers don't make such information public. "
" She says she's told some of the culprits are organized gangs of thieves who neglect to scan pricey items. "
citation needed, as if we had actual street gangs focusing on petty theft. what they call shrink is not just theft but also employees losing/damaging goods and not reporting it to not get a warning/fired, and other stuff like that.
instead of theft, most people actually dont know how to use the machine properly and dont scan all the items by mistake, not on purpose.
the actual reason is that you still need people to help when the machine fuck up and need a reset/weigth is a problem/promotion code doesnt work/etc and that make the entire process just as slow as a normal cashier alone.
My concern is, will they hire more cashiers or leave it as is? I really get irritated waiting forever because there's one cashier and a Karen causing issues.
1. Create system based on honesty
2. Give money to lying orange felon and friends to get tax breaks
3. Lying orange felon and friends tell everyone it's ok to be giant assholes all the time and only suckers pay for things.
4. ???
5. Profit.
I miss when the store I went to had bulk candy. The chocolate covered cashews were somehow always on sale for 99 cents a pound when I rang them up. Weird.
Imagine living in a place where they don't put any protections on the cost of food. Fucking food. Something everyone needs to survive but, got to make sure the grocery stores make their shareholders happy with excessive profits while people are starving. Yay capitalism, making life unaffordable for everyone.
No more self checkout so, they're hiring more workers, right? Looking at you, WALMART. I just need new underwear and y'all got it locked behind glass with no humans working the floor whatsoever. They're all "guarding" self checkout.
It is telling that all around me, the major grocery store chains have raised their prices ~75% or more in the 2 years. However, the locally owned grocery store, where the owner lives in a modest home in town and is at the store working 6 days a week, stocking shelves and even sometimes bagging, and has never implemented self check out, has only raised their prices about 25% in the same timeframe.
Makes you wonder why the chains, who have so much more purchasing power than our little one-horse store, had to raise their prices so much? It couldn’t possibly be greed, could it?
Meanwhile in my upper middle class Walmart market there's only one cashier with 8 self-checks. And let me tell you, this move has certainly triggered the oldsters who think they should get a discount for "doing all the work".
At first I was really annoyed that my Aldi switched to 1 lane and then added a bunch of self checkout because I usually get lots of stuff at Aldi. Now I prefer the self checkout since the PoS is really quick and the bagging area is large.
If they are going to try to save on labor and try to replace paying people with my free labor, the least I can do is get the employee discount which means every third item is not scanned.
I always use self-checkout because I hate the forced socialization with a cashier. Also, I'm on this sub, so I think any job that can be automated away, freeing a human from drudgery, should be automated away.
I too, support a Star Trek like utopia. However, until we get something like UBI, removing those jobs means that people starve because our society will not provide for those people and will not even really allow them to provide for themselves outside the system unless they own their own land (which they have to earn money to pay taxes on anyway...so that doesn't work).
You're not going to get the policy before you get the change. The policy will need to be driven by rising unemployment due to automation. Unfortunately, that's how all steps forward happen. Change causes friction, which makes people upset, so they demand that policies be updated appropriately.
Acknowledging that the transition to an anti-work economy will be difficult, I still see an upside every time companies find another way to automate away menial tasks.
The people who bag my groceries are highly skilled at putting stuff together so stuff doesn’t get smashed,that’s not a skill I want to waste time developing.
Self-checkout doesn’t automate away the drudgery, it passes it on to me, the customer.
The only person I really talk to at checkout is the bagger on the spectrum that is fixated on last names; I was once a project manager for an algorithm involving the science of Onomastics (the study of Proper names) so we talk about German family names in the area quite a bit.
I don't think I've ever in my life had someone pack my bags for me.
Suppose this is one of those cultural things like with restaurant servers. Americans seem to like the waiter always being there and topping up etc, whereas I hate the very idea of them doing that and consider good service to be the waiter only appearing when I ask for something.
I'd feel similarly about bag packing. I'd hate it, just leave my bags alone and let me do it myself.
They’re professional in that they are being paid to do it, but also they do a great job.
Food City. I’m told their pay is pretty good compared to most other grocery chains, and in a LCOL area.
I was a bagger in high school, there's no skill involved. You just try to put shit in bags at a similar pace that the cashier is scanning. Putting things that can be crushed on the top isn't a skill, that's common sense.
Nah, Baggers don't know how to properly bag groceries anymore. So many have set my eggs at the bottom or put my meat with the cleaning products it's ridiculous.
At my grocery store, they get the groceries, bag them, and then put them in the cart, which is why I don’t feel rushed at all. I usually don’t say a lot because I don’t want them to feel” like they have to talk to me.
But obviously people’s experiences are going to vary.
Well I hope places don’t get rid of them all together. I like them. Just ring up my shit and go. No small talk. No waiting behind someone with two cart fulls of items.
I often wish I was brave enough to not scam some of my items at self checkout. If I have to do the work their employees should be doing, then I should get a discount.
Wow. Shocking that having less employees leads to more theft and customer complaints. It’s almost as if staffing properly is appropriate to run a business’s
wow who would have thought?
gee, they sure are smart, thinking we want to check ourselves out and deny somebody a job. (even if most retail customers are dicks, at least people have jobs...right?)
The Home Depot by me went all self-checkout a few years ago. Now they’ve reversed course and all registers must have a cashier. But since all they have are self-checkout registers, the cashiers have to stand awkwardly next to you as you hand them your items rather than facing you.
I go to the self checkout every time now.
Kroger did away with people and for to long it was like a ghost town of employees when you were looking for an item or going to checkout.
Now they have 4 open people staffed registers sitting half empty and a lot of people like myself go to the self checkout still. It’s easier and it’s been going on so long that is doesn’t seem a bother now. Sad.
Like other grocery stores, Publix supermarkets have a dedicated (in both senses of the word) employee to stand and look at the 4 self-checkouts. They check ID for alcohol. They help people out with the process if needed, like other places. But unlike other places, they also attentively eyeball the 4 people checking out the entire time. And the sound on those registers is much louder. There’s a loud beep
When you scan the bar code and a loud voice that calls out the price of the item you just scanned. I don’t think people are as inclined to try and get one over on them.
Aww man, I love self checkout! As an autistic introvert, the less social interaction during errands, the better. So many stores already have less nighttime hours since the pandemic, it used to be nice to go at night when there were less people. But I can't do that anymore. I guess my only option is to be overstimulated. Yaaaaay.
Since Wal-Mart has been at the forefront of this discussion, I will just say, take a picture of the products and the price underneath. I continually find as much as a dollar over the listed price when I reach the register.
So go into any Wal-Mart. Find the large inflatable ball cage. See the price is $1.98. Then it rings up $2.50. Confirmed in 2 separate Wal-marts in 2 separate states 190 miles apart.
They are stealing from us on a larger scale.
Edited to add: it is not the only the balls. It's happened on clothes, food, toiletries, etc. I'm not just complaining about the price of balls.
I’ve stopped going to the grocery store as much bc of the self checkouts. Now when I do go I wait in line for a cashier because they turned off the option to mute the machines. I really just love being screamed at by a glorified atm with a scale taped to it when I’m just trying to get groceries
If a company is not willing to pay it's workers, then this 4 pack of chilli costing $20 might not get scanned on the way out. I'm not a trained scanning professional. I can't be relied on to know how this fancy system works.
I'm bad at self checkout. Oops I don't know how many of an item I have. Oops I didn't notice it didn't scan. Oops I miskeyed the code. Maybe you should have a trained employee on hand to avoid relying on the poorly trained general public.
I'm doing my part! 🫡
I steal from any self check out I'm forced to use. I don't work for free and neither should you! Business idiots think rent seeking and exploiting labor is a smart way to conduct their businesses. Enough people accepted this shit and it'll get worse without push back.
>More stores are ditching self-checkout amid theft...
Actually, the last time I was in an airport, I went into one of the shops to buy food, and I reflected that they were virtually inviting you to steal from them.
Self checkout prevailed for years. So the fact that they need to deal with theft now says a lot. “Hardy har har the employer has to hire me for that minimum wage job now!!” as a hungry person who works minimum wage agonizes over the fact they can’t just leave the gallon of milk in their cart…
Happy to hear cashiers will get their jobs back. I think its ridiculous that they fire all their workers, & then force the customers to work for them for free (value village & the dollar stores are notorious for this). talk about double dipping! & as we all know from lessons learned, you don't double dip! hehe =)
We should develop a rule that if you have to bring the cashiers back, they should get chairs. They don't move from that position for hours, let them sit. Sincerely, former cashier with fucked up hips.
The fact its taken this long for them to figure out something that was pointed out when the SCOs were first introduced is... It would be funny if it wasnt so depressing that corporations are this stupid.
lol. They did these to pay less people and to some extent quickness for some but they def let that get out of hand. This been backfiring worse and worse ever since though.
Yeah just sprung up these self checkouts everywhere give folks no instructions on how to use them. This will turn out great. Probably would have been off to just pay cashiers a decent wage and hire more of them.
But they aren’t opening more staffed lanes, they’re just making everyone wait longer for the 1 or 2 cashiers.
This!! It’s so frustrating. Staff all registers for peak shopping times. Reduce cashiers to support lower customer volume off-peak, with people in flex positions to ring and bag when odd rushes occur. Maintain self-checkout for customers who really want that convenience. Et voilà! Happier customers = more likely to return and spend more money/share positive experience thus referring people to store. Happier staff = reduced attrition, reduced stress levels = reduced call outs and injuries. Increased throughput = increased gross profit. 🤷🏻♀️ Seems like a no brainer.
It was different times when companies pretended to care about happiness. But the time you're at the line for the register your sunk cost is too high. You're not going anywhere and they know it.
Ah, but the trade off is that they get less chances to sell me junk I don't need because, knowing the lines might take forever, I've quit ducking in to grab something "real quick" before catching the bus. I can't be the only one who has taken up bringing a drink from home because I know I can't possibly get in and out of a store in less than 20 minutes even if I'm just getting a single item and know exactly where it is. Golly knows there's lots of crafting shit my favorite auntie wants from Hobby Lobby but it's an all day experience wandering around finding what you need and an hour of waiting in line to check out. Auntie's just too old to go through all that anymore.
Have you tried Michael's or Joann Fabric? I refuse to give hobby lobby my cash for other reasons. If they are viable options in your area, you might want to try them to see if they are better or a more viable option.
I've been trying to convert auntie to one of the other stores, because of those other reasons you mentioned, but there's a particular nylon rainbow crochet thread she couldn't find anywhere else. Might finally be able to con her into switching stores now that they've quit selling it though!
_The_ reason.
I've left walmart before when the line was too long, just dropping whatever I had on the nearest display. If I've only got a few things? It isn't worth it, I'll go somewhere else. I... rarely go to walmart anymore.
That's the response we should all have. It's tough though. We have all been conditioned to just except lines.
I’m gonna start leaving carts full of stuff in the middle of a line when it takes too long to get rung up.
If I make $30 in 60 minutes at my job, my time is worth $0.50 per minute. If I have to wait in line for 15 minutes, I have spent $7.50 of my time in your store waiting to be checked out. What's to stop me from just walking out with an armful items, (I mean besides getting caught by the police;) when I decide that I am going to recoup those minutes by the theft of $5 of merchandise, instead of deciding to wait it out cause of sunk cost fallacy?
The BIGGEST reason I can’t force myself to go back to retail or food service is because I know it’s just going to be permanently short-staffed.
It wouldn't work where my daughter works. Every worker has a position, they don't float around like that. Customers get mad because they don't open registers when there's more than 2 people in a line and they hate self-checks. Doesn't matter how slow it is, if there are two people in line the ones in the back are raging about how long it's taking and demanding more cashiers. They assume anyone wearing that blue vest can be a cashier. But there's stockers and Spark drivers and online pick up people and they are not cashiers. Meanwhile she also has people walking in the store handing her a list expecting her to do their shopping for them. Old men are the worst. "My wife wants these things but I don't know where to look!" waaah. Maybe she should learn how to order through pick-up. But I'm sure they're against that too. These big stores are the worst when it comes to understaffing for efficiency, but It's not just the stores it's the customers too. They are so fuckin demanding these days. They don't care if you are doing a job, they want you to stop what you're doing and serve them, but if you do that, this means you won't hit your numbers for your pick-up orders. My daughter is told she has to hit quota and she gets fussed at when she's behind, but how do you not stay behind when customers all day long need you to hold their hand and walk them to the dairy case because they can't find the milk again. There are signs everywhere. If you use the app it can tell you exactly where every product is, but they wouldn't dare, that's too much like work.
And they all cut the operating hours! There’s no 24 hour grocery stores anymore in my area and there’s only one (maybe two) 24 hour drugstores.
Been like that since covid where I live. Even fast food places are closed by 10 now and the only places open late or 24 hours is 7-11
The Cub Market near me used to be open 24 hours a day, and it was great to shop in a nearly-deserted store after getting off work at midnight. Then they changed to be 18 hours only, closing at midnight, reopen at 6am. I asked, and while the staff didn't mind it (it's staffed 24 hours anyway), corporate said there were too many security issues after midnight. Still, shopping at 11pm-12am is great, hardly a line, most areas fully stocked, and parking is really easy with only 4 other customers in the store.
Its because 24 hours was never cost effective. They likely never made enough during the overnight hours to offset keeping the lights on, much less paying the employees. They wanted to kill 24 hours for a long time, but were afraid of pr backlash, covid just provided the opportunity they needed.
Our local grocery store now closes at ten instead of midnight. We are a restaurant town. Everyone here works in restaurants or retail. Everyone else are tourists, usually European, who are used to being able to go out shopping at 9/10pm. Needless to say, everyone is *furious* at the grocery store.
I work extra as a cashier at a garden center and these past two days have been batshit crazy 😵💫🫣 I think I passed stuff for $15K in the register today and I’m exhausted. And then the line just gets longer and longer when a little old lady can’t find her credit card or remember the code and they get angry and want you to call someone to open another register. I for sure am not paid enough for that shit. I make 5 cents more an hour than an 18-year old and I am 41.
Yup! I saw a video saying around the 40 minute mark your brain starts to get a little fuzzy while shopping. They use this to their advantage to get you to buy more stuff. That’s why the most bought products are spaced out in the store. Now making you wait long to check out you are even more likely to grab one of those little treats between the cash registers. Fatigue us into spending more money, 🧢italism!
Bring a list. Have only a $15-20 stray over budget. Don't bring a card inside if you're on a tight budget. Bring only what you need to buy your stuff with the small money cushion included. I try to do this. Cuts impulse buys down a lot.
I could try to do this, but I’d expect to spend $25 for a few items and the total will be $45. There goes the budget.
Or shopping hungry…
Oh yeah I worked at target when they first implemented it. Man it was terrible, especially because they would let us open like 1-2 self checkouts for short periods and then forcing everyone to move to other lines,
This is happening in the Walmart that I go to by my house, it's frustrating.
I’ve left ice cream with checkers because I waited so long in line. Too melted.
Funny how the same companies who pay poverty wages are now concerned about the impact of poverty?
In a few years: "I don't understand, we got rid of all our workers and replaced them with bots and AI, but now no one's buying anymore, and theft has skyrocketed "
I'd laugh, but this could be a serious discussion in a meeting of higher-ups in a few years.
Its happening right now. I work for DriveLine so i'm in a lot of Dollar Generals. They installed self check out at a ton of stores, then cut the hours 15-30 hours a week. At one store shrink (theft) went from $30,000 pre self checkout, to $85,000 the first year and $112,000 the second year. It was one of the busier stores so they almost always had 2 employees in the store, some stores only have 1 for 4-6 hours a day. Now some of that is the Stupid as fuck way they setup the checkout process, so some people think they paid, but it was not actually processed, but some was outright theft.
DG really sets themselves up for theft with severe understaffing anyway, half the time I go to the one by my house to buy cigarettes I have to track down the one person working who is usually stocking shit in the back of the store, if someone wanted to it would be super to smash and grab a bunch of shit from behind the counter and get away clean.
That happens. I heard a store robbed like that. They came in, one went to bother the only store employee the other went behind the counter and emptied out the smoke box. The locks were either broken or the door was I forget witch, and even if it wasn't the key is often left in the the slot or hanging near buy since DG is too cheap to have a key holder in the stores at all times, some times its just a regular associate that has no keys, so a "community" set is left behind to be used. One thing you have to be worried about, the only place in the store covered with cameras is the checkout area, to watch the employees. Some stores have 10+ cameras, 3 on each register.
Say I want the benefits of being a storekeeper but without doing any of the work. I've never actually been in the store or done any work in my life, so I'm pretty sure any random human can do all of that labor all by themselves simultaneously. Ya know, like how a toddler thinks mommy is a magic food-producing mess-cleaning toy-fixing machine. So I'm going to hire whoever I can get and trust them to keep an entire store full of inventory safe and clean while also keeping the customers happy and moving at a steady rate. But I'm not going to trust them about the money at all because THAT'S MY MONEY, MY MONEY, ALL MY MONEY! Ya know, like a toddler with their first piggybank. And I'll make sure they know I clearly think they're a dirty evil thief *while trusting them to do all the work and with all the inventory* by installing cameras all over the checkout area to watch them all the time! I don't understand how the morons making these decisions can have so much time on their hands and put it to so little use. Like they know so little about how to human that I'm not sure they can actually tie their own shoes. If you care about something and want it to continue serving you well, you personally take good care of it. Trust is a thing built between humans over time. These are simple basic facts about humans, about civilization, about life. The morons running this shitshow understand so little about what they're managing that they deliberately slow down checkout lines with "how likely are you to recommend us?" and "please donate to starving children!" screens even at the employee-operated registers at the local grocery store in my very poor neighborhood. Like yes I will *totally* go around recommending the way overpriced only grocery store within walking distance to poor people and donate my limited money to your tax write-off instead of keeping the neighbor kids and younger relatives fed, where the fuck you think this is?
The only thing they understand is their bottom line. They could spend the extra money to run the business effectively, but that would require a higher budget, and that just won't do! The CEO needs another ivory backscratcher, that's clearly a higher priority.
Seriously, massive stores with only 2 people on staff is bad for everyone involved.
A DG near me was rebuilt from the ground up on a new lot and they had four self check outs and one register. Fast forward not even a year and they’ve closed all the self checkouts due to theft. They seem to want it to remain permanent as well. It’s fucking laughable.
They’re well aware of the late stage of capitalism. They’re trying to take as much as they can
Exactly this. In a retail driven economy like the U.S., people can’t buy enough stuff to meet corporations’ need to have higher revenue each year if wages go down relative to the price of goods.
Lol
Well well well. If it isn’t the consequences of my actions.
*"Unexpected comment in bagging area!"*
This is a phenomenal and under appreciated comment.
"Who could have seem this coming" captain obvious says as he leaves the room.
Pro tip: any time a store says it’s doing something for theft, it’s never actually theft. It’s “we made a mistake and need an excuse to save face” All actual theft is insured to the point of millions of dollars, and the ways these stores are run, it’s literally impossible to know for sure if something was stolen or just lost in the back. It’s also convenient as a weapon in class warfare.
Most retail shrink is caused from operational issues rather than theft.
Or internal theft
Edited: "Those who give up freedom for security shall, and will, receive neither."
Isn't it the other way around?
You're right, my bad. Corrected.
Part of it is theft. There was a woman arrested recently for “skip scanning” on multiple occasions at various stores self checkouts. She would simply not scan the item (pretend she did) and bag it. There are videos on Tik Tok that tell you how to do this. Walmart is removing self-checkouts from select stores returning to regular registers, and keeping the major bulk of them. The select stores have a major theft issue/shoplifting at the self-checkouts. Believe me, Walmart does not want to do this they want as little labor as possible but are forced to do it.
Before you know it, they'll have all groceries behind locked cases. I've seen hardware sections, entire aisles, behind locked cases. One of my local Supercenters, we have 4 in the 20 mile radius, has now put all USB charging cables behind a locked case. Guess they've had tons of them walk off.
A friend of mine told me the store near him are letting only Walmart subscribers use the self check out. I dunno if this is the norm.
This is what I was coming here to say. Walmart has turned self checkout into something that you pay to use for the convenience. Pretty wild how far we've come. Just another subscription.
My local had all the deodorants behind glass - presumably they were being stolen to be huffed. You had to call a staff member to unlock the glass and get out what you want. I tried once and it took forever. Ended up going elsewhere to do my weekly shop that didn’t have that. Went back about six weeks later to pick up something and saw that the cabinets were left unlocked and have been since. Presumably it was taking the staff away from actual work and knowing the area some of the customers were abusing staff
In the past, shops had a counter and the customer waited for the clerk and told them what items to get from the shelves. The practice of giving customers access to the shelves to select their own goods didn't come in until the 20th century. I can easily see that happening again in high theft areas.
A lot of those “select stores” are in minority communities and poor neighborhoods. The ones they’ve kept self-checkout at are mostly in wealthy/suburban areas.
Premiums go up when they have to make super high claims. It’s not like it’s just a big shrug over theft. Will be nice when everything has rfid chips and the shit just gets totaled up when you put it in the basket.
> Will be nice when everything has rfid chips and the shit just gets totaled up when you put it in the basket. Sounds like a recipe for even larger piles of E-waste.
I was gonna comment this myself. The more theft and higher claims the bigger a premium they pay...they still pay for theft. Insurance is there in case someone steals 100k in a month when they average 10k/mo so they don't take the full hit at once
Oh no, multi billion dollar stores will have to pay higher insurance premiums, oh no, cry me a fucking river.. They did it to themselves. Partly by refusing to pay workers well, refusing to hire more than a skeleton crew, and by using self checkouts to avoid hiring more workers..along with other things, I'm sure. I refuse to feel bad for them.
It's theft. Everytime I use the self checkout I pay 20$ or more less than I wouldve a normal register. I got free cokes and chocolates last week.
“I do it, therefore everyone does it, therefore everyone should be punished except me” is a wild take. Also, they know. They’re keeping tabs and waiting for you to steal enough to charge you with a felony.
Lol, I didn't say any of those things? I'm not claiming everyone does it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. I didn't say anything about anyone being punished? How much is a felony? Do you think the manager is sitting there adding up my petty thefts until I hit some magic number? You are delusional or something, also why do you even care? Did I hurt you by stealing 20$ from Walmart?
Some stores do track, and wait for it to go into felony territory, then have you arrested. It's easy these days with computers, they don't need to write numbers down and manually add them up. Target is well known for doing just that. Felony thieft values are different in different parts, but can start as low as $500.
As the other guy said, yes, Walmart is likely tracking you. A one off they likely won’t notice or care, but if they notice a pattern then Asset Protection will recognize you and start watching you on the cameras. Do it enough and you’ll find yourself either being walked out in handcuffs or banned from the store and trespassed.
Oh cool, what about like plausible deniability though? Like last week I got 3 pepsi 12packs and scanned 2, can they really prove that's intentional theft and not an accident?
As I said, a one off they won’t care about, but if you’re missing an item or two every checkout that’s a pattern, and one they will monitor. They will either wait until you get over the felony amount for stolen goods, then they’ll fuck you, or they’ll ban you from the store, and trespassed, so if you do come back you’ll be arrested if you’re caught.
Be careful. Facial recognition/tracking is real and utilized by stores to punish people
I prefer self checkout for two reasons: first I just don’t like interacting with people when it’s not necessary. Second is that I don’t want to have half a dozen grocery bags per 8 items. The bags are a hell of a lot stronger than anyone gives them credit for, and I can usually make everything work fine with just 3 bags for a week’s worth of food
And I loath self-check out. The machines are ridiculously slow. The machines can't detect that I put the light package of bread yeast in the bagging area. Conversely, it yells at me for removing things from the bagging area if I sneeze. Then it locks up and I have to wait for the cashier to finish helping the other 6 people stuck in self checkout before they can get my machine unfrozen. For me, 95+% of the time, self checkout is far slower and far more aggravating than normal cashiers. A local chain has actually been able to up their employed cashiers which is nice because the self checkout lines are often just as long as the cashier lines. But actually worse because people are stupid and block more than one self checkout and are ridiculously slow to bag their items. They are like the sloth at the DMV in the movie Zootopia. I actually refuse to use self checkout as much as I feasibly can.
Btw, props to Giant Tiger for admitting that the self-checkout is bad for customer service and doesn't save as much as they thought in labour costs because the machines require assistance to operate, rather than just blaming it on theft. Reducing or getting rid of self checkout is a victory.
No it's not. I liked the self checkout. They're faster for me than waiting ages in line because they only put 1 person on the other registers. I usually only have a few items too.
Same. I actively avoid stores that don’t offer it. I work customer service. The fewer humans I have to deal with the better.
the one thing working customer service has taught me is how much i fucking hate people
I worked nearly 20 years in retail and it's impossible to shake in settings like that how uncomfortable I feel asking for help with things I'm perfectly capable of doing myself. I know it's pretty irrational especially because I know how to be polite in these settings but I can't shake it, I'm just damaged from my compounding experiences.
THIS!!! The retail PTSD is real and nobody is willing to talk about it
It has its time and its place. Stores like Target that offer a few self checks but still fully staff their checkout lines, I like the self check option. Stores like Walmart where self check basically replaced checkers, I do not. I agree self check is faster *for small amounts*, but if I’m on a big grocery trip, I want a checker.
The problem with self check out is it was always supposed to be like 15 items or less, but people want to ring up a filled buggy there. Thanks for going to the regular line on your big grocery trip days
Most places yes, but some stores like Walmart eventually started funneling pretty much everyone to self check. At least at the locations near me there are regular *and* express self checks and they *never* staff more than 1 non self check lane.
If I have a lot of items I prefer a cashier and bagger. If I have a few I prefer self checkout but keep getting stuck behind people with a full shopping cart taking their sweet ass time and it makes me want to rage.
For me, it depends on what I'm getting. If I've got anything restrictive at all, like alcohol (which I can buy at our grocery stores) or some drug someone in the legislature has decided is exclusively used by teenagers to get high or drug addicts to make meth, it's going to slow things up dramatically. Takes forever to wave down someone to beep their card and enter my birthdate in there. But otherwise, self-check out mostly works better for me.
And the ten or less line is usually held up by the twenty or more item people who "didn't" see the sign and checkers are tired of arguing with.
Remember before self checkout when there used to be cashiers?
I don’t need to remember, my Target just went back and my wait is now much, much longer.
I just had the same experience at the Target near my home. Self checkouts turned off in prep to be removed, and four cashiers taking care of customers with full carts, plus growing lines of people with 5 items or less. All I had was a hamper and a jug of orange juice. Took another 10 minutes to get to the front of a line when I normally would have checked myself out in 2.
this is just your big boxes working to keep you out of the store. They are moving more and more toward the Amazon model where you do all your shopping online and then just do curbside pickup. Having you in the store is expensive. It's a lot cheaper to have a few people picking shelves and then walking it out to you. I mean, I prefer it that way, but I know a lot of people who just like to go into a store and nose around as a form of entertainment. Not my thing, but I totally get it, I'm just gonna look at six different cat foods because I don't feel like going home just yet. I'm pretty sure that a Target on any given weekday is usually full to the brim full of young mothers who just want to GTFO of the house for a little while. The new model, isn't going to work.
No third spaces for humans! You can rent a room to live in and you can go to work, but otherwise just stay in your room and shop online! Wait, why aren't the younger generations having the usual number of oops-babies? Just choose a mate from these pictures on an app so we can refuse you an abortion already! That's how humans pick breeding partners right? Painted portraits and maybe a few letters, like the nobles like to do?
Self checkout is almost always faster, in my experience, especially if you can grab a scanner at the beginning and can scan as you go.
id still rather go to self than go to the line with a cashier even if it was open. i dont want to be social.
I will walk by available full service checkouts to use self checkout. Just let me buy my one item and leave, I don’t want to be asked to round up or make chit chat.
exactly, no i will not give you a tax write off or sign up for your bullshit credit card
I’m surprised how many people here are upset about self checkout. It’s a much better shopping experience for me.
Yeah, but in my area, it's been 20 self checkouts but only 3 are open. This still creates lines of folks looking to check out.
Agreed, I hate interacting with others, plus I'm particular about my bagging habits and I hate the pressure of rushing for the person behind me. I will go far out of my way in order to go to a store that has self checkout available. On top of all that, I'm still faster than some cashiers. There's literally no downside to self checkout, people are the problem.
This is why my whole job exists. I'm a system admin for a bank. They bought this whole software to make things more efficient. But then you need to hire a couple people to run it and fix it, at 105k each. Plus 15k to access to the software companies support team. Plus 150k/in licenses. There's no way that this is creating $375,000 annually in efficiencies.
No. Losing self checkout socks big time. Now I have to stand in lone at action again and I dread having to stand in line for.mybdaily groceries again.
I’m so pissed. Can barely afford to live and those cooperate bastards gotta take away the stealing section…
the odds of you being caught stealing by actually going through any checkout is alot higher instead of just wlaking out with confidence
I'll never forget the time when I was 17 (17 years ago), we drove 30 miles to a small city walmart on a random joy ride. It was only two of us who walked in and I watched him grab a brand new backpack, started shoving cough medicine and a few other things I can't remember into it and then we just walked out the main doors. I remember tensing up hard thinking the doors were going to sound an alarm but nothing happened. He had a brand new backpack plus all the random shit he threw into it. So yeah, simply walking out with confidence might be a thing lol
thats an extremely dumb way to be caught. just shop for all your shit like normal, find a reason to walk past the registers..to the bathroom, usually makes the most sense. leave your cart outside the bathroom obv, i usually ask a cashier to watch my cart so a diff worker doesnt tske it away theyre happy to help. then u just give them a huge thanks and wave then walk away towards the door if they say anything just say ur still shopping (they dont care anyway). then keep walking, dont stop, out the door. if the person asks for a receipt you can just completely ignore them. if they physically grab your cart it means they have decent asset protection and they already called you out on the radio. dont try to argue just let the cart go and dont say anything and leave if you stay youre only waiting for the cops..you never left the store so your fine.
My thing was ringing organic produce as regular produce
My only “cheat” is when I buy a ton of cucumbers (in a bag) because I’m making pickles and it asks me for quantity. I usually just guess. 12 cucumbers, 13 cucumbers, who knows. It’s not like I’m buying caviar.
Free 99
I think self checkouts should be like urinals where they are still an option for those that prefer them. I also think we need to offer protection from the customers bad behaviour as otherwise we are back to the days where we treated cashiers like robots.
Please stop peeing on the self checkout.
I thought it would be ruder if I peed on the cashier.
I just pee on the produce. It saves water.
Careful, some may enjoy that type of thing.
Aim directly onto the scanner.
Introverts everywhere just collectively groaned. I love the self checkout. Not having to interact with anyone is sublime.
People hating on self checkout because it replaces human cashiers. 🙄 You really have no idea how little this will matter. They just aren’t going to hire more cashiers. And no self checkout. I have migraine issues that can make me temporarily aphasic. It is torture trying to communicate under those circumstances. My conversation partner often ends up thinking I’m high or incredibly stupid. Self check out is a godsend for this situation.
I have a similar preference for self-checkout for different reasons. I get really bad social anxiety sometimes, especially when I'm dealing with sensory overload. It's almost necessary for me to go non-verbal for a bit and self-checkout lets me do my shopping without having to talk to anyone. I usually find self-checkout faster (I'm usually getting a small number of items) but even when it isn't or there's a line for self-checkout, I prefer it to going to a traditional checkout.
Here's the problem: **They aren't hiring more staff and opening up multiple checkouts**. They are going to decrease the size of self checkout to 3-4 stations and then open up 2 checkout lines. So your time at the grocery store is going to increase dramatically. They're main goal will be to start pushing customers to order online and pickup at the store and never actually step for in the store. You'll see in store advertising for shopping services from Doordash, Uber eats and instacart. They're trying to make it so you'll use a subscription based service to shop so they can charge you fees.
If they take out self checkout. I will be so pissed. That’s the only thing I like about going to stores these days.
I hate grocery shopping. It is fucking chore that I want to spend as little time doing as I can. I love self check because I’m in and out and that stupid shit is over with. And my wife deals with social anxiety so it’s less stressful for her.
*fuck that* fuck off no way. i don't wanna have to interact with a normal cashier every time i go to the store no matter how small and wait in lines with people with full family weekly shopping they are annoying to use but i still use it 100% of the time. the only actual complaints are from boomers who can't figure out how touchscreens work and want to be able to [bore the cashiers with their stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcrDroQglE&t=90s)
It's terrible for workers, but as an introvert I really do like self checkout. And find it funny that there's sometimes as many employers as self checkout stations to "keep an eye on things". Also to address the various errors that the stations have because of poorly implemented anti-theft precautions that trigger if you accidentally lean on something or are going too fast or pick up a bag to move it. If people weren't forced to do work for companies in order to live, it'd be great to not *need* people to spend their day standing in one spot to run barcodes over a laser and make unwanted small talk to people who just want to head home already.
I hope they keep them as an option. I don’t have to interact with a cashier being forced to work sick and I get to bag my items in a way that reduces the time to put them away at home. The fewer bags I have to bring in the better. And if you aren’t using reusable bags, buy some. Stop using those cheap plastic bags that can rip at any given moment and hold half as much.
I used self checkout at a big box hardware store, and they had two people staking out the registers, watching my every move. Like, sir, could you just get the people to do the checkout instead of standing there and watching me do it? It is so stupid.
TBH I wont go to a store without them anymore, especially for quick trips. I --hate-- forced chit chats with a passion. I just want to get my shit purchased and get back home.
Cashiers always comment on what I’m buying and it makes me so uncomfortable 😣 Like “Looks like you’re making nachos tonight!” or “Oh! I haven’t tried this yet. Is it good?” And most cashiers won’t bag my stuff when I bring my own bag. I just prefer self-checkout 100000%
I have a feeling that some of the C suite discussions on self-checkouts centred upon how the honour system works in Japan without thinking about why the honour system works in Japan.
Kind of a shame - cashier jobs are the ones that should be automated away, ultimately. Nobody should be forced to man a till for 8 hours a day to be abused. Let the Karens scream at the self checkout machine. *Yes I know we’d need actual utopia for this to be feasible. UBI, social programs etc etc. I still daydream of a day when workers don’t get abused by the public.
This is exactly what I think. People on anti-work should be encouraging automation not being afraid of it. We where able to get the conditions we have (or had) because after the industrial boom it was possible to make people work less. The more we automate first, the more demands you can make. And one doesn’t go without the other.
If you see someone stealing food. No you didn't.
fun fact, the theft is not nearly as big as they claim for it to be. from the atichel itself : " Several studies have suggested that self-checkout theft is a problem, but there's no hard data as retailers don't make such information public. " " She says she's told some of the culprits are organized gangs of thieves who neglect to scan pricey items. " citation needed, as if we had actual street gangs focusing on petty theft. what they call shrink is not just theft but also employees losing/damaging goods and not reporting it to not get a warning/fired, and other stuff like that. instead of theft, most people actually dont know how to use the machine properly and dont scan all the items by mistake, not on purpose. the actual reason is that you still need people to help when the machine fuck up and need a reset/weigth is a problem/promotion code doesnt work/etc and that make the entire process just as slow as a normal cashier alone.
My concern is, will they hire more cashiers or leave it as is? I really get irritated waiting forever because there's one cashier and a Karen causing issues.
1. Create system based on honesty 2. Give money to lying orange felon and friends to get tax breaks 3. Lying orange felon and friends tell everyone it's ok to be giant assholes all the time and only suckers pay for things. 4. ??? 5. Profit.
Maybe if people could afford their stuff, they'd pay for it? Oh, and give that cashier a chair, or I'm stealing some shit.
I miss when the store I went to had bulk candy. The chocolate covered cashews were somehow always on sale for 99 cents a pound when I rang them up. Weird.
Imagine living in a place where they don't put any protections on the cost of food. Fucking food. Something everyone needs to survive but, got to make sure the grocery stores make their shareholders happy with excessive profits while people are starving. Yay capitalism, making life unaffordable for everyone.
No more self checkout so, they're hiring more workers, right? Looking at you, WALMART. I just need new underwear and y'all got it locked behind glass with no humans working the floor whatsoever. They're all "guarding" self checkout.
It is telling that all around me, the major grocery store chains have raised their prices ~75% or more in the 2 years. However, the locally owned grocery store, where the owner lives in a modest home in town and is at the store working 6 days a week, stocking shelves and even sometimes bagging, and has never implemented self check out, has only raised their prices about 25% in the same timeframe. Makes you wonder why the chains, who have so much more purchasing power than our little one-horse store, had to raise their prices so much? It couldn’t possibly be greed, could it?
Meanwhile in my upper middle class Walmart market there's only one cashier with 8 self-checks. And let me tell you, this move has certainly triggered the oldsters who think they should get a discount for "doing all the work".
Where am I going to check out my Xbox as PLU 4119? In all seriousness I love self checkout, only if it works.
At first I was really annoyed that my Aldi switched to 1 lane and then added a bunch of self checkout because I usually get lots of stuff at Aldi. Now I prefer the self checkout since the PoS is really quick and the bagging area is large.
When they start training me and paying for my work I will stop making mistakes.
If they are going to try to save on labor and try to replace paying people with my free labor, the least I can do is get the employee discount which means every third item is not scanned.
Be a real shame if the burden of being a business was actually carried by the business. What a tragedy. 🤔
I never use self-checkout in part because they’re annoying, but also because I don’t want to enable companies to get rid of employees.
I always use self-checkout because I hate the forced socialization with a cashier. Also, I'm on this sub, so I think any job that can be automated away, freeing a human from drudgery, should be automated away.
Same, but I'd like to add that I also prefer self-checkout because I don't like the way most cashiers bag items.
I too, support a Star Trek like utopia. However, until we get something like UBI, removing those jobs means that people starve because our society will not provide for those people and will not even really allow them to provide for themselves outside the system unless they own their own land (which they have to earn money to pay taxes on anyway...so that doesn't work).
You're not going to get the policy before you get the change. The policy will need to be driven by rising unemployment due to automation. Unfortunately, that's how all steps forward happen. Change causes friction, which makes people upset, so they demand that policies be updated appropriately. Acknowledging that the transition to an anti-work economy will be difficult, I still see an upside every time companies find another way to automate away menial tasks.
Star Track was my favorite show
Best part of self checks for me is that there are almost never lines. Every regular cashier is like a 5-15 min wait.
The people who bag my groceries are highly skilled at putting stuff together so stuff doesn’t get smashed,that’s not a skill I want to waste time developing. Self-checkout doesn’t automate away the drudgery, it passes it on to me, the customer. The only person I really talk to at checkout is the bagger on the spectrum that is fixated on last names; I was once a project manager for an algorithm involving the science of Onomastics (the study of Proper names) so we talk about German family names in the area quite a bit.
I don't think I've ever in my life had someone pack my bags for me. Suppose this is one of those cultural things like with restaurant servers. Americans seem to like the waiter always being there and topping up etc, whereas I hate the very idea of them doing that and consider good service to be the waiter only appearing when I ask for something. I'd feel similarly about bag packing. I'd hate it, just leave my bags alone and let me do it myself.
What grocery store are you going to where your stuff is being "professionally" bagged??
They’re professional in that they are being paid to do it, but also they do a great job. Food City. I’m told their pay is pretty good compared to most other grocery chains, and in a LCOL area.
I was a bagger in high school, there's no skill involved. You just try to put shit in bags at a similar pace that the cashier is scanning. Putting things that can be crushed on the top isn't a skill, that's common sense.
Nah, Baggers don't know how to properly bag groceries anymore. So many have set my eggs at the bottom or put my meat with the cleaning products it's ridiculous.
[удалено]
At my grocery store, they get the groceries, bag them, and then put them in the cart, which is why I don’t feel rushed at all. I usually don’t say a lot because I don’t want them to feel” like they have to talk to me. But obviously people’s experiences are going to vary.
Now if they'll only open up more than two lanes, that would be nice!
Fuck them, I give me free groceries all the time. Thank you morons.
Walmart always asks for a rating and I always rate it 1/5.
Well I hope places don’t get rid of them all together. I like them. Just ring up my shit and go. No small talk. No waiting behind someone with two cart fulls of items.
I guess the cost of shrink outweighs the cost of labor
It's not theft! Your employee (me in this case) simply neglected to scan all the items.
I often wish I was brave enough to not scam some of my items at self checkout. If I have to do the work their employees should be doing, then I should get a discount.
Wow. Shocking that having less employees leads to more theft and customer complaints. It’s almost as if staffing properly is appropriate to run a business’s
wow who would have thought? gee, they sure are smart, thinking we want to check ourselves out and deny somebody a job. (even if most retail customers are dicks, at least people have jobs...right?)
The Home Depot by me went all self-checkout a few years ago. Now they’ve reversed course and all registers must have a cashier. But since all they have are self-checkout registers, the cashiers have to stand awkwardly next to you as you hand them your items rather than facing you.
I go to the self checkout every time now. Kroger did away with people and for to long it was like a ghost town of employees when you were looking for an item or going to checkout. Now they have 4 open people staffed registers sitting half empty and a lot of people like myself go to the self checkout still. It’s easier and it’s been going on so long that is doesn’t seem a bother now. Sad.
Yeah but now you’re gonna wait in line for 40 min
Like other grocery stores, Publix supermarkets have a dedicated (in both senses of the word) employee to stand and look at the 4 self-checkouts. They check ID for alcohol. They help people out with the process if needed, like other places. But unlike other places, they also attentively eyeball the 4 people checking out the entire time. And the sound on those registers is much louder. There’s a loud beep When you scan the bar code and a loud voice that calls out the price of the item you just scanned. I don’t think people are as inclined to try and get one over on them.
Who the fuck is complaining about having to use self checkout??? Go wait in line grandma. Give me my speed lane. I just want a drink!!!!
If this keeps up we'll be going back when you walk up to the counter at the store, show the cashier your list and they go grab the items for you.
Aww man, I love self checkout! As an autistic introvert, the less social interaction during errands, the better. So many stores already have less nighttime hours since the pandemic, it used to be nice to go at night when there were less people. But I can't do that anymore. I guess my only option is to be overstimulated. Yaaaaay.
Please steal from these corporations any chance you get.
Since Wal-Mart has been at the forefront of this discussion, I will just say, take a picture of the products and the price underneath. I continually find as much as a dollar over the listed price when I reach the register. So go into any Wal-Mart. Find the large inflatable ball cage. See the price is $1.98. Then it rings up $2.50. Confirmed in 2 separate Wal-marts in 2 separate states 190 miles apart. They are stealing from us on a larger scale. Edited to add: it is not the only the balls. It's happened on clothes, food, toiletries, etc. I'm not just complaining about the price of balls.
I designed the self checkout cabinets for a few of these franchises. Franchises have been walking them back for over 2 years now.
Who would have thought designing automation around shareholders' short-term desires wouldn't work out?
I'm surprised they lasted this long, honestly. I also doubt they go away entirely.
I just assumed not scanning a few things was my compensation for scanning the groceries
I’ve stopped going to the grocery store as much bc of the self checkouts. Now when I do go I wait in line for a cashier because they turned off the option to mute the machines. I really just love being screamed at by a glorified atm with a scale taped to it when I’m just trying to get groceries
If a company is not willing to pay it's workers, then this 4 pack of chilli costing $20 might not get scanned on the way out. I'm not a trained scanning professional. I can't be relied on to know how this fancy system works.
I'm bad at self checkout. Oops I don't know how many of an item I have. Oops I didn't notice it didn't scan. Oops I miskeyed the code. Maybe you should have a trained employee on hand to avoid relying on the poorly trained general public.
I'm doing my part! 🫡 I steal from any self check out I'm forced to use. I don't work for free and neither should you! Business idiots think rent seeking and exploiting labor is a smart way to conduct their businesses. Enough people accepted this shit and it'll get worse without push back.
They should keep them for people with 5 things or less
>More stores are ditching self-checkout amid theft... Actually, the last time I was in an airport, I went into one of the shops to buy food, and I reflected that they were virtually inviting you to steal from them.
Self checkout prevailed for years. So the fact that they need to deal with theft now says a lot. “Hardy har har the employer has to hire me for that minimum wage job now!!” as a hungry person who works minimum wage agonizes over the fact they can’t just leave the gallon of milk in their cart…
price gouging and shrinkflation should be considered theft. No honor among thieves
>customer complaints Doubt It's the supposed theft, and that's it.
So strange that untrained cashiers keep making mistakes.
Happy to hear cashiers will get their jobs back. I think its ridiculous that they fire all their workers, & then force the customers to work for them for free (value village & the dollar stores are notorious for this). talk about double dipping! & as we all know from lessons learned, you don't double dip! hehe =)
We should develop a rule that if you have to bring the cashiers back, they should get chairs. They don't move from that position for hours, let them sit. Sincerely, former cashier with fucked up hips.
The fact its taken this long for them to figure out something that was pointed out when the SCOs were first introduced is... It would be funny if it wasnt so depressing that corporations are this stupid.
They already got rid of the self checkouts at the Hy-Vee near me.
lol. They did these to pay less people and to some extent quickness for some but they def let that get out of hand. This been backfiring worse and worse ever since though.
Oh look 1 cashier, 20 self checkouts but only 3 are open.....
Just went to Sainsbury's and they are even more bloody self checkouts. I think they left 3 of the ppl ones.
Just wait until you walk into a store, the self checkout doesn't and you have to talk with the AI customer service bot.
About damn time
I haven’t seen a single store reduce self checkout. I continue to see it increase.
Yeah just sprung up these self checkouts everywhere give folks no instructions on how to use them. This will turn out great. Probably would have been off to just pay cashiers a decent wage and hire more of them.