Their intent was to cut jobs/costs. They worked as designed. The user experience being improved was never the real goal of these, both on the employee and customer side. I’m fine using them for a small number of items/one item, but if I’m going to buy a bunch of things or anything that requires special handling (alcohol), I just skip them. I also skip them if there’s no line at a human checkout because I don’t want to drive those folks out of jobs either.
The whole “but those cashiers can get better jobs” line is such BS in a society like the US. It is just as likely that the cashier’s life might be seriously negatively impacted by losing a job and they might not be able to find another that works for them. I don’t know what will happen to that cashier when they lose their job, I am not in their shoes and I am tired of people being so callous towards destroying jobs like this. We don’t need to get rid of every cashier job to make society more efficient, it’s just what antisocial people want and what greedy business execs want.
There are so many other places we can increase the efficiency of society (primarily by taxing the rich!) that firing cashiers down to the minimal number that can functionally manage a market front is absurd. It is like train freight companies “needing” to cut costs and have only one conductor on the train by themselves instead of two because the modern economy demands it… and it just doesn’t pass the smell test. A half mile long freight train isn’t an efficient enough movement of massive amounts of material to just say to hell with it, let’s pay two people to drive the train just in case one becomes incapacitated in an emergency?
I think the real question is why is the job of someone who oversees the process of members of a community collecting their food and paying for it so fucking miserable in the first place that people wouldn’t want to work that job for a fair wage? It shouldn’t on the face of it be a miserable job, though for sure a physical one. Why is the work environment so miserable that most people derisively assume nobody should be happy working this job for the rest of their lives?
The article says the expected cost savings haven’t been realized because people steal stuff and generally suck at scanning & bagging their own groceries.
Ah, the retail theft claim…
Hahaha, that’s awesome. I don’t believe it, but it is humorous.
Shoplifting was already an issue. Self checkout has scales to check what you’re bagging, and cameras. I simply don’t believe it’s caused a significant increase in theft, no matter how hard they try to claim it.
Further, any issues that stores have with theft/shoplifting is because they refuse to do anything about it. Thirty years ago we stopped shoplifters and took them to security where cameras recorded everything, and called the police to come pick em up. Hell, we usually had a cop on hand for this stuff, and much of security was staffed by cops/retired cops.
Fine, you’d rather let this be an insurance claim, then any issues you have with theft is no longer a concern to anyone, because clearly it’s not a concern to you (that is, the company).
People know they won’t be stopped/arrested. So there’s almost no risk to just walking out.
Why would grocery stores lie that shoplifting happens more at self-checkout?
deleted by creator
I’m not using it only because the two retailers in the country don’t need to have my credit card info and/or phone number.
This seems to be an implementation issue. In my neighbourhood discounter, in Germany, there’s three self-checkouts and while they’re a bit small they also don’t do any of that weighing and whatnot bullshit: You scan your stuff, pay, done. The only thing they can’t do is apply best-before rebates.
There’s also always a manned till open (or at the very least, when things are slow, a worker hanging out in the vicinity). In practice if the queue is empty you go there, if you have lots of stuff you go there (because it’s bound to be faster as you can focus on packing while things get scanned), otherwise you have the choice to use self-checkout. Never had to stand in line for self-checkout, before that happens they open another manned till. What the self-checkouts do is keep small purchases away from the manned tills when they’re busy which is exactly what they’re good for. I
I don’t like to interact with people, but I also don’t like to work for free for the owner of the chain, so I take one for the comrades and interact with the cashier.
My own bag. Hand scanner. Zip through the store while loading my bag. Easy check out. Hell no I don’t want to use the cashier line.
As someone who has shoped in the us but lives in europe, that only applies to the us. Self checkout is objectively bad in the us. Here, it is actually pretty good. The only anti theft mechanism is a random check wich happens like once a year to me, no weighing bs. Especially, if you use the option to scan while shopping with your phone or scanner device. Then you just pay in the app and leave, no hastle at the cash register.
Making customers bag their groceries for free is not a “cost saving measure” its a “cost shifting measure”
Maybe this is just a British thing? They’re very popular here in NZ
Yea, no. The supermarket I shop at, I just scan everything with my phone as I go, scan a QR code at self checkout and pay.
Worst case I have to wait 2 minutes for someone to do a verification scan (5 random items crom my bag) or wait for them to verify my age.
Self checkout is just fine, as long as you have enough of them.
Even better are the handsets you can take around the shop and scan as you go, as nobody wants to really be doing an entire trolley at the self checkout.
In Brazil I only see more and more places adopting it, does not seem a failure
I think self checkout is a good way for stores to get more customers through faster but the stores seem to think they are a replacement for human cashiers and they are not at all. They are nice to have in addition to human cashiers.
I know a few large supermarkets in yhe us that have this that have disabled the weighing and improved over time. Also having one employee for 8 machines doesn’t sound like a failure
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.
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.
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.
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
