The Boomers are right sometimes, like about keeping email.
Yeah, this response is a rare boomer W.
I have 20k emails in my inbox
I will only clean it when I get complaints
You’re either the kind of person who reads their emails in real time and freaks if that little blue number ever reads “2” or you’re the kind of person who selects their entire inbox and marks it as read twice a decade.
My wife is the former. I am the latter. I get too much junk. I go through my inbox a few times a day, read what looks important, and ignore the rest. I have 2,174 unread emails in my inbox and a folder called “auto junk” with 5,116 in it.
Unsubscribe and/or block is a good friend
Is there a way to delete all emails from a single address at once in Gmail? That would help a lot for me.
Yes, filter by sender, select all, delete
Pro tip: the checkbox at the top of the column only selects the first page worth (100 messages). You have to click that and then also click the “select all N messages?” link that appears.
I like keeping the unread count low, but I get so many junk notification emails at work I’ve given up on checking.
See if your email provider lets you whitelist addresses. Every known sender goes to inbox, all the rest to trash. Great for keeping things tidy and helping to sniff out fake emails from eboy.
I’ve never understood the people who seem to not get that some people actually don’t mind scanning their stuff and putting it in bags, and insist that that’s the line between what the customer does and the employee. They also used to carry your groceries to the car for you, and you can also get them to pick everything up, bag it and bring it to your car or house. It’s not like the checkout process is the special part that can’t change.
Yeah, they want to save money by having fewer people get more customers checked out faster. I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
I don’t have a problem with self-check. I use it most the time because I usually have < 10 items.
I DO have a problem with only self-check lanes being open or only ONE regular clerk check lane open. both of which happen at walfart.
I know this because I used to work there and policy was to hire floor associates that can run a register so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
Aren’t walmart employees also required to stand all day? Kinda insane to me that they’re not allowed to just sit down
can’t say for every store, but we were told “it makes us look lazy and disinterested in being friendly or helpful to our customers”.
typical boomer bullshit.
they did let the little. old lady greeters use a chair, although that’s likely because of ADA compliance requirements they had to follow and not because they grew a heart.
That’s true for pretty much all corporate retail in the US.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Walmart cashier without a line. Doesn’t matter how many cashier lanes and self checkouts are open. Find it hard to belief they are ever able to just stand around.
that’s exactly the point. WM mgmt sees that as a win. every employee has a queue depth they can complete in x time, be it customers they help or tasks they complete.
if you can’t complete the minimum queue depth according to WM you’re pulled up for a performance eval and eventually fired.
Mgmt doesn’t want to hire more people because “home office” provides a bonus to mgmt to keep operation costs low. at “performing” stores this can be as much to go out and buy a new car.
so the next time you’re waiting in line for an hour at WM ask to speak to the store mgr directly, or better yet ask for the contact details of the district mgr. enough complaints and that store is marked as “non-performant” and the store (and mgrs) will be pulled up for a performance eval.
But in the end won’t it be the cashiers who will suffer/be blamed, instead of management hiring another one to help carry the load? I mean, even if you ask to speak to the manager, and wait for them, and say, “obviously you’ve understaffed this shift, so you need to open a register yourself and start ringing people up, you can start with me,” they are just going to blame the poor cashier who got stuck with Grandma’s coupons and check-writing or whatever. Or if they are decent, they’re already working a register, and it’s someone higher up who refuses to hire more staff, despite having a “ghost job offer” that sits out there to look like they’re hiring.
I love self checkout. Conversation with strangers is difficult, slow and often not fun. Separating that aspect from checking out is the best customer service a lot of stores offer.
Some stores near me are removing or disabling self checkout. Apparently this better serves the customer. Can’t quite see how taking away options improves things, but …
It doesn’t, it’s because people shoplift at self checkout all the time and the big retailers can’t figure out how to stop it. Almost every shop in my town forces you to do self checkout, they don’t even have cashiers most of the time. Last time I was at my local walmart they had like 6 self checkouts and 4 cashiers just standing there staring at everyone trying to find shoplifters. They still can’t find them though lol.
Which is bizarre, because shrinkage due to theft at all major retail chains is at historic lows, but they keep complaining that they can’t make any money due to rampant shoplifting. Then you look at their profits for each fiscal year and wonder what their deal is if losses due to shoplifting have never been lower and profits have never been higher?
It’s an easy scapegoat to justify closing low performing stores. It essentially shifts the blame onto the community, rather than the greedy suits.
Well, this can’t possibly be the case. The giant corporations who assuredly only have my best interests in mind tell me it’s what I want, not what they want.
I dare say that the shoplifters aren’t even bothering going through the self checkout as a pretense.
I respect your preference, and for some people it could even be considered a “reasonable accommodation.”
But I prefer to have the person who does this all day whip through the scanning and bagging while I pay up. It may not be rocket surgery, but good cashiers have an efficiency of eye/brain/hand motion that I can’t match. Especially when there’s multiples of the same item, their machine trusts them to do it the efficient way rather than scanning and weighing each item. Or having the produce codes at their fingertips without stopping to read them. And since all machines have little quirks, it’s helpful to know exactly where to apply “percussive maintenance.”
I am comfortable speaking with strangers, so I always thank them and wish them a good day. And I don’t stand for entitled assholes giving them shit, either.
Having both options is best and should be part of ADA compliance.
That’s fair.
Yea the issue is the employer doing it to make more profit instead of spreading the more profit they make to the workers. There is nothing wrong with self check out. There is something wrong with people being paid shit when the company is sending dividends to stockholders instead.
The check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different from those other services you mentioned.
Also,
I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
That was true until they realized they could enshittify by closing all the regular check-outs and force everyone into it. Now it’s just as slow as full-service used to be.
check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different
Like a vending machine? Or the gas station? Or the grocery pickup, where I pay online?
What makes a human being present for me giving my money to a machine different if it’s a grocery store as opposed to one of those?Sorry your experience sucks. Stores near me regularly have both open and the self checkout is invariably significantly faster. It’s not like I just didn’t notice that something I do several times a week actually sucks.
My parents refused to use the self-checkout because “They take people’s jobs.”
They were hardcore republicans perfectly happy to make sure those jobs got paid shit.
Do they also book all their travel through travel agencies, always use full-service gas stations, valet their cars instead of parking on the street, make restaurant bookings through concierge services, etc? Those are people’s jobs too!
Also, let’s not forget that you are doing someone’s job simply for using a shopping cart at all. Traditional grocers didn’t have anything like the aisles we wander through now. Rather, there would basically be a warehouse with a counter at the front. You walked up with your list of items, gave it to the grocer, and they would grab the items for you. Customers gathering goods themselves didn’t come about until the age of the supermarket starting in the mid 20th century.
This is also why I have zero sympathy for stores that complain about theft and shrinkage. They’re the ones choosing to operate in a business model that makes theft easier. Traditional grocers didn’t have to worry about shoplifting, as everything was kept behind the counter. Sure, armed robbery was a concern then as it is now, but shoplifting wasn’t a concern.
When the grocery stores abandoned the traditional model, they realized the money they saved on labor would more than make up for the increased losses due to shoplifting. And that was simply a choice they made. And it’s the same with self-checkout. They made a business decision that would inevitably result in increased theft, and they have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they don’t like the increased theft, they can go back to cashiers. Or hell, there’s nothing stopping Walmart from going all the way back to the traditional dry goods store model even. That would work really well with online orders as well. You don’t even let customers wander through most of the store. You just have a very long counter at the front of the store that customers walk up and tell the workers what they want. And the workers gather the order. You either wait for them to gather it, or you place the order in advance and have it ready when you pick it up. If Walmart did this, shoplifting would become virtually impossible. Their labor costs would skyrocket, but Walmart has it in its power to completely eliminate shoplifting if they really want to.
I’d book a flight through a travel agency if these still existed. Booking online is pure dread to me. I’m too young to have ever seen a travel agency but the concept of not having to deal with Ryanair and Wizzair is very luring.
Travel agent saved my ass about 10 years ago when my connecting flight was delayed in air while I was on it. Completely missed the final leg of my journey because of a storm. Middle of the night and she helped me switch everything over and rent a car to drive the rest of the way and even got me upgraded to a more fun one. This was when I was going to a job interview and flying in the night before.
I always go into stores to throw stuff from the racks onto the floor, to make sure the people whose job it is to clean that up stay employed.
I never buy anything of course, I don’t want stuff that’s been on the floor!
IE. We like the idea of slavery! Someone to do the dirty work while we act superior…while shopping at Walmart.
They were increasing demand for labor which pushes up the price of labor.
Maybe in spite of themselves, they were helping.
I’ll give them a “partly right in spite of themselves” for sure.
I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.
At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.
I don’t mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you… but they are not a replacement for cashiers.
Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.
You don’t get to be 3 of the richest people on the planet by paying for labor
I’m 100% against self checkout.
They’ve put the burden of sale on you instead of themselves. If you fail to check something out accidentally, you are liable for theft.
If they don’t have a cashier, I go to customer service and tell them to ring me up even if it’s one item.
Which is why I’m against making people do big orders through self checkout, cause thats when an accident can happen.
Not when you’re getting your genital itch cream.
A lot of the grocery stores near me have a limit of 15 or 20 items for self-checkout. Safeway says “about 15 items” which is strangely vague. Any more and you have to go through a regular checkout.
i would say even 10 items is to much for self checkout, but thats better than walmart expecting you to take a cartful of monthly groceries through self checkout.
At my local Walmart I regularly see people with their cart full of groceries going through the self checkout lanes. It’s immensely annoying when you only have 1 or 2 items. And it’s not like they don’t have cashiers either. There are even multiple self checkout lanes with belts and yet for some reason these people always go through the smaller self checkout lanes.
NAL, but i believe that they have to show intent in order to prosecute. As long as the legal system works properly, they would have to prove that you’re lying when you say “I forgot that was down there”
I can’t imagine a judge taking a case where someone unwittingly stole something
I admire your faith in our legal system but despair at you lack of imagination.
They’ll prosecute a bag of money for potentially being involved in a crime.
Depends how white you are
Don’t need to get to a judge. They can just tresspass you and then you have to drive 30 miles to another supermarket cause you cant ever set foot in that one again.
Thats enough to fuck shit up for a lot of people.
Do you live in the US? I do and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that happens here
Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item
It’s cute that you think 25% of your sale is going towards labour, even before self-checkouts became so commonplace.
Its cute that you are trying to twist what I said into something that I didnt say.
No wait, not cute. the opposite of that.
I said I want a 25% discount for doing their job and saving them the labor. Not that their labor is 25% of my bill.
I’m sorry you’ve taken offence to my throw away comment, as no offence was meant.
Is it actually “cute” that this person allegedly overinflates the worth of checkout labor, or were you being condescending?
It is not and I was not meaning to be condescending.
I was trying to add a little humour, clearly I’m not funny. It’s not that deep.
Just curious, I have no idea what the real number is, what do you think it is?
I have no clue. I guess you can look at the profit margin for a supermarket (Walmart is around 2%, I just checked), then figure out the average full food shop spend, and finally see what the average hourly wage is for a worker and how long it would take to ring up a full shop.
Although, this also highlights why they can’t give OP 25% off as their margin isn’t anywhere near this figure. I guess we should also factor in handouts that companies like Walmart get from the government to subsidise their staff etc.
Apparently they spend about 7.67% of their operating budget on labor. Just in case anyone was wondering. Source.
I would wager that a significant piece of that is centered around the logistics and distribution element. Cashiers are probably rounding errors.
Thanks for posting this.
From reading a few reports, after looking this up, it seems walmart spend about 7% of it’s revenue on hiring, and about 32% on payroll. The other costs towards labor seem to vary greatly from source to source, depending on exactly what they take into consideration as a labor expense. So it is somewhere between 39% and 60% of the revenue.
So that other person was probably being super condescending for no reason? That’s kind of the impression I got when they said they had no idea the actual number.
maybe? don’t know, wouldn’t be surprised if they just actually didn’t know, and made an assumption based on some information they had. Also wouldn’t be surprised if they were being condescending. meh
What’s so bad with self checkout I run through it faster then a cashier does
If you have more stuff than will fit in the weighing platform it’s a logistical disaster. Hence why the belts and bagger system were invented in the first place.
Not really you leave it in the cart and bag it as you scan it
And then put the full bags back in the cart right on top of the stuff you still need to scan?
There’s usually a platform you can leave 5-6 bags on till your cart is empty enough to through them back in there as you scan the rest
Yea no shit. Not everyone has the luxury of shopping as often as you do and we have to actually fill our carts. Also it sure seems like you are still using disposable bags which is a shame.
You act as if it doesn’t work the same way with a full cart cause it does, so what if I am that wasn’t even the subject
Walmarts keep the same number of cashiers before and after self checkouts are installed.
not in any walmart where i’ve witnessed the changeover.
I’m just basing it off of being married to a Walmart manager for 10 years but hey, maybe outsiders’ anecdotal feelings on the topic are more accurate than observed first hand experience.
Walmart is ALWAYS hiring cashiers.
Yeah, and you know where they are? stocking shelves and picking for the online pickup orders. Not running checkout lines.
That number is between 0-2 depending on how many cashier lanes there are.
Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don’t even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?
That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “boomer” on the opposite side of the word “sucker”.
Refuse to do free work for a company—insist that the grocery store employees go and gather the items on your list from the shelves for you! Never set foot on the sales floor, do pickup orders online only!
Background: It used to be that the proprietor of a store brought items you requested to the counter for you. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly pioneered a new grocery store model, requiring/allowing the customers to pick items off of the shelves themselves. Not only did they not give you a discount for doing their work for them, they raked in more money from impulse purchases. The increased sales more than offset the increase in shoplifting losses. A cynical, corporate ploy to bleed customers dry, and we just think it’s normal now!
That is to say, the purpose of a grocery store is to provide food in exchange for currency. There’s no law of nature that I know of that says that having an underpaid teenager drag your food across the scanner is the only proper way to do check-out, just like there isn’t one that says only a store employee can pick items from the shelf.
In other words, race to the bottom is race to the bottom.
Those jobs were not cruel and demeaning as you seem to imply. In fact plenty of industries still operate that way (auto parts etc.) and they served a valuable purpose, to give work experience to that underpaid teenager.
In fact if you go to a butcher shop, fishmonger, farm market etc. you will have your food handed to you by a human as well. And most people highly rate both the service and quality at such shops, with the employees usually being paid significantly more than at supermarkets, and having proper work hours and job security.
So yes, I suppose Piggly Wiggly made food margins a little thinner. But considering I get better meat prices at my butcher than at a supermarket, who do you think benefited from that move the most? Most likely the same ones benefiting from the move towards a fully automated store like Amazon tested.
Maybe you can go the warehouse and pick it up from the boxes, drive down to the farm to het the produce or, even better, grow your own food ALL THE WHILE STILL PAYING FULL VALUE TO THE SUPERMARKET.
“People used to have even more done for them and now they don’t and pay the same” is not the powerful argument for us having even less done for us that you think it is.
Exactly! Back in my day, people used to fill up my gas for me and carry my things up to my hotel room. Young people are getting lazy and entitled! Corporations need to make them work harder. Makes it hard to humiliate the poors if they make ME do the work.
Tbh back then the pay was more fairly in line with cost of living for some of the jobs. however, it has been a good 20 or so year since it was more fair. Nowadays, it is absolutely scary the cost of living. it’s down right criminal.
Okay boomer
Recently had a support call with a woman who was complaining about our 2 factor authentication system because she could only access one web page at a time. When I asked her if she couldn’t just open a new tab, she said she was too old to learn how computers work and couldn’t do that. She went on to claim that there’s a lot of people at her level of ineptitude, and that we shouldn’t have implemented 2fa because “most people don’t have multiple monitors.”
It was so, so hard not to throw out an OK Boomer as they proudly lectured me on the depths of their ignorance.
There is a time when every person realizes that things have changed so much around them that they no longer understand how it works. It creeps up on you slowly, but in the Information age, that is accelerated. Every person here will experience some form of that at some point in their lives.
That’s entirely your choice, it’s not a requirement of life. You can continue learning new information, there’s nothing that forces you to give into ignorance. I’d also say there’s a pretty big difference between “I’m not a very tech savvy person” and “I am completely helpless and choose to make it other people’s problem.”
It’s a balance in many ways. There’s some aspect of refusing to do things due to not wanting to learn things. But sometimes people don’t want to adopt technologies simply because they’re unwilling to accept some very glaring downsides. For example, if you demand 2FA, you are demanding that your customers essentially consent to have an ankle monitor and remote audio monitor on their person at all times. Smart phones track your location 24/7, and they seem to track what is spoken around them as well. They are absolutely a huge invasion of privacy, and it’s remarkable we ever let them become as indispensable as we have. They’re basically just ankle monitors we all voluntarily put on each morning. I can absolutely see people just refusing to have a smartphone for the privacy implications alone.
I also have some red lines on technology. I refuse to use tiktok because of its privacy and psychological manipulation issues. And I’ve moved away from most social media, even if that cuts me off from some very useful communications and conversations in my family and community. I also refuse to buy any appliance with a wifi connection. I try to avoid any device that requires an app to use. If your widget requires an app but your competitor’s doesn’t, I’m buying from your competitor. If your widget requires an app and your widget is just something that would be nice to have, but not life-changing, I’m not going to buy your widget at all.
It’s a very dangerous thing to simply decry anyone who rejects a technology as ignorant or not tech-savvy. Often people reject particular technologies for damn good reasons. If we just accept the newest thing with zero thought simply for the fact that it is new, we are actually the ignorant ones. Something being newer does not automatically make it better. And often newer things are inferior to old things, like the case of a lot of privacy-violating appliances and companies filling everything with DRM and trying to turn it into a subscription. I don’t want basic household items to require an app to use, as it is guaranteed that the security on that system will be crap, and that the product will stop working after a few years after the company stops supporting the app.
If I’m buying a physical thing, I want it to be completely stand-alone and require zero continued feedback from its manufacturer in order to continue to function. You can tell me til you’re blue in the face about how spying on me helps improve the customer experience, but I’m still going to tell you to take your privacy-violating, app-dependent widget and shove it up your app-loving ass.
My father was 75 when his finances had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer able to afford a personal secretary.
He had me explain the things he had to do, and he wrote them down on paper, step by step. He was pretty quickly able to do all the things he needed to do on his desktop.
Never got fast typing down, so I got him dictation software. Anyway, I’m pretty convinced as long as your determined, you can stay hip to new technology in a way that at least allows you to work with it.
The difference is you. You enabled him and helped accommodate his needs. Without you, how’s he going to cope? Also you’re a good child.
So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven’t worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc), they’ve lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.
(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
I LOVE self-checkouts for small shopping. No human interaction bullshit. Just beep your stuff, whip out your card and go. Rarely do I encounter technical problems.
For me it’s not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it’s the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I’m walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.
Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
I’m a lot faster at bagging when I’m not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.
Scandinavia?
Netherlands :)
That sounds amazing! Can I ask where that is?
I live in the Netherlands
Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that the mighty MBA class are actually just short-sighted, trend-hopping, avaricious shitbags?
Yeah, if you can’t pay people enough to notice and/or care if I steal from you, I get to steal from you. Them’s the rules.
“If you aren’t able to stop me, I get to rape you. Them’s the rules.”
That’s how fucking stupid you sound.
I mean that’s literally how rape works. Not saying that’s a good thing, just that a law is mere words on a page if it’s not enforceable.
I just like the feeling of privacy. When the staff redirects customers to the cashiers because there’s less queue than at the self checkout, I pretend not to hear with my headphones on.
Same. I’m one of the few people that prefers self checkout. Covid was a magical time for me while grocery shopping. No one awkwardly had to smile after eye contact, everyone gave space and avoided each other, just get in and get out without ever taking out my headphones. Self check out is always faster where I’m from too.
As a hermit forced to live and work in the modern world, COVID is the high I’ll never get again.
Ditto. Then, when we went back to “normal,” I felt like I had to pretend to hate it because everyone else hated it so much. For me, it felt like freedom and relief.
I only prefer self checkout when I’m buying rubbers and lube. Anything else I’d rather have the checkout person scan and bag for me.
If you have social anxiety, the checkout person conversation is one of the easiest interactions for you to practice those skills on. “Hello, here are my items, thank you” is about the gist of what’s necessary.
Oh I have absolutely no social anxiety, I just prefer to keep what I’m buying to myself when I can, rubber or not.
Well I hope you use cash for all purchases and wear a mask that covers your face, otherwise everything you bought is recorded along with your identity in the store systems and potentially sold to 3rd parties like advertising companies, maybe to your health insurance company too.
Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items
In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?
- If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
- With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
- If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.
the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc)
What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.
The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.
In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
- Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
- Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
- In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
- The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
- The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don’t have bar codes.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
Age verification happens asynchronously and causes zero delay for anyone who doesn’t look like a teenager. The employee overseeing the self-checkout gets an alert on their tablet-thingie, they take one look at me and press approve. You can just keep scanning items while this happens. Usually the ‘your age may be checked’ alert disappears within seconds.
Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
They can where I live.
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
The conveyor belt slows things down. You take an item out of your basket, scan it and put it in your bag in one go instead of it being two separate actions. You’re only handling each item once instead of twice. Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items.
If you scan while you add items to your cart it takes less than 10 seconds to check out, regardless of how many items you have
That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
My local supermarket has a grand total of 1 regular cashier, versus 16 self checkouts. If you go during a busy time you have to stand in line. Since the regular cashier is basically only used by people who don’t want to or can’t use self-checkout for some reason (that is: usually elderly people) this line doesn’t move very fast.
When it’s a quiet time of day there often isn’t a regular cashier at all and you have to ask the person overseeing the self-checkout who then has to call someone to help you out as they cannot leave the self-checkout isle unattended so you end up waiting for a cashier to arrive.
Self checkout is always faster, by an order of magnitude.
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
I use self checkout at certain stores, and avoid it at others.
And the store that this whole post is about, Wal-Mart, is definitely one of the stores I’ll avoid self checkout at. Their system sucks.
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
It basically is implemented the exact same way in every supermarket in my country.
So we’re having a conversation about the Wal-Mart style self checkouts, which you’ve not only never experienced, but apparently can’t even imagine.
To borrow from an earlier comment of yours, we’re in an “alternate reality,” so your conversation should be grounded in that understanding.
The system you describe sounds good, however, it’s nothing I’ve ever encountered. May I ask where you live?
The Netherlands.
Here is a video of the hand terminal in action (in Dutch, but you’ll get the gist of it)
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time. This is to try to prevent theft. If you have more items than will fit into one bag, you have to periodically remove that bag and start a new bag. If you bump something or move things around while you bag (there’s very little room to work with), you often get one of these errors.
Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
I’ve never been in a store that has this. What stores in what country are you referring to? The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts. It probably has to use RFID or something and be able to effectively compare all items you’re walking out with to what all was in the transaction. Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
Anyway, I think most of the people who are raving about how great self-checkout is are those who only buy a handful of items at a time, probably not stocking up on groceries or buying enough for a family.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them, people with full carts and the lines move very slowly compared to the ones with a cashier, where for the same length of line, my wait time is much shorter and then someone who’s better at it than me, with a conveyor belt and ability to scan quickly does it, and there is usually also another person bagging, or if not I can bag as they scan (depending on the store).
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time.
Sounds like a stupid system.
What stores in what country are you referring to?
Pretty much every supermarket in the Netherlands.
Here is a video of it in action
The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts.
There is no anti theft system other than randomized bag checks where they check up to 10 items from your bag to see if you scanned them. Takes about 1 minute and with daily supermarket visits this happens maybe once a month or so. (I think there is some kind of reputation system linked to your store loyalty card).
Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
You scan your receipt af the exit gate (you can also scan a barcode from the store’s app or choose a tiny receipt that only contains the exit barcode). You have to go through one or these gates regardless of wether you go through self checkout or not.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them
There are almost never lines at self checkout. There are 16 self checkout stations vs only one regular cashier. Self checkout is super fast and even if they are all occupied one usually frees up in less than a minute.
Sounds like a stupid system.
Yes! Now you’re getting it. I’m glad you have a system you like in your country, but this thread is about Walmart in the US. Yet for some reason you want to keep telling us we’re wrong about something you have no experience with, somehow thinking we’re talking about what you have in your country.
self checkout cannot remove anti-theft devices.
I’ve never seen anti-theft devices on items in a supermarket.
on clothing and tech???
Clothing and tech in a supermarket?
near the letters and hygene products?
From my personal experience, scanning things by yourself instead of more experienced cashier is somewhat slower (maybe 20-40% for large amounts?) for reasons you provided. The thing is, you don’t have to replace one cashier with one self-checkout, instead you may put like 5 of them and assign one employee to supervise them and solve things that need intervention like verifying age. Also when not in use (low amount of customers) they probably cost tiny fraction of employee’s wage. Idk about thefts though.
Self checkout isn’t supposed to be for more than 10 or 15 items in most stores… obviously it would be less convenient in those cases.
Self checkout works fine for large amounts of items. You grab a portable scanner at the entrance and scan items as you put them in your cart. When you arrive at checkout you already scanned all your items and all you have to do is pay.
Unfortunately not an option for most stores where I live.
Self checkout is great for stealing!
It’s not stealing, I paid for that six-pack of bananas and two steak shaped bananas!
Because the store is packed, they only have 2 cashiers on shift and I want to go home.
It’s almost as if they do underman the tills on purpose to force people to do the checkout work themselves for free …
Yeah, I wish they’d staff more tills too.
They are HUGELY advantageous to shoplifters. My local grocery store did it for a few years and stopped all together.
I agree with the boomers on this one. I’m not in the habit of providing free labor to a corporation I don’t even work for.
Do you also demand to have underpaid workers standing all day to bag your groceries?
If it was up to me, they wouldn’t be forced to stand all shift or be underpaid, but since I’m not in charge of shit I can’t change their company’s policies.
I agree! I was at a Walmart one time and some chick ran out right by us at a high speed. We had no idea what was going on but apparently she was stealing. The one worker said as they walked by us “you got all these people standing around doing nothing and they couldn’t stop her?” It was a smart ass comment. Did that employee really believe that I would risk my life for Walmart, of all places? I don’t work there, I’m not security, I’m not a police officer. Not my problem.
Boy, you’re not gonna be happy when you learn how food stores used to work. They’ve been offloading things labor used to do onto the customers for a century.
Which makes it even worse
I actually prefer being able to choose my own produce and meats.
Edit: I definitely get suckered in by the impulse purchasing though.
have fun waiting in line i guess? while i zip through the self checkout in a fraction of the time
also, do you live in jersey? if not, then you’re pumping your own gas, bless your heart
The lines are usually minimal (1 or 2 people) during the time of day I typically go shopping, and I drive an electric that is charged in my garage.
Then pay for delivery and get it right to your door…
Cashiers and baggers are underpayed and forced to stand, if you want someone to chat to, you should pay extra. But you don’t want to pay more for groceries to pay people a living wage, the solution is to pay for delivery, sorry that still removes the ability to chat, but they aren’t obligated to, they only need to scan your groceries. Why do you think they need to do more?
These people being forced to stand all day in the USA is pure insanity looking from the outside.
Yup. There’s no reason they couldn’t have a stool.
I don’t think, nor did I say, they needed to do more. I’m also not particularly fond of small talk, so I dont typically chat with them. They’re paid to do a job, so why would I offer to do that job for free?
It’s easier to steal shit. So pay yourself with a nice cheap can of Pinot Gris.
Stealing is wrong.
If you see someone steal food, no you didn’t.
I’d rather “work” than wait behind people with 100+ items. I can be out the door in 2 minutes.
even faster if u skip some items from being scanned
Based
Why bother going through the checkout at all, the fastest way out is straight through the door. Unrelated, the weather is changing so I’m thinking of buying a really big coat, and I’ll want pockets for my keys and other essentials.
I don’t know where you live but here theft is a crime and very antisocial and despicable.
Someone has to pay for the thieves and prices rise because they have to compensate for theft. Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices, which, in essence, is yet again against consumers.
I don’t know where YOU live but Walmart is one of the biggest thieves in the USA. People working there still have to collect government assistance because they pay too little to live on.
it gives retail a free card to jack prices
so blame the corpos for that. not your neighbour stealing some chicken.
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re being facetious.
I thought you were fully serious, but then I hit the line
Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices,
And assumed you were just poking fun and the poor widdle corporations and their giant profit margins, but then you continued with your paragrap, and now I’m not sure again…
But maybe you can explain where all the downvotes come from, because I don’t understand.
Is thievery good? Only when thieving from companies? Is is socially acceptable to take what is not yours from others? Only from companies? Or from a stranger who has more than you? From a friend? What’s this all about?
Fuck the corpos, choom.
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exactly. ofc nothing is black or white. many fail to realize!
appeal to ignorance.
Yeah, it’s completely ethical to steal from big corporations. They steal from you every single day. Their entire existence is based on the amoral exploitation of other humans. Other people, small businesses, a very very very few medium-large corporations, it’s not ethical to steal from, they’re not a disgusting blight rotting away the foundations of society. Nor a friend, or stranger, or small business, etc. for the same reason.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly hard concept.
No, I’m serious in all statements. Corpos will jack prices on any occassion that offers itself, so keep the number of those low.
Don’t worry, even if we don’t give them the theft excuse they’ll just lie about it anyway and do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of our input or reality. If a retail corporation wants to raise prices, they will raise prices. There is nothing you or me or anyone else can do about it.
The only winning move is not to play the game.
Bro relax. It was a joke
eh, only partially…
Shoppin’ with Hoffman
Someone needs to write “Ok, Boomer” on this notice.
The writer seem sympathetic to their workers I. This case.
Management can fuck right the hell off. Self checkout is taking jobs away from people and getting us to work for free.
I once asked a cashier in Germany if she thought self-checkouts would take away her job. She said she liked them because there’s enough to do anyway and they take away the boring task of cashier-ing.
Though there is always a person standing next to the self-checkouts helping people if something is not working or they need to approve alcohol. They always seem pretty bored just standing around.
Do you feel the same about self serve gas?
Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.
If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.
In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I’m smarter now and wouldn’t use self checkout even if they gave a discount.
I’ve driven through Oregon before back when you weren’t allowed to pump your own gas and it felt ridiculous and inconvenient waiting for an employee to come pump gas for you. But maybe that’s just because I’m accustomed to self serve.
For groceries it’s nice to have the option to do self checkout. If I have a small number of items then self checkout is faster/easier. If I have a large number of items then going through the line with the cashier is faster/easier.
Tell me where I can find a place that pumps it for me at the same price and that’s where I’ll be getting it.
I like them because it makes my bagging more efficient. At the lanes, if I’m getting a decent amount of groceries, I usually end up bagging for a while after I’ve paid and feel like a dick because I’m in the way of the people getting rung up behind me.
At self checkouts, I take it out of the cart, scan, then stick it right in the bag. Even better if they don’t have the stupid weighing thing that assumes I’m trying to steal shit if they don’t micromanage every item going into my bag.
Also, in this case, management is telling workers to not make fun of people who don’t want to use self checkouts.
I’n Italy we use barcode scanners during the shopping and you scan everything. After that you only pay.
Super useful as well because you can price check all the groceries while you pick them up and scan
That’s an option at some stores in the US. I believe Walmart has that option for Walmart+ members, and I know Sam’s Club has the option available in their app for all members.
That would be nice, though I’ve got some questions.
- Do you bag as you shop, then?
- Do you need to involve staff if you change your mind about an item?
- Do they have a bag/receipt checker doing random searches in many stores?
- Are all stores like that?
1 yes 2 no, you click “delete item” and re-scan what you want to delete 3 yes 4 more and more, if they don’t usually I wont shop there
Don’t feel like a dick for that! That again is management’s fault!
Remember that bagging your groceries used to be part of the service and part of the price, they eliminated that job to increase their profit margins!
At least around here Walmart still bags them for me, except they now have the cashier doing it instead of a dedicated employee for bagging.
With self checkout I can literally get in and out the grocery store in like 10-30 minutes where 98% of the time is me choosing products instead of waiting 5-15 minutes in the cashier lane waiting for old people to put their shit on the rolling thing
However, you’re increasing the client turnover, doing the cashier’s work and not getting a single discount for it. All of this while prices for groceries keep increasing.
Does that really seem ok to you?
This. I don’t even go in the store unless I just need a few things now or meat. In and out. If I’m getting a lot of stuff I’m making an order and picking it up. How’s that for job creation they do the shopping for me. I’ve been toying with even getting it delivered. Those large stores have tons of work to do like keeping it stocked up and trucks unloaded and what not, cooking, cleaning and some even have a place to get your car serviced. Hell maybe there would even be someone to help with electronics for once… I get it though sometimes you just want the full shopping experience. Staff it accordingly if lots of people like a cashier. We can have the best of both worlds people
This says much about respect and social competence in this society when the first instinct is to mock and abuse someone with different priorities than yours.
When they are that rude and stupid they have it coming
You mean “rude” in asking for a cashier? Not sure I understand
asking for a cashier?
That would be normal
“I don’t work here”
Is a rude response to the question whether they would like to use the self-checkout.
Ehhhhh very mildly rude if at all. Like it’s not the most polite response but people are allowed to express themselves too
I agree, but the argument is that this should go both ways.
Ok boomer is hardly offensive, unless the target is found to be rather fragile
They didn’t ask.
service is not something the client has to ask for but something the vendor provides. Just like you hold a door open for someone entering behind you, you provide that service, unasked. Having to ask for service is a failure in itself, it’s just “no service”.
Can’t you read or do you just want to be right?
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You mean demanding special attention rather than using the self-checkout like everyone else? Not sure I understand.
I expect that the management is responsible for adequate staffing. Self-checkout typically doesn’t even work. Not a boomer, not USian, YMMV.
Self checkouts don’t work where you are? Odd.
Typically they need attendant attention, to be reset to be usable. Which makes it rather pointless. My expectation that checkout lines are to be adequately staffed with cashiers. This is, however, increasingly not a safe assumption, in Germany. I expect the situation to further deteriorate. As does everything else.
Here there are like 10 self-checkouts per 1 employee and they’re just there if the machine gets confused about a weight. It’s much better, and faster than waiting in the queue for a manned checkout. I can’t imagine wanting to go backward, where’s the benefit?
“service” is no “special attention” but I get to the conclusion our misunderstanding might be a socio-cultural thing
- I don’t work here. Stop trying to get me to do the job for free, either pay a cashier to check me out or fuck off.
- There’s an epidemic of these machines not working and then the shopper getting charged with shoplifting over it, Wal-Mart is the worst at doing this.
Then offer a discount for self checkout.
But also, fuck off walmart
