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When you see this, you should be thinking “look what they fucking took from us.”
Once upon a time, those lanes all ran. The CEO’s megayacht is the reason you have to stand in line or check out yourself.
This has been Target and Walmart for the last 30 or 40 years. They build them with 30 lanes with the idea of Xmas rush but then only have one or two lanes open no matter how many customers are waiting.
This was a problem long before self checkout or higher minimum wages or any of that.
They don’t even open the other lanes for xmas rush anymore…
TBF, I haven’t seen a Christmas rush requiring all the lanes open since maybe 2010 or so. Combination of ordering online and/or just buying less I think.
Hell, 20 years ago when I worked at Walmart we usually had about half the registers open most days. More when we were expecting a crowd. There was a fair amount of downtime, but not an excessive amount.
or check out yourself
Thanks CEO’s megayacht. I’ll always pick self checkout over forced human interaction.
You don’t to talk to the cashiers, no one is forcing you to do anything and they won’t even remember you, it’s fine. Why so mad about having the smallest interaction with another human being?
i dont think you win this discussion by talking down other peoples fears / inconvenoences. a lot of people generally just really dont like this kind of interaction, and while i agree with the whole megayacht thing, but people’s preferences should not be talked down upon
That’s very clearly not what I was saying, though. That person was acting like we’re forced to talk to the cashier and literally that’s not what happens. You rock up, they scan their stuff and maybe say “hello” and then you can just pack your bags and say “credit” and “no receipt” and take off.
Look I’m honestly fine with a self-checkout lane in some large stores and I’m not saying that there aren’t people with some much more serious issues they’re dealing with but we got way to many people with no excuses who just hate other human beings and that’s weird.
At my place a few remaining workers of normal checkout posts frequently run to self-checkout kiosks whenever they encounter random errors or booze (ID requirement), while the lines of customers form and grow on every side. They don’t get paid more for doing extra, their further empoyment is at risk, and their work day is full of complaints on how sloppy both they are and how wacky that tech is. Somehow, yet to surprise of no one, the idea that could get rid of unnecessary discomfort ended up salting the wound.
It’s almost like the driving force behind such innovations has rabies.
The CEO’s megayacht thanks you for doing the cashier’s work for free
My labour ain’t free.
This is why I always use the cashier lanes. I can goof around and check my phone while I wait. The store can pay somebody to check my items out
You think that’s bad, did you know some stores make you pick the stuff up from the shelves instead of the worker doing it for you!
Yeah, I’m not sure why I would be bothered by having to scan my own stuff, especially since I get through self-checkouts much faster. I value my time more than saving that physical action.
I beg to differ. I don’t have pay attention in the normal checkout - that time is fully mine.
In the self checkout that’s time I can’t use on anything else.
Its specifically because I value my time I avoid the self checkout unless I am only picking up a couple things.
really depends. If you are a busy buiseness person, sure. but if you just stand there and wait for rhe people infront of you, you might as well do the self-checkout if its faster
Ah yes the valuable time you have to spend standing in line, especially since where I’m from it takes longer to use regular checkouts.
I’d rather do the scanning and be out there quicker.
I mostly use the spare time to post on lemmy. On avg I probably get one more post in than the avg lemmy self checkout enthusiast.
I get back to home sooner where I can utilize my home PC to post with extra horse power
Yeah fuck workers amirite
Do you think about the shoe shiners losing their job when you choose to wear sports shoes instead of dress shoes? Would that be a valid argument to stop you? It’s not my responsibility to go out of my way to make sure certain jobs stay relevant.
Hunter-gatherers must have been real mad when agriculture was invented
Little known fact, serfs bought a bunch of yachts with their ill-gotten hunter gatherer wealth, which is where the term “surfing” comes from
Stores having you do labor for free to replace workers and increase profit is not the same thing as a shoe shiner losing their job because of new types of shoes, like not even remotely the same issue.
You’re not going out of your way to make sure certain jobs stay relevant, you’re being forced to do free labor so these companies can kill those jobs, and you’re seemingly complacent in that.
I’m not being forced to go to self-checkout, I deliberately choose to do so wherever it’s available. Choosing not to do so for the benefit of cashiers’ jobs would be going out of my way.
To be fair, my experience with self-checkout does not match what I see in the comments here. It has always been faster than the regular check-out wherever I go.
There used to be a Fresh & Easy near where I lived some years ago that had zero employees in store. I just went in, got what I needed, paid at self-checkout, and I was on my way. Perfect shopping experience.
Edit: already mentioned somewhere else in the comments, stores used to have all products behind the counter and you’d have to ask the merchant for the products (there are still a lot of places like that). But people don’t complain about having to do the labor of picking up their own products from the shelves. Because you grew up used to this new way of doing things and you find it normal. People just try to rationalize their aversion to change.
It used to be that you went to the counter and told the store worker what products you wanted and they’d collect them for you. Now I’m doing free labour collecting it all myself.
Have you tried our self checkout. We make you work for us so we don’t have to hire more employees and you pay the exact same price.
yes, but some of us got social anxiety and would much rather not have to interact with people when shopping.
And still, you can ignore the person, swipe card and you keep someone in a job.
Staff don’t always want to talk, but they still would like a job.
If we stay in our comfort zone, our comfort zone shrinks smaller.
I work retail too and I hate having to interact with people just the same. i ain’t opposed to having an employee ring me up cause some store don’t have self checkout. but I like having the option provided to me
also anxiety is wayyyy more than just comfort zones
I am someone that has had anxiety and sought professional help for it.
The way I didn’t improve it, was by avoiding it and staying in my comfort zone. I had to push myself into situations that made me anxious in order to de-arm it. So the bodies fight or flight reflex doesn’t kick in. So the body becomes aware it isn’t a threat that requires that physical reaction. Expanding my comfort zone if you will. Obviously some folk will have very valid reasons why that approach may be much more challenging, but avoiding supermarket checkout staff is an extreme level of avoidance. Professional help would be much better for that than self-service tills.
If we stay in our comfort zone, our comfort zone shrinks smaller.
nah
I don’t get social anxiety, but sometimes I dont want to talk. Just through in some “yeah, that’s right” and “Oh yeah?”. They can just talk while you think about the next loot drop you’ll get in your favorite game.
They won’t know the difference.
Alternatively, if you’re sick of people talking to you. Just break the convo and start trying to sell them stuff. People shut up real quick.
Just through in some “yeah, that’s right” and “Oh yeah?”
You’re already asking too much from someone with social anxiety.
Just break the convo and start trying to sell them stuff.
Again, what use is this advice to someone who will spend the rest of the week losing sleep over whether that “yeah, that’s right” was used appropriately or not?
If you can’t say 3 words to someone and blow off convos. How can you even survive in the workplace? Social anxiety, sure, but too much for an “Oh yeah?” Come on.
How will you interact with co-workers or customers?
the walmart here must be experiencing a high rate self-checkout ‘discounts’. they’ve added more ‘watchers’ who are actually watching everything. enough extra bodies now that they could just staff the regular registers, and with less waiting in line for the customer.
They won’t staff them until they consistently have longer queues and see a risk.
Only way to get more checkouts is favour shops with staff and shorter queues that are staffed.
Do you feel the same way about getting the stuff off the shelves yourself?
It is the store who wants payment from you and is responsible for collecting it.
It is the customer who wants an item so he may be reponsible for picking it up.
Not how it uses to work.
Its wonderful how humans don’t have a problem with contradictions when they see one side as “normal”
There aren’t people who will lose the jobs they currently hold because customers get their own products from the store, but there are people who will lose their jobs if everyone switches to self checkout. It’s not a contradiction to view them differently, just like it’s not a contradiction to view the sewing machine and generative ai differently
But people did lose their jobs when shops switched to customers getting their own stuff off the shelves.
Yes, and had I been asked at the time, I would have opposed it, unless efforts were made to provide anyone laid off as a result with equal or better work. Given how businesses and governments treat people working as cashiers, that doesn’t seem likely to happen for people laid off as a result of self checkout kiosks.
I’ve stopped using the self-check out all together. My grocery store has clearly been trying to do more with less. So I want the bean counter to see people using normal check outs so they’re more inclined to hire more people. It’s sold to customers as “a convenience” when really it’s just having 1 person watch 4-12 self-checkouts instead of hiring more people and having 3 or 4 lanes open.
Also, self check outs are prone to failure, and if multiple fail at a time there’s usually a single person having to manage all of them.
My personal belief, if you can’t carry the items in your hands, then you have too much stuff. I find it very inconsiderate people who roll up with full carts. I don’t care you’re reason, but especially if you’re like “I have social anxiety”, buddy everyone is glaring at you. You couldn’t have more eyes on you and more people pissed off at you. And then if there’s any error, even more people are looking at you and you’re still going to have to deal with someone.
A well trained person will get you through the check-out much faster. I’ve also had cashier’s double check items to ensure they’re good (like eggs), or apply coupons for you, or in rare instances I’ve had something fail to scan so they do an over-ride and set whatever it was to $1 because they just don’t care.
Meh, it’s more efficient to make less trips to the store and buy all you need in one go, than to go to the store often (less fuel/electricity/time). Some people have large families and multi-generational households as well.
Yes, and it’s more efficient to use a normal check out. Which is what people have been doing for hundreds of years. If you’re going through self-check out and you have enough food for multi-generation, you’re an asshole. We used to have the express lane, which was for 10 items or less (though it should have said fewer), which was meant to get people with only a few things, through quickly. Self checkout replaced the express lanes. And now people will waste 10-30 minutes scanning things because they have a full cart and can’t think about another person, they only consider themselves.
Yes, I did. It’s faster. It’s the only way I shop since it’s been introduced.
The good ones are better because I can scan faster than your trained clerks. (I never had a job scanning so I’m not trained, and my wife does most of our shopping so I’m out of practice - despite that I’m still faster than most clerks)
I keep hearing this argument, but having to put all my stuff up for scanning fucking sucks. In my ideal world stuff gets scanned when I put it into my cart and at the end I simply pay. Everything else is dogshit. Sadly, there are too few supermarkets that offer this.
This is the Target in Hixon, TN everytime i go there. I’ve stood in a 20 frustrated person long self-checkout line with at least a dozen regular checkouts collecting dust and not a soul with a red vest in sight. One poor lady helping 5 or so self cheout kiosks. The Starbucks at the entrance has more people behind the counter. And they still wonder why they’re failing spectacularly.
“Obviously it’s the checkout supervisor’s fault, they’re too expensive. Minimum wage for 8 hours with 4 hours unpaid overtime?! How do you expect a corporation to lose that much money to their employees and still fulfill their responsibilities of producing record revenue for their shareholders. Obviously the answer is to let go of the checkout supervisor’s at our stores and contract out one checkout supervisor to five stores and have them rotate between them in their own vehicle. It’s not like they really do anything anyway, they’re just their to make the consumer feel better.”
Said a CEO to his board.
First time I’ve seen my little corner of the world mentioned here. The Hixson Target is still wayy better than the Gunbarrel one. I’m convinced that Target is single-handedly keeping the company afloat.
Howdy, neighbor!
I know Hixon as “that Aubrey’s location that some of the employees from my local Aubrey’s location moved to.”
Target fucking depresses the living shit out of me. The only reason I ever go is that I’m a school bus driver and for some reason half of the tips I get at Christmas and the end of the school year (why the fuck do people tip school bus drivers? I have no idea) are Target gift cards. It always has Kmart-at-the-end vibes with half-empty shelves and employees that look like they want to kill you. And I don’t understand how they can maintain a grocery section at all - the selection is poor and everything costs twice as much as it does at normal grocery stores.
For some unknown reason, the stores all seem to have been inadequately constructed. The floor shakes at every multi-story Target I’ve ever been in.
I’ve actually found that Target groceries are cheaper overall than the major grocery store chains, even the shittiest ones. I live in a major U.S. city so ymmv. The only big chain that beats Target’s grocery prices is Walmart. But you have to psych yourself up to shop there because it’s always a hellscape and I’m usually too tired for all that.
Aldi’s/Lidl/Trader Joe’s are also always very economical but they have a limited selection of items.
I live in the Philly 'burbs and Target is wildly more expensive than the big supermarkets, which themselves are lot pricier than LiDL and Aldi. I can see where that might be different in a big city proper since things are generally so much more expensive there.
The reason to have several more checkouts is for holiday rushes. Under normal day to day operations they don’t use them all.
they could use them all. but they allow self checkout to have a line. it’s ok though, the self checkout discounts usually help offset.
the self checkout discounts
Thee what now? You must live in some magical non-Capitalist hellhole if you’re actually getting a discount for ringing yourself up!
They’re referring to what the legal system defines as “theft”
theft. i’m speaking of theft.
Shit, I can’t believe I whooshed that!
(To be fair, my local supermarket has scales and cameras to prevent most shenanigans… so I have to sneakily pocket small but expensive items while still walking around the store!)
Be careful with that. Some stores will let you walk out even if they notice, until they have enough evidence to nail you for more than just petty theft.
And you don’t have to stop for store employees.
That’s the thing - they don’t have the store employees stop you once you breach the $500 threshhold. They bring in a police officer to arrest you.
that’s true now but that isn’t how it used to be before the self checkouts came. It was not unusual to enter a grocery or big box or general goods store and see every single checkout lane staffed by humans during daylight hours. You could almost always go right to a waiting checker or get in the shortest line and be next in line. The grocery stores operated like this for many decades!
How’d you get a picture of my local grocery store?
For real though, one of those cashiers would be on the self checkout helping 50 people at once and the cashier who has to actually scan stuff has 5 people in their line but all of them have enough food and goods for an army.
I always go to the cashier.
I hate self checkout.
The payment flow is always way too confusing, I hate scanning and bagging…
Please keep the cashiers.
same. The local self checkouts are a sensory nightmare for me. There’s blinking lights I can’t avoid, a camera+screen I can’t ignore… I just can’t deal with it.
local home depot only has self checkout. I don’t go there any more.
I guess I’m the opposite. The sensory nightmare for me involves having to interact with strangers, and self checkout offers the utopian promise of avoiding all that. But it fails only too often, as the slightest problem brings the clerk over. It’s a bait and switch for my introverted ass.
That makes sense. I was raised Southern [USA], so I can fake polite conversation with the best of them. If anything, I’m too chatty if the checkout clerk gives the slightest sign of talkativeness.
But that’s the thing, different people feel better in different methods, so why can’t we keep both and let each one choose? Some would even use both methods in different moments Why does things be always forced into others because “it’s the future”?
Maybe that’s it for me…
I already hate how bright those stores are with their artificial lights.
Plus the other shoppers are super chaotic in those lanes, and they have ill defined spaces.
Self checkout with app where you can put the items in your own bag or backpack as you shop, is the fucking goat
I have never tried that and I’m not sure how much I would like that
I understand. For me it also took a couple of times to get over the shoplifting feeling 😂
My supermarket is the opposite. The registers have a few people with like 2 items, and old grampa with 4 weeks worth of groceries is learning how to use the self checkout, and talking back to it when it says there’s an unexpected item on the scale.
Sorry I’m with grandpa on this. Fuck your unexpected item in bagging area.
Goddamn it, I talk to the self checkout, and I don’t have any grandchildren that I know of.
Just go to the self checkout. It’s so much easier to steal from
Does your local grocery not have the AI cameras set to over-react mode where it flags things that get scanned and put into the bagging area too quickly? Or when you scan a heavy item and put it under the cart since it would never fit in a bag anyway?
If not, it’s something you can look forward to soon!
I have had workers override it in my favour plenty of times
Honestly, stealing from the manned checkouts is easier. I just tell them “This bag is from another store” and while that’s true, I bought the bag from aldi, the contents are all from here. And they don’t get paid enough to even look up or deviate from their programming.
Isn’t it normal to reuse bags from other shops?
When the store is charging you for new bags it is. I’ll bring any bag I want!
don’t get paid enough to even look up or deviate from their programming
Also, it’s literally not their responsibility to do anything about shoplifting attempts. Normally there is a security person (yes, one) employed in the store, but I wonder if they are only there to tackle aggressive behaviour or to actually peek into people’s bags and pockets. As a till worker, you can point out that those things are actually from the store, but I think it’s not legal to require you to enforce anything - especially because it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) in your job description.
Yes, sometimes, it’s IDGAF, sometimes it’s lack of critical thinking, but more often than not it’s “everyone knows but obviously it’s out of our scope to make a scene for a jar of gherkins or a cheese wheel”. Nobody will think much about it if you actually look like you need stuff, but based on my several years of experience, in the majority of the cases the employees clearly know when someone is trying to do petty tricks, they definitely judge you for that (unless you’re in need of course, but you can still ask and get stuff), the employees just won’t act for the above 3 reasons.
I just go to those because it’s faster
false logic. It’s faster for you… only if there’s an open self-checkout. I’ve stood in a self-checkout line waiting while customers try to figure out how to use the machines and there’s one employee trying to run around fixing all the problems. The average employee will always be faster than the average customer.
If you’re going for faster then pick-up or delivery would be your course of action. Self checkout will always be statistically better for the companies profits versus speed of checkout or customer experience.
Usually same place hosts like at least 4 self-checkouts compared to 1 regular lane. So unless the self system is shit, it’s probably going to be faster
I would say more 2:1 on some older designs but with newer self checkouts you have walls and additional shelving being added for goods instead of just the normal “end cap” style of traditional lanes. Also, reducing the working space of a checkout lane creates more problems with larger purchases. Have you ever tried to ring up a full cart of groceries with a tiny weight-shelf? Shit’s horrific and usually you end up needing to get another cart to start putting items in before yours is empty (if the system even allows you to “remove” items from the bagging area).
Again, I think your process is faster, but the average check-out speed is going to be longer which the company doesn’t care about since they’re not paying people to check out. If you’ve never had a problem checking out I think you’re in the minority, everyone has had something flagged or “attendant needed” during a check out at this point.
When the picking, processing, packing, transportation, and shelving of products is all automated I’ll be a withered old man and will be damned if I don’t steal everything not bolted down.
My old bank branch had thirteen teller stations and two tellers since at least 2018.
My Bank does Apple shop style now. Get there, to the techbro with the glasses and tablet, “ah, please wait a bit, person X for problem Y is availlable in half a hour”, wait, tell them the same thing again.
Just in case you’re wondering, they actually do man all those checkouts during superbowl weekend
My first job I worked at a grocery store that had I think 12 checkouts and only 4 cashiers on at most times. The exception was when they did a special “2 hour sale” during which time it was busy enough for all stations to be staffed, but also it was basically guaranteed that you’d get to go home early on those shifts because it would die down pretty quick and they’d cut the unnecessary staff for the day
And holidays.
One line has 8 people waiting with a bunch of groceries each but the line is moving steadily
The other line has only two people … a little old lady at the cashier is holding up the line because she wants to process three out of date coupons, a return item with a label that said it was past its best before date, and a loaf of bread that ‘doesn’t look right’.
Even at the very height of Xmas Eve my Tesco has maybe half the tills open. I don’t know why they haven’t just got rid of the others, it’s free real estate. You could pop a Timpsons in there.
Look, no one in self checkout is in a hurry or can figure out how to use it, one item won’t scan, they put something on the scale and need assistance from the attendant who isn’t paying attention but isn’t doing anything otherwise. It’s a great system
Heh. Butt.
All of those are self checkout. Those 2 are also busy helping other people.
I’m just pissed my grocery store got rid of self checkout
Would’ve been icing on the cake if they were conjoined twins.
