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Interesting side note. I overheard staff talking at a local grocery store with a good number of chains. Now, i'm not sure to the extent of this (ie all chains o
by notheguyouthink 10y ago
Interesting side note. I overheard staff talking at a local grocery store with a good number of chains. Now, i'm not sure to the extent of this (ie all chains or just those in my state), but they had to actually remove self checkouts.
Why? They were being targeted to test stolen credit cards and it was costing the company a pretty penny having to deal with all those fraud checks/etc.
Not a detraction from your point - i just found it interesting. "Automation" seemed great there, but they were having difficulty managing how it was being used.
I wonder what might happen with the upcoming automation(s) in a similar manner?
- ghaff 10y agoSelf-checkout also doesn't work terribly well in grocery stores because there's a lot of slow fumbling around things like weighing produce and bagging. I've also seen self-service discontinued in some grocery stores that put it in. I find it somewhat odd that another category of stores that often aren't a great match for self-checkout--big box home improvement stores--seem to have adopted it so broadly, at least around where I live.
- gozur88 10y agoPeople at my local supermarket told me it doesn't seem to save the company much money, but there are a lot of customers who prefer self-service.
- ghaff 10y agoSelf-checkout seems to be one of those things that become popular or not based on fashion rather than necessarily good reason. As I mentioned, at least in the Northeast US, it seems to be particularly popular in big box home improvement stores (Home Depot, Lowes) even though it's problematic for a lot of purchases there. OTOH, I basically never see it in supermarkets here even though it's almost ubiquitous in London markets (albeit smaller stores with less fresh/un-barcoded produce).