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Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-ch
by gnufied 3y ago
Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely.
I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area".
Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them.
I don't know what humanity plans is. Even if we pay folks free money, they still loose on social interactions.
- ghaff 3y agoGrocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are finding a reasonable balance. And one of my cheaper grocery stores doesn't use self-checkout at all for now. Which is just fine.
- gnufied 3y agoI would say it is getting harder. Walmart for example I think has switched to largely self-checkout with some helpers thrown in. Other stores where had more than 3 or 4 human manned lanes, now have just 1 most of the time.
- bombcar 3y agoMy local Walmart often has a line waiting for the ocean of self-checkouts whilst they have two or three humanned checkouts empty. I prefer the human ones because they have the bag carousel which is faster.
- saurik 3y agoThis "balance" still cuts out a lot of employees and still removes the social interaction for most use cases. My local Home Depot, FWIW, still has a person to do checkout... but I think it is only one person, not even two: the rest of the checkout opportunities are self-checkout. Also, btw: it isn't so bad to do self-checkout of large items as they have a wireless handheld barcode scanner at each self-checkout stand; it isn't like you are having to lift each item and place it on the platform. There is something similar now at Target, and I routinely self-checkout large/heavy furnishings.
- bombcar 3y agoTarget and Home Depot have some of the best, but that may be because the anti-theft is tuned all the way down because they're in high-trust areas. Neither seems to complain much about the weights on the scale.
- rcme 3y agoOrder groceries online. It's much more convenient for large orders.
- ghaff 3y agoI don't have great options where I live and both my nearby grocery stores are pretty good with cashier checkout. I have a car so shopping for larger orders isn't really an issue.
- rcme 3y agoDo you have a Whole Foods? For basically the same amount of time it takes to make your grocery list, you can have your groceries delivered. This saves the shopping time and the driving time.
- ghaff 3y agoI don't think close enough to deliver unless it's changed--about 40 minutes away. And I can't/wouldn't want to do a complete grocery shopping at Whole Foods anyway. Used Peapod once upon a time when I was on crutches for months and dropped it as soon as I could walk again.
- klyrs 3y agoI got a cake delivered upside down. So convenient.
- bombcar 3y agoFree upside down cake! Sounds like a winner. (I only trust grocery delivery for things in impervious packaging or impossible to screw up).
- klyrs 3y agoIt wasn't free! And yeah, it wasn't my idea to put a cake into the grocery order. I also don't trust anybody else to pick out fresh fruit & veg for me.
- Dylan16807 3y ago> But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Huh. Everything at my grocery store either has a barcode or is produce that needs to be weighed, so there's no speed advantage for a cashier. And they've gone through different sizes of self-checkout, some of which actually had more room than the cashier checkouts.
- ghaff 3y agoI'm going to have to squint to read the number on the vegetable which is sometimes there. Might have to do a lookup. It doesn't have a barcode. There's no real place to put a shopping cart. I'm having to take out items, find their price, and bag them. Something will probably go wrong which means the person watching over the self-checkout will have to come over and do something. I can do it. But it's a pain for a large order.
- codetrotter 3y ago> produce that needs to be weighed In Spain and France (and probably other countries too) they’ve been doing something that’s pretty neat in regards to the fruits and vegetables since long before self-checkout even became a thing, but which helps a lot now with self-checkout as well. When you go to the fruits and vegetables section of the store, a lot of these stores have a scale there with a printer. So when you pick the fruits and vegetables, you weigh and print a label for them there and then. And then when you get to the checkout, you just scan the item. You kind of have to experience this in person to see why that works well, but it does :)
- Dylan16807 3y agoWe have that in my US grocery, I just worded it that way because it doesn't affect the point I was making. Though personally I use those scales but not their printer. I scan every item as I add it to my cart, and those scales display a bar code too.
- badrequest 3y agoAmerican produce aisles have these as well, but now I have to create the waste of a printed sticker and most likely a bag as well to get groceries I could have otherwise purchased by weight.
- techsupporter 3y ago> In my experience, most stores are finding a reasonable balance. I hope you're right but this hasn't been the case at the grocery stores around me. QFC (a Kroger-owned brand in the Pacific Northwest) has, at least at two I usually frequent, stopped staffing checklanes after 8 or 9pm. It's self-checkout only. These are at stores that have a lot of signage advertising that "summer hours are here, all locations open until 1am!" I normally shop around 9 or 10pm and there has historically been at least a "push this button to ask someone to come to the in-person method". Much as I like self-checkout, I don't like doing it with a full cart of groceries. Both recent times, I was told rather bluntly that a full cart was my problem. With service like that, I'd rather just go to the Amazon spyware grocery store. At least I can put everything in a bag myself and they're open until 11pm.
- Denvercoder9 3y agoSelf-service checkout at the store exit is such a wasted opportunity. In my (non-USA) grocery store I can scan product with my phone while I'm walking through the store and putting them in the cart; afterwards I only have to pay. Not having to take everything from my cart, scan it and put it back saves quite some time, even compared to cashiers scanning. There's also a handheld scanner for people that can't or don't want to use their smartphone.
- techsupporter 3y agoWe used to have that, at QFC/Kroger funny enough. They got rid of it because few people used it (I tried it and it was very clunky) and replaced it with more self checkout lanes.
- bobthepanda 3y agoRight, but the issue there seems to be execution, which admittedly non-tech firms dislike investing in.
- alex_young 3y agoI used such a system when I lived in Switzerland, and found it much easier for the reasons you mentioned. I did have an odd conversation with someone at work who warned me that sometimes they check your basket to make sure you’ve scanned everything before leaving, which I thought was an odd way to tell someone you like to shoplift. Anyway.
- gorlilla 3y agoMaybe it's just because self-checkout has always played into my intorvertedness. But i have become very effecient at self checkout no matter how much i buy. I shop for myself, spouse and 4 adolescent/teenage children. I can typically ring myself out faster and more orderly than the cashier. Most cashiers are super wasteful with bags and just pack things illogically. These aren't the trained baggers of yester-year afterall. Either way, my favorite way to shop at my local wholesale warehouse has been the app which lets you ring up as you load up the cart, pay and simply walk out the door. Cashiers are not in fact still necessary, the self-checkout lanes are merely a stop-gap yo better automation.
- hooverd 3y agoSelf checkout shoppers should be timed just like cashiers. I swear everyone else using the self chicken are moving in slow motion.
- morkalork 3y agoI watched someone try taking a freaking step ladder through the self check out and the machine scanned it okay but then wouldn't proceed to the next item or cash out because "item must be placed on scale". Really?
- bombcar 3y agoIt really comes down to how the store has them tuned; one local grocery store's system freaks out if a fly lands on the scale, whereas the local Walmart doesn't seem to care if the weight is ten pounds more or less than what it thinks it should be.
- smt88 3y agoSo far, I've never seen a Publix with even a single self-checkout. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're rolling them out much more slowly than the other stores. This is likely because Publix is 80% employee-owned[1]. 1. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-publix/#:~:text=Key%20takeaways%3A-,Publix%20is%20an%20American%20supermarket%20chain%20that%20was%20founded%20in,about%2080%25%20of%20the%20company https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-publix/#:~:text=Key%20takea....
- silisili 3y agoThe newer ones seem to have them. Which to me is like a breach of the unspoken contract. Publix has always been more expensive, but gave you great people experience, a cashier, and usually a bag boy asking if you wanted help out to the car. Now that they're moving to self checkout, what the hell are we paying more for?
- smt88 3y ago> Publix has always been more expensive It's still far cheaper than Whole Foods. > what the hell are we paying more for? In my (major) city, Publix has by far the best bakery and prepared foods of any of the grocery stores. They also reliably have the freshest produce. Does that mean they're more wasteful and take things off the shelves if they're just slightly overripe? I have no idea. I just know that I end up spending more money at, say, Kroger because a lot of the fresh items go bad before I can use them. I'm personally also willing to pay more to a business that takes care of its employees, but other people might not care that much.
- silisili 3y agoI lived in a city with a Publix, Walmart, and Kroger. While I agree re: the deli, most of my family's grocery bill came from things other than that. In a routine week, where I'd buy the typicals(dairy, meat, bread, canned good, etc), Kroger would be about $90, Publix would often be ~$120. (If you couldn't tell, this was a few years ago, before massive inflation). I want them to take care of their employees too, and part of doing that is not replacing them with machines.
- radicalbyte 3y agoHere in The Netherlands we don't have that thing where they weigh your bag to make sure you haven't stolen something. They instead have two people for 8-10 checkouts and do random inspections where they scan your bags. Works great and also gave me a huge shock when I went back to the UK and Sainsbury's treated me like a criminal.
- ghshephard 3y agoNice thing about whole foods - there is person there to help you with the self-checkout (in case something doesn't scan, price isn't right - rare) - but there isn't any scan or check of bags/receipts. It's close, fast, and convenient enough that I just do my shopping every day for most stuff, with a few exceptions like Milk that I might buy a weeks worth of stuff. The Palm Scan Instapay thing is awesome too.
- phpisthebest 3y agoI resisted using online ordering at Kroger for a long time, then in 2021 I started using the mobile app, and just picking up my groceries... now I have not be inside a Kroger in almost 2 years and have no plans on going back in. The Kroger App is great, and having them bring the stuff out, load me up, and I drive away... even if they actually go back to charging $5 for the service I am paying. >>I don't know what humanity plans is I dont know about humanity, but consumers demand low prices on food, one of the biggest complaints people have today is high cost of food, even if over history we still have some of the lowest costs of food as a percentage of expanded ever... Grocery is also one of, if not the lowest profit retail businesses to be in, it is not surprising they will look to lower their #1 cost... people.
- jonwest 3y agoI feel like the lowest earning employees on the totem pole is a bit of an easy scapegoat for high costs when executives make an exponential amount in comparison. I understand that if they weren’t in grocery they could be making similar amounts in another industry—my argument is more that the disparity between employee and executive is too great, regardless of industry.
- phpisthebest 3y agothe lowest earning employees are the lowest earning because those are the jobs for which the widest number of people in society can fill, this often makes them very "easy" not maybe in physical effort but in their repeatability, and their formulaic process making them a prime target for automation. this is completely separate discussion and disconnected completely from the increase in executive pay. Which is largely driven by the increasing size of companies. I may have the time frame wrong but something like 50 years ago the top 5 companies of any market segment controlled 20% of the market, today the top 5 companies of any market segment control's 80% of the market. This consolidation of markets is a few very large companies has driven executive pay. The other big component of that is the Institutional Investor, if you look at the raise of investment from Funds like 401K's and IRA's etc where most companies are owned by funds of funds of funds instead of people, founders, etc you also see the extreme raise of executive pay
- canucker2016 3y agoPlus there are some customers who misscan stuff to pay less (they buy a lot of "bananas"). also the discretionary purchases that occurred while waiting in line disappear - no gum/chocolate bar or celebrity/gossip magazine sales
- raverbashing 3y agoThe discretionary purchases still exist as the line to the self-checkouts go thought shelves with check-out merchandise
- bombcar 3y agoYou used to be standing around bored watching the cashier swipe items, now you're busy swiping items yourself; I suspect the number of gum purchases drop on the self-checkout line (but the longer winding path may grab a few more drinks, but only if it's backed up).
- IshKebab 3y agoI think the automation trend can be annoying when it fails, but self checkout is a weird thing to pick on. In the UK at least they always have a staff member on hand to override the scales. They're soooo much better than waiting in a queue for a human.
- brrtbrrt 3y ago[dead]
- bdangubic 3y ago[flagged]
- gwbrooks 3y agoSo the plan is screwing over the company you're buying goods from? Where can I like and subscribe for more of these amazing life hacks? (/s)
- bdangubic 3y agothis isn’t mom&pop shops, these are big business who spent a lifetime stealing whenever they can and are now not even having workers check people out but we as shoppers should be honest…
- Atotalnoob 3y agoThe thing is, these stores budget for loss (shrink). The problem is when they go over this budget, the store will need to reduce costs to cover their larger shrink budget. The largest cost for stores is employees. The executives and corporate don't lose hours, the low level employees do. You might think you are sticking it to the man, but in reality you are screwing over the low level employees
- bdangubic 3y agoif by “low level employees” you mean myself who is using self-checkout lane to do the work for “the man” then I agree 100%
- bdangubic 3y agohere’s few more: - you never have to buy stamps. just put address where you want letter to be sent in the sender area of the envelope and address it to whomever and drop it in the mailbox without postage. post office will return mail without postage to sender which is exactly where you want letter to go any more? ;)
- barbazoo 3y agoI don't like self checkout because sometimes I'm clumsy and forget to scan an item or two, oopsie.
- bombcar 3y agoMy wife scanned an item, used Apple Pay, the phone dinged, but the stupid self checkout was still bitching about something, so the payment never actually cleared. And she didn't notice and walked out. I came back a few days later and it took me nearly half an hour to explain that I wanted to pay for something without buying it. Finally a manager figured it out heh.
- neilv 3y agoMost self-checkouts here are surprisingly bad, but Whole Food Markets ones work well enough. However, WFM recently managed to ruin that in a different way... The WFM self-checkouts here recently started displaying dead-on video camera closeup views of the customer's face, on-screen, during checkout. They're doing this in neighborhoods with upscale customers, so I'm thinking maybe it's not a rough part of town "you are being watched" security thing. (That would seem incongruous with the premium WFM brand, and how historically they've seemed to want customers to feel about shopping there.) Maybe the live view of the camera in the customer's face is actually trying to lay foundation for a legal defense that that they weren't secretly recording people, for the inevitable scandal over a data breach/mishandling/misuse. (Lawmakers and state AGs should be all over this, because history is clear that very few companies take data capture and handling responsibility seriously, unless it's heavily regulated, with teeth that hurt, and maybe not even then.)
- Modified3019 3y agoI’ve found it heavily depends on the system the store uses and if improvements are actively made. Walmart’s self-checkouts are great, and I’ve noticed distinct improvements over the years, reducing or removing common sources of issues. WinCo’s on the other hand have been and continue to be prone to becoming a pain in the ass requiring multiple employee interventions. I personally hate interaction at grocery stores, I want to get in and gtfo and not hold up the people behind me.
- grepfru_it 3y ago>Walmart's self-checkout Look up next time you use your credit card :|
- jacquesm 3y agoI boycott the self checkout, and always go through the cashier, even if that means waiting a bit longer. The way I look at it that's at least a token towards keeping people employed that make substantially less money than I do and even if my time is valuable it isn't nearly as valuable to me as their employment is to them. I hoped more people would join me this but it looks like it is a losing battle.
- bombcar 3y agoYou're fighting the wrong battle. The real galaxy brain move is to use a self-checkout and fuck up horribly so they have to send the staffer over anyway, and take ten times as long. Then it appears on the balance sheet as a negative.
- jacquesm 3y agoI like your thinking.
- anticensor 3y agoSome stores might forcibly evict you by the power of guard (before finishing your purchases) if you do that.
- el_benhameen 3y agoI just bought some snacks at an airport store that was “fully” self-directed—swipe your card, walk through the gate, grab your stuff, and walk out. Except it required _more_ human assistants than a typical airport convenience store in order to handle the volume of confused and suspicious shoppers. “Wait, how does this work?”, “How do I get a receipt?”, “How do I know it won’t over charge me?”, etc.
- dheera 3y ago> Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". When that happens I usually just pick up my stuff and start over at another machine. It's usually faster than waiting for them to come over and enter their password. Sometimes by the time I'm done there are 3 machines "waiting for assistance". (I just hope their UX researchers are watching from a corner, but that's their problem.) Self checkout is supposed to be faster than non-self checkout, if it doesn't meet that bar it is useless.
- fy20 3y agoI feel the opposite. I much prefer the self-service experience. Staff are miserable, they usually scan stuff faster than you can pack, and I have to wait in a large line for that. I'd much rather do it myself. Even with a large cart (family of 3 weekly shop) I have no issues, you just need to be good at stacking items so they don't fall off. Where I live stores are slowly adopting scan-as-you-shop which is even better.