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I have never used one. Even when there is a queue and a person monitoring offers to scan for me I still queue. I'm never in that much of a hurry and I enjoy bei

I have never used one. Even when there is a queue and a person monitoring offers to scan for me I still queue. I'm never in that much of a hurry and I enjoy being as nice as possible to the assistant. I completely avoid stores that have self-checkout only. The time saved is often negligible or sometimes it is even much faster depending on whether the person I am casually racing has tried to check out some disallowed item eg. booze. or the machine has a fit which seems to happen a lot. I also get to people watch when I queue. I don't care when it is slower since I have been waited on - which is also nice. Why on earth people would want to do it themselves is beyond me even though I am very much a type A, am quite impatient and really dislike queues in general.

kleiba 9y ago
Ah, how nice: a like-minded person! I'm just like you in that respect, 100%. I think another way to save costs (if that is what the stores are after) is to make the cashiers they do employ more efficient. For instance, while living in Melbourne, Australia, I sometimes went to a local Aldi store and the cashiers there weren't exactly slow, but not the fastest either. In comparison, while living in Germany, if you go to a Aldi there, they check your items out faster than you can chuck them into your cart! (Yeah, that's right, they don't pack stuff up in bags for you over there.) It's really amazing how fast they can be... and they have to because it's sometimes unbelievable how much stuff people in front of me can fit into a single cart. Because of that, however, you still get waiting lines -- it's the sheer mass of items people put on the conveyer belt. But the speed at which Aldi cashiers operate could certainly be a lesson to other stores as well if they want to maximize throughput per cashier.
- mattkevan 9y ago
  It's changed now, but Aldi didn't use to use barcodes - the cashier had to memorise all the product codes. This meant they could go really fast.

kleiba 9y ago

Ah, how nice: a like-minded person! I'm just like you in that respect, 100%. I think another way to save costs (if that is what the stores are after) is to make the cashiers they do employ more efficient. For instance, while living in Melbourne, Australia, I sometimes went to a local Aldi store and the cashiers there weren't exactly slow, but not the fastest either. In comparison, while living in Germany, if you go to a Aldi there, they check your items out faster than you can chuck them into your cart! (Yeah, that's right, they don't pack stuff up in bags for you over there.) It's really amazing how fast they can be... and they have to because it's sometimes unbelievable how much stuff people in front of me can fit into a single cart. Because of that, however, you still get waiting lines -- it's the sheer mass of items people put on the conveyer belt. But the speed at which Aldi cashiers operate could certainly be a lesson to other stores as well if they want to maximize throughput per cashier.

mattkevan 9y ago
It's changed now, but Aldi didn't use to use barcodes - the cashier had to memorise all the product codes. This meant they could go really fast.