Got a dozen cans of soup. Scanned ten cans of soup. Got two pounds of bulk pine nuts ($34.99/lb). Paid for two pounds of bulk barley ($2.49/lb). Etc.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue" – Gabe Newell
Oh come on, really?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about some big chain losing some money, for me it’s a matter of principle to not fuck with the system unless really needed.
Two cans of soup, I don’t care. But pine nuts? Cheating the system for some “luxury” goods and not some essentials is pretty low.Corporate is cheating the system just to save a few bucks in wages. I see it as OP balancing the books.
I would have been more understanding if it was always on the level of two extra cans of soup or comparable.
But 2 lbs of pine nuts is not balancing the scales, that’s abusing the system.
It depends on the country, but in the US I see nothing wrong with this. Wage disparity is so high here that taking items from a store owned by billionaires doesn’t feel like much of a crime. I wouldnt do it, personally, unless I was less well off financially, but I am most definitely not going to judge someone else for doing it.
I mean I could understand (but not necessarily approve) if it would be a few everyday groceries here and there. But pine nuts? 2 lbs? Sorry, but that’s just ridiculous.
I can completely understand if people have to steal food to make ends meet. It’s a tragedy that they have to do it, but it’s the system’s fault and not theirs.
But OP doesn’t seem to fit into that category.To be honest, my uncivilized self doesn’t even know what a pine nut is, so if you say it’s a luxury item, I’ll take your word for it. In that case, I can agree that it’s a bit ridiculous and selfish. Still I wouldn’t call the cops or anything. If it was my friends or family I’d most definitely give them a hard time about it, though.
You go mate !
Well, I work in retail exactly in this field for chain of roughly 100 small grocery stores mostly in rural villages in central/eastern Europe. We do have couple larger stores, where larger doesn’t mean big in global scale, for us it means they need 2 cash registers most of the day.
We do have few stores equipped with self check out registers too. There are 3 types for us and all of them with different pros and cons.
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Bigger stores. We have 2 stores where we installed SCOs as an addition to regular check outs. It works great if you have just a couple items and don’t want to wait for those 3 people standing in line. I prefer to use them with most of my shopping there, because they are often empty/instantly available unlike regular check outs.
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We have 3 small village stores with one regular check out that we expanded with one SCO. These shops are open 24/7, while cashiers are there for roughly 8 hours a day and the rest is full automatic. You get in through ID, pick your stuff, check out and leave. It is great idea, but prety novel in this region and people are not used to it yet. Remember we’re talking about villages with less than 1000 people.
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We also have 2 completely self check out stores. Meaning there’s no live personnel tobinteract with, only one person to go in, refill shelves and leavd. There’s only one SCO and it also works 24/7 as number 2. This is in the smallest villages, with under 500 people and it’s pretty successful so far. People are happy they have place to shop locally, because if it wasn’t for this they’d be left without shop whatsoever.
Just my 2 cents. Also bear in mind this is Europe, where people are definitely not used to take long drives very often. Especially not because your everyday shopping needs. Be happy to answer if you had some questions.
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Realize that many elite schools are pay to win and these business failures make sense.
In a new stadium in my city you swipe your credit card, pick up food or drink in a little monitored area and walk out with your items. It is an interesting idea but it is also creepy. That’s probably what stores will be like eventually – at least the ones with the resources to implement something that expensive and complex.
As far as self checkout, I don’t mind it for small orders or when it is more convenient for me at the grocery store. Unexpected item in bagging is a bad consumer experience, and buying produce/alcohol is also a pain. If I feel like I am going to run into trouble I head for the traditional lines.
I really despise the ones at big box hardware stores that show a video of you checking out. I’m not stealing, don’t judge me or make me judge myself with that unflattering angle.
It doesn’t work everywhere. Smaller store like CvS? Sure
Being watched like a hawk in Walmart? Not a comfortable experience and would rather work with someone face to face
I enjoy Sam’s Club’s “Scan and Go” feature in their app. I scan my items and pay in the app. I never have to interact with a soul, and that’s peachy keen in my book.
self checkout is a default for me
Love self Checkout, but if I can’t pay cash I’m not using it. And sadly they’re all card only here …
This article really sounds like it describes an alternate reality to me. Interesting to see how many people in the comments seem to hate self checkouts but here in the UK they seem to work fine. Shops seem to have found the right balance. In the same shop you’ll have queues advancing rapidly at self checkouts and people run tills with shorter queues for customers who prefer the human interaction.
I don’t get their point that shoppers “need to be socialized into using self-checkout”. Who ever needed to be persuaded? It’s just that they try hard to make it painful. Self checkout was always an over-complicated conglomeration of parts with poor usability, then poorly thought out additions to try to control theft and no counter space . It just never works well. Maybe we should “socialize” retailers into getting their shit together she it can work more smoothly
Consumers want this technology to work, and welcomed it with open arms.
That’s an actual sentence from that actual article. The fuck? I read it, like, four times. Is that even - what??
I think I used self checkout once in my life. I very quickly realized that they’re pushing their work onto me and never went to self checkout again.
I also think those jobs matter. Not great jobs, sure. But they are jobs. I’m sure tech will eliminate cashier jobs someday but I don’t see self checkout doing so.
Those jobs may be important but they’re not the customer’s responsibility. My goal is to get out of there as conveniently as possibly for me, and sometimes that involves self-checkout.
Of course I was recently on the other side of this conversation when trying to buy beer at self-checkout. The other person claimed it’s easy, but I claimed the extra steps and edit made it less convenient
My troubles with self checkout usualy has to do with the confirmation weight scale which slows things down tremendously. Sam’s self check out featured a lack of scale (Sam’s also had a scan-as-you-go app my wife loved).
The two places I go to that have self-checkout seem to have disabled the scales. The only thing that is an understandable hassle is having to check my ID for alcohol.
One of those places knows me well enough to authorize the sale before I can get my ID out, which might be a sign that I have a different problem than the hassle of having my ID checked at the self-checkout.
they also often dont work with any discounts or bulk buy
Self checkouts don’t have those here. Just scan all the barcodes. What is even the point of the scales?
I believe they were introduced as an inventory control mechanism, though they got way worse as customer-supplied bags became the norm.
But they already know what is sold by the scanned barcodes. What do the scales add to that?
It allows them to confirm what you bought is the same as what you scanned. It also makes sure you didn’t miss-count your multiple items. (Either double-scanning an item or failing to scan an item.)
Having now lived in lower-class areas and gentrified areas, stores that can afford a self-checkout kiosk tend to trust poor people less. (At the same time, they over-estimate their losses from theft or accidental shrinkage).
Here they just do random bag checks. When you press ‘pay’ there is a chance you get a notification to wait for an employee to check your bag. They then scan a random number of items from your bag (up to 10) and see if it matches what you scanned.
And my biggest problem is that the self-checkouts I see in stores around me do not accept cash (even though earlier there WERE cash-accepting models - in the chain now merged with another). So even if there are faster lines to the self-checkout, that doesn’t help me much.
Making customers bag their groceries for free is not a “cost saving measure” its a “cost shifting measure”
Over here stores are increasing their prices because people steal at the self-checkout. So they reduce costs by not having cashiers but then increase prices due to theft. Quite some logic.
You’d assume it’s an easy balance to make: if (saving on cashiers - loss due to theft) > 0 implement self-checkout else don’t implement.
Yes, but: They can shift the cost of theft onto consumers this way, without having to make their line item budget for payroll any bigger. The retailers don’t give a fuck as long as they’re not the ones paying.
Over here they increase their costs because we have no choice but to pay it.
and frankly the amount they lose is nothing to the amount they steal.
Insurance is more likely to pay for shrink than paychecks.
Recurring shrink isn’t going to be claimable. These customers are walking out with an extra case of Snapple not a TV.
Quite some logic.
Yeah, it’s win/win to the company. They save money on workers and charge more for the goods. They’re double dipping. It’s great… For them. But that’s the way the capitalist machine works and is going to continue working until we fix the whole damn thing. As unfortunate as it is, this is basically expected behavior in our current society.
I almost exclusivity self-checkout for groceries, and it had drastically sped up my checkout time as most people in my area opt to use traditional checkout and the stores are still keeping lots of lanes open (just closing the express lanes). The last 3 times I’ve used a non-self checkout, each time I was double charged for items or didn’t have reduced prices applied and didn’t notice because I was bagging.
This is the second article in the last month I’ve found here on the Fediverse pronouncing the death of self checkout and honestly I just don’t see it. Most of the stores around me have only just recently expanded their self-checkout areas and I vastly prefer using it unless I’ve got more than 25 items.
I’d honestly probably stop going to a store that decided to not allow me to check out on my own. Small talk and having to make a minimum wage worker suffer through it is just not something I want when I’m running to the store for a gallon of milk. I vastly prefer being able to throw in some earbuds, get my shopping, check out, and get out to having to interact with anyone while I’m just trying get my shit.
I am surprised too. Self checkout only intensified recently in my country. What is surprising is that the dislike seems to come from the corporate side. So it exist since 1990, and just now they realised they are loosing money on it. Pretty weird… But I’m all in on big corpo losing money because they didnt want to pay wages.
Mark my word: they installed self-Passport machine in Paris airport in planning for the Olympic tourists grand arrivals. It will be a disaster!! It doesnt work, it is slower than having an human check your pass, and a lot of travelers will be very angry at thoses machines. Plus I suspected you can trick them easily if you’re a criminal
