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A Grocery Chain Just Fired Its Self-Checkouts – They're Bringing the Humans Back

33 points by pg_1234 3y ago

pg_1234 3y ago
https://archive.ph/U7Yc1 https://archive.ph/U7Yc1
innagadadavida 3y ago
They should try a hybrid approach - self checkout only for registered members. This. Will promote store loyalty but keep the thieves out of the store.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  I think you belive customers like self check-outs. I do not believe that to be true. I hate self checkouts. I will stand in line for 15 minutes with 4 items before going through an open self check-out.
  - innagadadavida 3y ago
    Many software engineers I know just don’t like interacting with people. Machines are better unless they are buggy UIs.
  - kevincox 3y ago
    I like the ones that aren't user-hostile. For example IKEA near us has these. You just quickly scan everything and pay. The only slight annoyance is one "Are you sure you scanned everything, you are on camera" nag. I can get through quickly and bag everything as I like. However most stores by me have mandatory delays after every item as it weighs your bagged of scanned items to make sure you didn't slip something you didn't scan in there. It painfully slows down the process even the times where it doesn't misfire.
  - ChickeNES 3y ago
    On the contrary, I use self checkouts at much as possible. I'd rather wait in line for one than deal with a person
hunglee2 3y ago
retrograde step, it is measure of civilisation to be able to manage self check out
- MarcusE1W 3y ago
  See, and I see it quite differently. I don’t do other people’s job without being payed. You are supposed to run the whole payment process yourself. Become an expert yourself over time how to navigate all the issues and fineries of the system. You are doing a cashiers job. But no advantage for you. Human tills have been removed and only because of that the queues on the self checkout are shorter. I am sure for some tasks self-checkout can actually be quicker but more often than not there is no difference or it can be longer. So now you are standing there and have been good and done their job, for no reward. And once a food price crisis comes up, will the supermarket remember your unpaid contribution to reduce their cost? Really, don’t do other people’s job.
  - zulban 3y ago
    Do you also boycott grocery stores that don't bag your groceries? What about those that don't walk your bags to your car?
    - MarcusE1W 3y ago
      I have to say that does not exist in Europe and to the best of my knowledge never existed as a common pattern. So I don’t know ;-) I guess it’s an individual decision.
    - pigeons 3y ago
      I don't go to the ones that don't bag for you when I can help it.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I prefer self checkouts to manned ones, even if the line is shorter at the latter. I like scanning my own groceries, and don’t really like someone else doing it for me.
neilwilson 3y ago
For anybody who hasn’t been to a Booths recently they do terrific tea and scones in the cafe and the clientele are mostly elderly and well off. The prices reflect that. In the cheaper supermarkets they’re going the other way.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-costco-kroger-facing-self-checkout-reckoning-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-costco-kroger-facing... or maybe they're not.
kioleanu 3y ago
Self-Checkouts have been really problematic in Germany with stores rushing to put them to use and namely: 1) they have very bad interfaces 2) they don’t trust customers at all 3) it’s easy to report cases to the police and 4) stores have people hired to catch thieves and their incentive is that they are paid 50 to 100 euros per report (paid by the person caught) Now a combination of all of the above leads to a not insignificant number of people having police files for missing an item while scanning. I read about cases about once a week on Reddit. Aaand I am one of them, luckily without the police report because they saw that it was an error, but with a permanent ban from the store. My mistake? Went to pay, scanned my customer code in the store’s app so I get the e-receipt and the payment failed without me seeing that it failed and I went out the door. Their reasoning for banning me? Should have asked for the physical receipt. I say me having to operate two devices that I’ve never seen in my life and some really bad UI/UX were at fault but at least I’m glad they didn’t call the police. I don’t use self-checkouts anymore.
- wojciii 3y ago
  I don't think that the store here (neighbouring DK) will report you to the police if you forget something nor can you get outside of the self checkout area without a written receipt or showing a code to a scanner. I use an app to buy groceries and I assume that any mistakes that I make will be corrected if checked like a human would do.
  - kioleanu 3y ago
    That won’t happen here because of point #4. Police usually drop the charges because it’s impossible to prove intent but you still pay them a few hundred euros for the bother.
    - wojciii 3y ago
      Why would you pay something if the case against you was dropped? I'm pretty sure that I would not have to pay anything if I was targeted by the police but the case was dropped for whatever reason. I would probably just get a letter saying that the case was dropped.
duffpkg 3y ago
Blah blah blah wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, managed large hospital and multipractice groups, ... Self checkout scenarios remind me a lot of the difficuly in building electronic medical record interfaces and workflows. UI really, really matters but is barely given a second thought by most vendors. These things frequently fail on UI but the blame is placed elsewhere. It took us roughly 8 years to create a solid reliable UI and workflow for most acute care and primary care settings that most of the people liked most of the time. A good example I can think of personally is at McDonalds. It takes 22 finger clicks on the screen to order a medium iced coffee and approximately 140 seconds. There are numerous slow animations, the screens are slow to appear, slow to respond, multiple upsells, positions of buttons change on reflow after clicks. In person it takes "I'd like medium ice coffee light sugar", approximately 7 seconds for that and then the card processing time. Self service is 20 times worse. Someone else mentioned theft reporting. Having recently spoken with a criminal defense attorney in a social setting, this is an out of control problem. He is in a medium sized city and has seen the number of shop lifting bans increase over 500-1000x. He would typically see a dozen or so per year but since self checkout became dominant in the area he is seeing thousands per year, nearly 1% of the population. This becomes a major problem in an area like this, if you get banned by walmart and safeway you have to travel 2 hours to get groceries, there are no other food stores. There is no recourse, the stores have no interest in trying to resolve these cases where, as the other commenter described, very common human errors resulting from terrible UI are criminalized.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  The UI always seems to be the least developed, which is ironic, considering no matter how good a given app is, when the UI sucks, the entire app sucks.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  >> at McDonalds. It takes 22 finger clicks on the screen to order a medium iced coffee and approximately 140 seconds The self-checkouts at Target where I live are hilariously bad if you are paying with cash. Up to the point where you pay everything is fine, but then if you indicate that you are paying with cash, it says that it is preparing to accept the payment. It takes 20 seconds before it will let you put money in, like there is some sort of data processing it needs to do first. And every third or fourth bill that you put in gets jammed up and you have to pull it back out and re-insert it. After you put in enough money to cover the amount due, it prints the receipt right away, but it takes another 20 seconds before it gives you the paper money change, like it has to do some more hard-core processing to figure out that 40 dollars minus 37 dollars equals 3 dollars. The coin change takes even longer, like there is some advanced algorithm it uses to make change that takes it half a minute. Then, as a final "fuck you" to the customer for daring to pay with cash, the receptacle where the change comes out is set up so that unless you put your hand in front of it, it spits half the change out onto the floor. It's so bad that it doesn't even make me angry any more, it just makes me laugh.
Avshalom 3y ago
Several of the Walmarts here in ABQ just got rid of self-check https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-pulling-self-checkout-lanes-from-some-stores-2023-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-pulling-self-checkou... from three or four dozen to zero and probably worth pointing out that they just put them in like 2016-ish.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

33 points by pg_1234 3y ago

https://archive.ph/U7Yc1 https://archive.ph/U7Yc1

They should try a hybrid approach - self checkout only for registered members. This. Will promote store loyalty but keep the thieves out of the store.

RecycledEle 3y ago
I think you belive customers like self check-outs. I do not believe that to be true. I hate self checkouts. I will stand in line for 15 minutes with 4 items before going through an open self check-out.
- innagadadavida 3y ago
  Many software engineers I know just don’t like interacting with people. Machines are better unless they are buggy UIs.
- kevincox 3y ago
  I like the ones that aren't user-hostile. For example IKEA near us has these. You just quickly scan everything and pay. The only slight annoyance is one "Are you sure you scanned everything, you are on camera" nag. I can get through quickly and bag everything as I like. However most stores by me have mandatory delays after every item as it weighs your bagged of scanned items to make sure you didn't slip something you didn't scan in there. It painfully slows down the process even the times where it doesn't misfire.
- ChickeNES 3y ago
  On the contrary, I use self checkouts at much as possible. I'd rather wait in line for one than deal with a person

hunglee2 3y ago

retrograde step, it is measure of civilisation to be able to manage self check out

MarcusE1W 3y ago
See, and I see it quite differently. I don’t do other people’s job without being payed. You are supposed to run the whole payment process yourself. Become an expert yourself over time how to navigate all the issues and fineries of the system. You are doing a cashiers job. But no advantage for you. Human tills have been removed and only because of that the queues on the self checkout are shorter. I am sure for some tasks self-checkout can actually be quicker but more often than not there is no difference or it can be longer. So now you are standing there and have been good and done their job, for no reward. And once a food price crisis comes up, will the supermarket remember your unpaid contribution to reduce their cost? Really, don’t do other people’s job.
- zulban 3y ago
  Do you also boycott grocery stores that don't bag your groceries? What about those that don't walk your bags to your car?
  - MarcusE1W 3y ago
    I have to say that does not exist in Europe and to the best of my knowledge never existed as a common pattern. So I don’t know ;-) I guess it’s an individual decision.
  - pigeons 3y ago
    I don't go to the ones that don't bag for you when I can help it.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  I prefer self checkouts to manned ones, even if the line is shorter at the latter. I like scanning my own groceries, and don’t really like someone else doing it for me.

neilwilson 3y ago

For anybody who hasn’t been to a Booths recently they do terrific tea and scones in the cafe and the clientele are mostly elderly and well off. The prices reflect that. In the cheaper supermarkets they’re going the other way.

Avshalom 3y ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-costco-kroger-facing-self-checkout-reckoning-2023-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-costco-kroger-facing... or maybe they're not.

kioleanu 3y ago

Self-Checkouts have been really problematic in Germany with stores rushing to put them to use and namely: 1) they have very bad interfaces 2) they don’t trust customers at all 3) it’s easy to report cases to the police and 4) stores have people hired to catch thieves and their incentive is that they are paid 50 to 100 euros per report (paid by the person caught) Now a combination of all of the above leads to a not insignificant number of people having police files for missing an item while scanning. I read about cases about once a week on Reddit. Aaand I am one of them, luckily without the police report because they saw that it was an error, but with a permanent ban from the store. My mistake? Went to pay, scanned my customer code in the store’s app so I get the e-receipt and the payment failed without me seeing that it failed and I went out the door. Their reasoning for banning me? Should have asked for the physical receipt. I say me having to operate two devices that I’ve never seen in my life and some really bad UI/UX were at fault but at least I’m glad they didn’t call the police. I don’t use self-checkouts anymore.

wojciii 3y ago
I don't think that the store here (neighbouring DK) will report you to the police if you forget something nor can you get outside of the self checkout area without a written receipt or showing a code to a scanner. I use an app to buy groceries and I assume that any mistakes that I make will be corrected if checked like a human would do.
- kioleanu 3y ago
  That won’t happen here because of point #4. Police usually drop the charges because it’s impossible to prove intent but you still pay them a few hundred euros for the bother.
  - wojciii 3y ago
    Why would you pay something if the case against you was dropped? I'm pretty sure that I would not have to pay anything if I was targeted by the police but the case was dropped for whatever reason. I would probably just get a letter saying that the case was dropped.

duffpkg 3y ago

Blah blah blah wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, managed large hospital and multipractice groups, ... Self checkout scenarios remind me a lot of the difficuly in building electronic medical record interfaces and workflows. UI really, really matters but is barely given a second thought by most vendors. These things frequently fail on UI but the blame is placed elsewhere. It took us roughly 8 years to create a solid reliable UI and workflow for most acute care and primary care settings that most of the people liked most of the time. A good example I can think of personally is at McDonalds. It takes 22 finger clicks on the screen to order a medium iced coffee and approximately 140 seconds. There are numerous slow animations, the screens are slow to appear, slow to respond, multiple upsells, positions of buttons change on reflow after clicks. In person it takes "I'd like medium ice coffee light sugar", approximately 7 seconds for that and then the card processing time. Self service is 20 times worse. Someone else mentioned theft reporting. Having recently spoken with a criminal defense attorney in a social setting, this is an out of control problem. He is in a medium sized city and has seen the number of shop lifting bans increase over 500-1000x. He would typically see a dozen or so per year but since self checkout became dominant in the area he is seeing thousands per year, nearly 1% of the population. This becomes a major problem in an area like this, if you get banned by walmart and safeway you have to travel 2 hours to get groceries, there are no other food stores. There is no recourse, the stores have no interest in trying to resolve these cases where, as the other commenter described, very common human errors resulting from terrible UI are criminalized.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
The UI always seems to be the least developed, which is ironic, considering no matter how good a given app is, when the UI sucks, the entire app sucks.
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> at McDonalds. It takes 22 finger clicks on the screen to order a medium iced coffee and approximately 140 seconds The self-checkouts at Target where I live are hilariously bad if you are paying with cash. Up to the point where you pay everything is fine, but then if you indicate that you are paying with cash, it says that it is preparing to accept the payment. It takes 20 seconds before it will let you put money in, like there is some sort of data processing it needs to do first. And every third or fourth bill that you put in gets jammed up and you have to pull it back out and re-insert it. After you put in enough money to cover the amount due, it prints the receipt right away, but it takes another 20 seconds before it gives you the paper money change, like it has to do some more hard-core processing to figure out that 40 dollars minus 37 dollars equals 3 dollars. The coin change takes even longer, like there is some advanced algorithm it uses to make change that takes it half a minute. Then, as a final "fuck you" to the customer for daring to pay with cash, the receptacle where the change comes out is set up so that unless you put your hand in front of it, it spits half the change out onto the floor. It's so bad that it doesn't even make me angry any more, it just makes me laugh.

Avshalom 3y ago

Several of the Walmarts here in ABQ just got rid of self-check https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-pulling-self-checkout-lanes-from-some-stores-2023-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-pulling-self-checkou... from three or four dozen to zero and probably worth pointing out that they just put them in like 2016-ish.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]