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Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment

• tiberriver256 3y ago
  Joining in the mix here. I literally take such great pains to avoid having to use anything OTHER than self-checkout. They are a god-send to mankind.
  • axus 3y ago
    It's a great replacement for the "15 items or less" aisle, more than that and I'll find a line with a human cashier. There's one store that doesn't use humans in the evening, they've lost my business for large purchases.
• kthejoker2 3y ago
  It's still shocking to me that people - alive and well today! - used to have: * full service gas stations * live in maids * a mailman, milkman, iceman, and paperboy they knew the names (and birthdays!) of Call it false nostalgia or what you will, but we lost the plot somehow on paying for dignity-as-a-service. Sincerely, the "everything-is-worse" department
• Anonymousanyone 3y ago
  Most of the issues stems from corporations trying to save a buck. If you want to see how it should work go to a Market Basket. When you pull into the parking lot, the first thing you will notice is the place is packed. Then you think, wow the lines are going to be long and you notice people's carts are packed full. Now that your cart is full its your time for the check out line. In two minutes your in the parking going wow that was fast. Most Market Baskets have 18 cash registers each one is open with a bagger and two managers standing watching and waiting for any issues. Then your thinking there are at least 38 people at the registers
• billy99k 3y ago
  I disagree. I have had almost no issues with self-checkout, and I use it every week when buying lots of groceries. I think I only had an issue once or twice when the item I was trying to buy wasn't in the system.
  • ghaff 3y ago
    Self-checkout is mostly fine for a few barcoded items that don't require age approval (like alcohol). Even awkwardly shaped items at places like Home Depot work pretty well these days given hand scanners. But having half a cartload of groceries including a bunch of produce? I'd much rather have a cashier. Aside from the slow process of looking things up, self-checkout areas just aren't setup for checking out and bagging a big pile of goods.
    • Olreich 3y ago
      Grocery needs a little more tech to be perfectly convenient. Best I've seen are handheld scanners with electronic scales in the produce area to let you get barcodes for all your produce. The handheld scanner to let you scan and pack away from the checkout area. When you get to the checkout area, you generate a barcode that loads all the items into the self-checkout and pay.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        Sounds like more work than I want to do to buy produce. And there's still the problem that self-checkout at grocery stores is really optimized around the person scanning half a dozen items.
  • cogman10 3y ago
    Agreed. In fact, the complaints the article starts off with seem to screem "I'm an idiot that can't follow simple directions". All the self checkout systems I've used are near identical. You move unscanned items past a scanner and onto a scale in the bagging area. Nothing confusing about that
    • 3y ago
• raverbashing 3y ago
  Funny, I use whenever possible this "failed experiment" and it works fine for me Don't blame other for machines that suck and/or your inability to follow instructions I guess
  • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    If the machines suck, there definitely are "others" who should be blamed for that - both those who created the machines, and those who decided to install them.
    • raverbashing 3y ago
      True, absolutely It's not just throwing machines out there without proper UX studies and adapted to each case
      • ghaff 3y ago
        The worst offenders in that regard are probably public transit ticketing machines. In addition to every system being different, in some locations, you now have lines of possibly jet-lagged tourists who may not be native speakers of the default language fumbling with machines and nbot quite sure what to do with whatever pieces of paper the machine spits out.
  • rndmnflnce 3y ago
    There are definitely machines that suck and treat any little sensitivity as a potential theft. Blame goes to the machine makers and the decisions makers of the store. Generally self checkout definitely has its 'lane' with the 'less then 10' items shopping trip.
• hirundo 3y ago
  I was standing at a Home Depot self-checkout, looking all over for an employee to help me with an item, finding nobody. The guy next to me was waiting too and I asked him "does anyone work here any more?" He said "I guess we do." I wonder how they're going to get me to stock shelves and clean the restroom.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    And then there is my local home depot which seems to have a 1:1 ratio of employees to shoppers much of the time. And they're all so chipper and helpful. Almost too much so.
• hocuspocus 3y ago
  Here in Switzerland I scan my loyalty card at the entrance, grab a handheld self-scanner, scan items as I put them in my cart, scan out at the self-checkout area, finalize and pay at a self-checkout till. Very convenient. There are random checks by the staff, one out of 20 times maybe.
  • ceejayoz 3y ago
    My local grocery store (Wegmans) tried something like that; a self-scan app on your cell phone, to check out you'd scan a QR on the self-checkout and it'd pass over all your items. Theft (things like putting unscanned $200 beef tenderloin roasts unscanned at the bottom of a bag) was so bad they canceled it within months. I miss it, it was super convenient. They're now trialing camera-based machine vision cart attachments that are slow and annoying.
    • acheron 3y ago
      Wegmans around here kept it around for 2 years. But yes, I miss it too.
    • SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
      At ICA in Sweden they solved this by doing random checks of the cart at checkout to verify
      • ceejayoz 3y ago
        Might work with clear bags, but otherwise you put it way at the bottom underneath a bunch of small items. No checker wants to make you dump out a shopping bag full of yogurts.
        • dagw 3y ago
          In Sweden when you get stopped for random checks they do indeed make you empty out everything in your bags and rescan everything to make sure it matches.
• beardyw 3y ago
  The test to me is M&S on Waterloo Station. At 6pm it seems the world is in this slightly claustrophobic but big enough supermarket. There is one queue (as there should be) and it is a steady walk. At the end are a big array of self service tills, always several to spare, and several staff guiding people. Something that feels like it should be a nightmare is actually a good experience.
• Simulacra 3y ago
  I just don't like ringing up and bagging my own groceries. I'll pay extra for someone else to do it just please stop making me use the self check out.
• lannisterstark 3y ago
  It depends. Self checkout works wonderfully on stores like Walmart and Target. 0 issues. However in stores like Fry's/Kroger/Albertsons, it effectively treats me like a thief.
  • ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
    My Walmart even let's you void some items yourself, as well as not caring at all about the scale. I'd consider it a plus honestly at this point, self checkout has no line, and short of a cart full of groceries, it's likely faster.
    • Olreich 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure the various managers can play with that experience. I've had Walmart self-checkout complain if I moved too quickly or removed items from the scale after scanning them. They've also complained when I had a second person handing me items from the cart or if I was moving too quickly.
    • kj4ips 3y ago
      There seems to be some variance in systems. I //really// don't like the ones at my local WM. It disables the scanner until the bagging scale stabalizes, and you can't enter quantities. It basically speed-limits you to about 1 item every 2 seconds. The ones at the Target, don't lock out the scanner unless you scan something that is marked as having a security tag, and the degausser hasn't fired. Our local CVS has some, and they're fine, but anyone that can't use them (low vision, paying with cash (sometimess), or buying things that require ID) have to chase down the one or two roving employees in the store, which would be super annoying if you had to do it often. Personally, I tend to use SC when I have <5 items. Even on the "nice" systems, there's no way I can outpace someone who does this all day, has helpful tech (conveyor belts, a bagger (even if it's me), ability to enter quantity, can enter PLUs, doesn't have to deal with the system locking out the scanner whenever it feels like it).
  • _fat_santa 3y ago
    Every time I do self checkout at Krogers and it asks me if I put down a bag, selecting "yes" always triggers an employee verification (as does selecting "no"). I don't get the point in prompting the user if no matter what the user selects it always triggers an employee verification. Another annoyance is you have to remember to scan your alcohol last or else it will block the checkout until your ID has been checked, Walmart has figured this out and only checks your ID when you hit "checkout".
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Self-checkout literally always works for me. Items that require an ID, requires an associate to confirm, but they're always there to help me. The worst thing about self check out is when there's not enough machines!
• samizdis 3y ago
  My beef with self-checkout tills is that I don't use carrier bags, preferring to put my goods in my backpack. The self-checkout tills won't accept a backpack in the packing area; too heavy, I suppose.
  • c7DJTLrn 3y ago
    Yeah, I have the same problem, I usually just end up putting everything into my backpack after I've paid. Slows things down.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    That sounds like a crummy design. At my usual store, the packing area is just a big flat scale and you can put everything on it without bagging if you want. Then throw it back in the cart if you want, or a backpack, whatever, after you pay.
  • cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
    Backpacks work fine at self-checkouts at Target-CVS here, and all human checkers at Trader Joe's (Aldi Nord).
• slau 3y ago
  Here in Denmark, I use the “Scan & Go” feature whenever available. I use my own bag, scan items using my phone before dropping them into the bag, and use Apple Pay to finalise the whole transaction. A QR code is displayed on my phone allowing me to open the gate at the self-checkout line. I can be in and out of the shop within a minute or 2-3, never needing to talk to a human. The only disadvantage is that I can’t get my bottle deposits paid out using the app; I have to go to the till for that.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    Yeah I love the scan & go method. But... a gate? Do they block you from leaving self-checkout until you scan a code? That's fascinating. Have never seen that in the US, at least not in my region.
    • slau 3y ago
      Depends on the shop. At Rema 1000 (Norwegian brand), there’s no gate, you just a number on your phone that you might have to show to a clerk if they ask. You exit by walking past people being checked out by a cashier. At Netto and Føtex (Danish brands), they have traditional self-checkout with a machine where you scan your items yourself. You get a printed receipt/code that opens the gate. Scan & Go uses the same exit as the self-checkout, so they give you a code on your phone to open the gate. Here’s a very short video from Netto: https://youtu.be/5zVATAnUNyg https://youtu.be/5zVATAnUNyg Here’s another video from Coop, skip the first 1m20s: https://youtu.be/V69FQH47-sE https://youtu.be/V69FQH47-sE
      • rootusrootus 3y ago
        That's interesting, thanks for the video links!
• 0xJRS 3y ago
  I'm going to disagree and say that self-checkout has been good, and I only see the systems improving at stores I frequent and more stores are adding it every day. I'd call that a success.
• cde-v 3y ago
  Only for the boomers who still struggle with touchscreens and digital instructions and want a poor person doing the checkout for them. I have literally never seen someone younger than 50 have an issue with self checkout.
  • extr 3y ago
    What a tasteless comment. Just because someone works at a grocery store does not mean they’re a “poor person”.
  • carstenhag 3y ago
    At least about the ones I have seen in Germany - the devices are super slow. You need to tap 2-3 times. It's not nice to use.
  • dagw 3y ago
    Different machines have wildly different quality and ease of use. Some stores I never have a problem, while at other stores they almost never work right.
• JRKrause 3y ago
  There's a noticeable difference between self-checkout stations, for example: The stations at my local Harris teeter are unable to handle the user quickly scanning+placing products in the bagging area. I imagine this has to do with how the software translates changes in the bagging-area weight to a count of items. When this happens you have to wait around for the system to decide you aren't, in-fact, stealing. These same stations also prevent further item scanning once an age restricted item (e.g. alcohol) is scanned, forcing you the wait around for the attendant before you can continue with your items. Contrasted to the self-checkout stations at my local food-lion, which have none of these issues, the lack of UX is frustrating. To top off with some non-content: You'd really think more people would have learned how to reliably scan barcodes after observing others do it hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  By principle I tend to avoid them, as they are yet another reason to hire less people.
• broast 3y ago
  This seems crazy to me. I have one of these issues maybe once every 50 times I use a self checkout. And I think could tolerate much more of that before I consider a cashier interaction a better experience.
• teensydata 3y ago
  I see a lot of comments that disagree with the article. Where I live in the US, the only grocery store near me has four self-checkout machines and only one other cashier on duty. This results in lines through the entire length of the store at all hours. People with $200 worth of groceries are checking themselves out and taking at least 20 minutes to complete the process. The people who have 12 items or less have to wait for a long time to leave the store. I’m all for self-checkout if it is limited to 12 items or less because it is significantly slower to scan and bag groceries yourself than to have two people who are trained at this. The process is so slow that we drive an additional 15 minutes away just to avoid that grocery store.
  • rstuart4133 3y ago
    > Where I live in the US, the only grocery store near me has four self-checkout machines and only one other cashier on duty. I'm not sure why that is, but it isn't the fault of the self-checkout machines. They are smaller than normal checkouts, and they could have 20 of them and still need only one cashier on duty. Where I live, when they replace normal checkouts with their conveyor belts, lolly stands and backing areas, they typically get 2 self service ones per normal one replaced.
  • mattmaroon 3y ago
    Sounds like the issue in your area is lack of competition. I live near a lot of grocery stores (coincidentally can walk to two of them in under five minutes and I don’t live in a walkable city) and it would be hard for me to give that up.
    • taylodl 3y ago
      I also live near a lot of grocery stores, all different chains, and what the OP describes is the reality at all of them. I always choose a human cashier when available because it's almost always faster. Honestly, I think the issue may be more due to labor shortage than penny-pinching.
      • SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
• huijzer 3y ago
  Here in the Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, headquarters must love it. In Groningen I sometimes see 8 students checking out at the same time while the store would only have place for 3 to 4 regular check outs. It seems to me like much higher parallelization.
• extr 3y ago
  I’ve found it depends on the store and what you’re trying to do. Larger higher traffic grocery stores have their weight sensors calibrated much more finely. At kroger for example i’m always frustrated i forget to register my bag and need to empty it and start again. At sprouts things mostly “just work”, I rarely have issues. Another annoyance: after moving to California i’m fairly frustrated by the “No Alcohol in Self Checkout” rule. Buying a sandwich and a single bottle of wine? Good luck standing in line behind someone with a cart full of produce! Don’t really see what this law does except cause frustration. In states where it’s allowed you need an attendant to verify ID anyway, same as a regular line. Another stupid CA rule.
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• creshal 3y ago
  > You know how this process actually goes by now: You still have to wait in line. The checkout kiosks bleat and flash when you fail to set a purchase down in the right spot. Scanning those items is sometimes a crapshoot—wave a barcode too vigorously in front of an uncooperative machine, and suddenly you’ve scanned it two or three times. Then you need to locate the usually lone employee charged with supervising all of the finicky kiosks, who will radiate exasperation at you while scanning her ID badge and tapping the kiosk’s touch screen from pure muscle memory. If you want to buy something that even might carry some kind of arbitrary purchase restriction—not just obvious things such as alcohol, but also products as seemingly innocuous as a generic antihistamine—well, maybe don’t do that. Sounds like most of those issues are self-inflicted by cheaping out on all the hardware. Reliable scales, scanners, etc. aren't hard to figure out, if you bother paying enough for it. In the half-decade or we've had self-checkouts in Austria, they've been mostly reliable – I've only ever had real trouble in the first six months of their deployment (teething issues), and in the first half of 2023, when producers were shrinkflating their packagings so often that the inventory databases couldn't keep up and scales were regularly expecting the wrong values. That seems to have quieted down again too, thankfully.
• andyjohnson0 3y ago
  I never have a problem with self checkout here in the UK, mainly using Tesco for grocery shopping. It just works, and I appreciate the convenience. I've recently started using their service where you scan items with a portable scanner as you go around the shop, and bag them immediately. Checkout is even quicker because everything is already in my bags, and I can see a running total of how much I'm spending. Again, it just works. What doesn't work is product location discovery. I get that they want me to wander around looking for the coffee or whatever that theyve relocated yet again, because they think I'll make more impulse purchases, but it still frustrates me.
  • matthewfelgate 3y ago
    Scanning as you shop in Tesco is great.
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    > I get that they want me to wander around looking for the coffee or whatever that theyve relocated yet again, because they think I'll make more impulse purchases Or out of general low-level supermarket-chain evil. My local Tesco (a small urban one) recently rearranged everything, and put the flour next to the gluten-free products. The only way I can explain this is that this is a sort of Tesco Value Squid Game; in the office upstairs evil billionaires watch coeliacs running the Gauntlet of Gluten.
  • Gud 3y ago
    If you like how it's done at Tesco, you will love how it's done in most of mainland Europe. Imagine Tesco, except the scale that weighs how much you've scanned.
    • cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
      Tesco Fresh & Easy enters the chat with: - Small format - Small quantities & worse value - Limited selection - Giant self-checkout conveyor belt confusing shoppers
      • 3y ago
• habosa 3y ago
  Seems true in America. I rarely choose self checkout, for the reasons listed. However I spent 3 years in London and self checkout dominates. The Sainsburys by my house had ~40 self checkout kiosks and only about 6 regular checkout lanes. I only used the checkout lane one time in multiple years (same at Waitrose and Tesco). There are a few things that made it better: 1) Produce in these stores is rarely sold by weight. It’s more common to get produce in packaged quantities with a bar code. Much easier to scan. And generally the tech seems to just work, it rarely complained that I had missed an item when I hadn’t. 2) Fewer item purchase restrictions. Even alcohol was allowed at self checkout but you did have to flag someone down for that. 3) People do smaller shopping trips. Each person at an urban market in London is likely buying a basket of goods, not a whole cart. That makes the entire process much more streamlined and space efficient.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Seems true in America Not in my experience. I love self-checkout. > Produce in these stores is rarely sold by weight. It’s more common to get produce in packaged quantities with a bar code Same with my local store in the US. Still a few things sold by weight, but the majority of stuff is barcoded. Even produce. > Even alcohol was allowed at self checkout Is that not true pretty much everywhere in the US as well? They have to check ID, yes, but that's a legal thing.
  • rsynnott 3y ago
    > Produce in these stores is rarely sold by weight. It’s more common to get produce in packaged quantities with a bar code. Much easier to scan Even where a lot of stuff is sold by weight, you can just have self-service scales that print a barcode around the shop; this seems to work fairly well (unless they're out of order; then it's a whole thing and you can only use the self-checkouts that have built in scales, grumble mutter).
• fasterik 3y ago
  Article is behind a paywall, so apologies for commenting on the title alone. Even if self-checkout as it is implemented today doesn't work [1], that's not a reason to declare it a failed experiment. It's a reason to improve the technology. The only thing stopping us from having universal self-checkout is lack of quality in the hardware and software. There is a separate conversation about what impact self-checkout has on jobs and food prices. It's an empirical question what the ratio of automated to human checkout should be in order to maximize throughput. Maximizing throughput means lower food prices for everyone. However, if it happens that maximizing throughput means letting go of tens of thousands of human workers, then that also has an impact on the economy. This is why we should have a robust social safety net in wealthy societies. [1] I don't actually think this is the case. I use self-checkout multiple times per week at the grocery store, and I almost never have an issue. Maybe 1 in 10 visits I'll need assistance from staff, which takes less than a minute.
  • tivert 3y ago
    > This is why we should have a robust social safety net in wealthy societies. People frequently say that, but how does that serve the interests of capitalism? If a safety net is too robust, they'll have to pay to support unproductive non-workers indefinitely. Seems like it would make a lot more sense (and be the moral thing to do w.r.t. objective, capitalist morality) to make the safety net inadequate and hard to access, to eventually cull the unproductive people that turn out to be useless and cannot find other work.
    • fasterik 3y ago
      Capitalism isn't a moral agent with interests. It's an activity that humans participate in. Humans and non-human animals are what we should really care about. Capitalism produces benefits for everybody, and it also produces harmful side-effects and unintended consequences. Our moral obligation as a society is to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms. If cutting all social safety nets really maximizes overall well-being, then that's what we should do. But I don't think anyone seriously believes that. I think those who advocate for cutting off all aid to people with bad luck simply don't care about their suffering.
• helloplanets 3y ago
  At least in Finland, self-checkout works pretty well. Stores of all sizes basically have them, at least in Helsinki. If there's over four machines, there's almost always a person standing by just to help the customers with any issues. In the larger stores, I've often seen two people dedicated to that. If there's just two machines, it's always right next to a traditional checkout with a cashier. Cashiers have never been the ones tasked with bagging our groceries over here, so I guess it's not that big of a step to just scan and throw it in the bag after that.
• matthewfelgate 3y ago
  Self-Checkouts have been here in the UK for years and work pretty well now.
• tivert 3y ago
  > Much of the blame for that can be placed on the systems themselves. During the years I spent processing purchases at big-box and chain retailers in the 2000s, every point-of-sale system I used felt more intuitive and less error-prone than the ones I’m now regularly tasked with navigating as a paying member of the public. Modern UX for the win!
• voisin 3y ago
  I cannot stand Walmart asking me if I want a printed receipt and an email receipt or just a printed receipt, as if only-digital isn’t a reasonable possibility, and that unlike other retailers (Home Depot comes to mind), they don’t link your email to your card, so if you click for email, you have to type it in every single time. Whoever managed this didn’t think it through.
• rsynnott 3y ago
  Are the machines used in the US in some way different/worse than the ones used in Europe? Most of my local supermarkets are basically all self-checkout these days (generally smallish urban supermarkets with a bank of 5-10 self-checkouts plus some closed human-operated one); there's usually someone there to fix problems and authorise alcohol, and usually _one_ open human operated checkout. And it's generally _fine_. I remember a lot of problems when they started showing up 20 years ago, but it's distant-memory stuff at this point. Bigger supermarkets also tend to have self-scan things that you bring around the aisles with you for big shops. (One fun exception: a few years back all the grapefruits on offer were unusually small, I think due to adverse weather conditions in Spain. If you tried to buy grapefruits, the machine would become concerned that the grapefruits you'd put in your bag weren't as heavy as it expected, and required an employee to reassure it. There are presumably acceptable weight ranges for fruit, and the problem grapefruits just fell outside it...)
  • plorkyeran 3y ago
    My experience with self-checkout machines in the US does not resemble the description given in the article in any way. I've never gotten an "unexpected item in bagging area" error, rarely have issues scanning items, and need help from an employee once every few months. I've never had a line for them longer than 2-3 people.
• morninglight 3y ago
  "Loyalty Card" is a euphemism for a self-imposed privacy violation device. They are ubiquitous for the same reason as Self-Checkout. People are eagerly willing to surrender there privacy in order to save a few cents or gain convenience. ..
• xnx 3y ago
  The amount of touchpoints in the grocery supply chain is staggering: manufacturer -> distributor -> grocery store -> shelves -> cart -> checkout -> bags -> vehicle -> home -> pantry. Online shopping should remove ~4 of those steps, but the shopping experience is still too poor.
• glimshe 3y ago
  It works wonderfully at my US suburb. Have in mind that my county has a culture of law and order with a fully funded police force and educated population.
• ipython 3y ago
  I would say my worst experience with self checkout was at ikea. During a busy time of year, we visited ikea and picked up about $1000 worth of stuff. As you know, $1000 can net you a lot at ikea - so we probably had at least 50-60 items. We would have been happy to wait in line for a traditional cashier but there were only self checkout lanes. And long lines for those too! We finally get to the front of the line, dutifully scan each item. Of course it’s impossible to track what’s scanned already since the area to place items is no larger than the one at the supermarket. Fat chance putting a shelf on that tiny area. Anyway, the system decides that due to our purchase volume, we were selected for a “random rescan”. So we wait for someone to come over and it picks three items for the person to scan. Of course they screw it up, and the system now declares the entire order needs to be started from scratch. How exactly did anyone save time or effort in this case? What a nightmare.
• readthenotes1 3y ago
  What an idiot. I love self-checkout.