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Shoplifting and frustrated customers plague self-checkout
- Ancalagon 3y ago[flagged]
- falcor84 3y agoI promise I'm not a corporate shill (though I suppose you have no reason to trust me), and I absolutely get playful enjoyment from these barcode beeps too.
- qup 3y agoI admit I would like it, if there wasn't someone watching me like I could turn criminal at any second. Or the fact that if I make a mistake, I may be treated as a thief.
- lolinder 3y agoYou have a very different experience with these than I do. At all my local stores, when I make a mistake the clerk comes over and swipes their badge to approve any changes without even looking. That's if I can find them—at a lot of places the person ostensibly supervising the self checkout is usually MIA.
- Waterluvian 3y agoMy kids love doing it. It’s also good to get a second set of prints on all the merchandise.
- firecall 3y agoThat really does sound awfully like PR doesn't it! And anyway, when Ellen was a child they didn't have barcode scanners in Super Markets!
- dymk 3y agoKill the thing inside you that cringes; it only hurts you
- Ancalagon 3y agoOk.
- danielodievich 3y agoOur local Rite Aid (struggling with bankruptcy) has almost completely removed clerks. I was making an FSA card + personal card purchase (so a complex 2 step transaction) on their self-help kiosk and the credit card reader hung. I was lucky to catch the person who was as stumped as I was to what to do. After several minutes she was able to flip the machine into "employee" mode which unfroze the screen and allowed me to proceed. I was very vocal in my appreciation to her, they really don't get great pay to deal with this kind of nonsense.
- redserk 3y agoLet's do away with self-checkout and standard checkout. The model Amazon promotes with full delivery is where we ought to go as it'll save so much land and space in the long-term. In the near-term, the model adopted by Walmart, Target, and the many grocery stores with order pick-up makes a lot of sense. I rarely step into a store these days. Often I hear skepticism regarding quality of produce, but this is drastically overblown in my experience. This would eliminate a number of problems.
- ipaddr 3y agoThe most expensive and lowest quality producing way. If you can make it to the store spending a few minutes visually comparing products can really inform decisions.
- redserk 3y agoWhat comparison can one realistically do in a grocery store between most products? The packaging disguises a lot of characteristics of the products being sold unless you're strictly looking at produce or raw meats.
- lepus 3y agoIf the stores you're buying from have most of their produce in packaging then you're buying at best average quality produce in the first place.
- redserk 3y agoReread my comment as this was already addressed. I explicitly stated products other than produce and meats are in the category of foods that typically are difficult to gauge quality of. To specifically list out the products I'm talking about, consider: milk, oatmeal, flour, snack foods, ice cream, beverages, cheese, broth/stock, prepared soups, condiments such as ketchup, cooking oils, packages of tea bags, breads, jams, and so forth. Vegetables and meats are only slightly easier to gauge quality of because they are typically not packaged, however, anyone who cooks at home regularly can tell you that you still run the risk of getting bad produce/meats even with a close-up visual inspection.
- reb 3y agoEveryone quoted in this article is roughly 60 years old - would have loved to know if other generations are similarly split about this experience. That said, as a former cashier who mostly uses self-checkout in her 30s: babysitting self-checkout sounds way less fun than chatting with strangers while I checked them out was.
- crooked-v 3y agoWhen talking about shoplifting, I think it's worth noting that property crime rates in the US are noticeably lower than they were in even the 2000s, even accounting for an uptick during the pandemic. If there's any real (rather than corporate-PR-manufactured) uptick in shoplifting specifically, I would personally assume it's got more to do with the "remove every possible person from the floor so one person at a time is responsible for an entire store" business strategy than anything else.
- Spooky23 3y agoYou cannot trust those numbers very much beyond murder, grand theft auto and other scenarios where a disinterested third party is involved.
- firecall 3y agoI like the revised self service we have at some Super Markets in Australis where you have more space to load and unload and they don't use the annoying scales to weight everything that goes into the bags! Having plenty of self service checkouts means I neve rhave to queue! Also very modern is the way Uniqlo do it! They have what I'm guessing are NFC readers in these large white tubs that you put your items into at the checkout. Works well and is very efficient.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcphage 3y ago> Also very modern is the way Uniqlo do it! Uniqlo’s implementation is really neat until you try to buy a shirt that’s missing a tag in a pile of other shirts and it’s an annoying process to get it all resolved.
- firecall 3y agoI bet! I have only shopped there once! :-)
- useerup 3y agoI use grocery store apps where I can scan the items with my phone as I put them in my bag. Checkout is then only swipe to pay. There are occasional random inspections, otherwise I completely skip the checkout lines.
- sfRattan 3y agoMy experience is that self-checkout works extremely well until it... Doesn't. And then you need a human anyway. The "doesn't" only happens to me rarely. But when something goes wrong it becomes immediately clear that---whether at a grocery store, convenience store, or anywhere else---almost no business deploying self-checkout has a real plan for handling the edge and corner cases where it fails, freezes up, or spits out an error. Most stores that want self checkout to replace five to ten employees with just one to supervise but do not then make sure that the one employee can actually handle the self-checkout's failures and errors.
- aworks 3y agoI had a relative who had a summer job at Ikea monitoring self-checkout: 1) the system and software were unfriendly to both users and staff, especially in error states, as you suggest 2) many people needed rudimentary help 3) no time to look for theft due to 1) and 2) 4) surprising number of couples arguing with each other
- flax 3y agoThe problem, as always, is corporate squeezing every last penny. At my local regular grocery, the machines are set to "complain about a fly-landing on it" sensitivity and regularly berate me for not scanning everything even though I do. They also do not read barcodes well, taking several attempts. And on top of that, they are slow enough that they are often still processing the previous item when I'm ready to scan the next. On the other hand, the local asian grocery has installed self-checkout machines that actually work. They scan well, do not complain about phantom items, and there were 2 employees ready to help if necessary (it wasn't). Just actually invest enough to make stuff work! It's not a hard concept.
- Waterluvian 3y agoThe scales at every grocery store in my city were disabled a few years back and never went back on. It’s such a nicer experience. If shoplifting is a problem they should employ people to scan groceries.
- bombcar 3y agoThe local grocery store is set to “Fort Knox” levels of annoying. I never use self checkout unless it’s one item and no cashier is available. The local Walmart is set to somewhere around “maybe your bag weighs like an elephant” and it works quite well.
- popularonion 3y agoI thought scales were phased out everywhere years ago, I use self-checkouts a lot and I can’t remember the last time I had to deal with that.
- mcronce 3y agoHome Depot, believe it or not, has an actually pleasant self checkout experience. No scale whatsoever, access to a handheld barcode scanner, a fast enough machine that you're not sitting there waiting for it all the time, and no robot voice telling you what every item costs with no option to mute
- ourmandave 3y agoThe best part of self checkout is the 0% chance of getting behind someone who is writing a check, using multiple gift cards or counting out all the pennies.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI dunno why some grocery stores don’t do this but most in my city have a single line that feeds all the checkouts.
- robotnikman 3y agoI remember Frys Electronics (RIP) used to do that.
- aembleton 3y agoWe had that at one store and then they got rid of it. I think the long looking queue put people off but it moved so quickly. Was much more efficient.
- throwup238 3y agoThe worst part is that everyone is infuriatingly slow at self-checkout.
- rusty_venture 3y ago[flagged]
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- smitty1e 3y agoTrue story: I once shoplifted a gallon of milk from Lidl. 1. I missed it in the cart bottom at the checkout. 2. Put my shopping in the car. 3. Returned the cart. 4. Started to drive off, and someone else helpfully said: "You forgot your milk", and I took it. 5. Halfway home, I realized my mistake. 6. Next time there, I picked up the same product and scanned it twice to make good the boo-boo. 7. This post has given me a chance for public confession, and I am grateful.
- throwaway2990 3y agoYet in Asia self checkouts work well and rarely ever need intervention.
- pottertheotter 3y agoI feel like this was true 10 years ago, but not now. But maybe it's just that Walmart has figured it out since I've been primarily buying groceries from Walmart for the past 10 years. It's so good that I actively avoid aisles with an employee. I rarely ever have a problem.
- somethoughts 3y agoI'm curious why conveyor belt type systems (like the ones at airports) with vision based checkout aren't a thing. Multiple camera angles could prevent customers from trying to sneak stuff through. For additional security some sort of turnstile could be added to prevent the customer from access the groceries until payment has been verified. Computer Vision Approach to Cashierless Checkouts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEWFmKI5RYY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEWFmKI5RYY Twinflow Live in Store https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3eBbZ_Zt1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3eBbZ_Zt1c The floor area would be larger than a self checkout station but the throughput would likely be much higher and be a better customer experience. Self checkout stations seem much more amendable to casual shoplifting since its hard to see what the customer is doing.
- awinter-py 3y agoif you're multitasking a podcast or something, being able to do self checkout without taking off your headphones is worth a lot
- majewsky 3y agoI mean, I use self-checkout and generally like it because the queue moves much faster, but "worth a lot" is too much IMO. At regular checkout, I'll pause my podcast and pull out one of both earphones when the person in front of me is paying, and then I plop it back in once I'm done. That's like, what? 60 or 90 seconds or so. Not a huge deal honestly.
- exodust 3y agoThe supermarket mugshot I find most objectionable. I have no issue with general security cameras in store, but when placed 40cm from my face in the checkout screen, it's creepy. No indication of who is watching, recording status or face-scanning. In Australia it's common for no traditional checkouts to be available, meaning self-checkout is the only option and buying groceries requires submitting to the supermarket mugshot.
- bublyboi 3y agoMy local Home Depot has 3 humans overseeing 6 self-checkout kiosks… I’m guessing they’re there to protect against shoplifting (which certainly leads to accusations of profiling) and assist when the machine inevitable fails at something. Seems logical, especially for a hardware store that sells so many parts requiring product# lookups, to just have those attendants be cashiers.
- tomjen3 3y agoI never use self checkout if I can avoid it, the experience is always terrible. Instead I wait and just catch up on a couple pages of my book on my phone. Waiting in line is fine when you have something to do. Self checkout could be great, but corporations and excel sheets micro optimisation ruin everything.
- orf 3y agoThe UK has used self checkouts for 15 years or so now. They work fine, are quick and I’ve never seen an “obscure error message”. You need to wait for an attendant if you’re buying alcohol, but otherwise it’s seamless. Sounds like crap software and a customer base not used to things the first world take for granted rather than an issue with the idea itself.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoI hate these Luddite hit job articles on new technology. We've had self-checkouts for over a decade in Europe, stop complaining it's tedious.