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Yeah, the "if anything goes wrong you now stand around with your thumb up your ass while one employee makes their way from broken kiosk to broken kiosk to manua

Yeah, the "if anything goes wrong you now stand around with your thumb up your ass while one employee makes their way from broken kiosk to broken kiosk to manually resolve the problems" model has soured me on self-checkout. I find I have a very low "dealing with this bullshit" limit, to the point that if I have trouble I'm likely to just say fuck it and walk out of the store without completing my purchase.

bombcar 3y ago
It's really tunable and some stores are tuned to "Fort Knox" where even a fly landing UNKNOWN ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Others are so loose that you don't even have to take things out of your cart, scan and pay and go.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  The Whole Foods location nearest to me has self-checkout stations that don't even have a scale under the bagging area. You just scan, put it in your bag and go. I assume they can afford to tank the shrinkage that results from this due to their high profit margins, or they just don't consider the costs associated with the scales to be worth it.
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    All the local self-checkouts where I am in London are just scan and go, no scales.
    - tim333 3y ago
      Probably a nicer area.
      - thejohnconway 3y ago
        Than what? Not the average.
  - BytesAndGears 3y ago
    That’s how the popular grocery chains in the Netherlands all work. You just scan a few things, put it in your bag, and leave. I almost never interact with anyone. It uses your rewards card to determine your “risk”, I think. Just a theory. But whenever I’ve gotten a new card, they come check my bag a lot. Then after a dozen successes or so, they stop checking so often. Then hardly at all. One of my friends forgot to scan an item once when they checked, and he had someone come to check his bag way more often for a while.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    There was a news story a while back about how some chain stores were not going after most shoplifters directly but would keep the recordings on file and press felony charges once a certain total had been exceeded, so instead of getting a slap on the wrist for a few dollars of shrinkage here or there they'd drop the entire weight of the law on shoplifters once those few dollars added up to an amount that qualified for felony theft. Given that "just walk out" apparently means "replace cashiers with offshore video analysts" I'd wager Whole Foods might do something similar and policing shrinkage in self-checkout is too expensive compared to just keeping track of cheats and throwing the book at them if they make a habit out of it.
- darepublic 3y ago
  Where I live most stores started off in fort Knox mode but had to tone it down. The bagging area was usually miniscule and trying to fit all the groceries of even a medium grocery list on there without locking the system was nigh impossible
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
Having used the UK/US type self checkout machines while travelling, I must say it is so nice to live in Northern Europe where the self checkout machines are largely just based on trust, with randomly sampling ~five items of every 100 shoppers. There is no weighing at any of the stores. If you don't get randomly selected for inspection, there is nothing stopping you from just walking out with groceries you didn't pay for worth a hundred dollars easy. People just don't. Another benefit of having a proper social safety net I guess.
- dambi0 3y ago
  A lot of the waiting is for age restricted items or machine errors rather than trust issues. I have never once been randomly sampled after self surface purchase in either the UK/US.
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
    Without trust issues there would be no machine errors in my experience. Anytime there's an issue it's because I'm scanning too fast for the machine and it can't figure out how the weights work. Or I selected the wrong type of garlic and only the associate is allowed to remove items (why would you not let me remove items I personally added??).
    - dambi0 3y ago
      Fair, the inability to remove your own items seems maybe a hang-up from an older view of privileged cashiers. The store I currently use doesn’t have weight checks except for weighed produce. You can leave your stuff in the cart and with the wireless scanner and a bit of forethought everything can stay in there. Different trust models makes things interesting. I have never been checked leaving the store and I don’t think social safety net or otherwise is the driving factor
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        Yeah, the not being able to remove items grinds my gears. It's especially annoying when I am waving an item furiously, trying to get the poorly printed barcode to scan, and when it finally accepts it, it double scans the item. Then when I have to stand there waiting for someone to remove the item is usually where I get disgusted with the process and give up on shopping, especially when it happens multiple times.
FourOnTheFloor 3y ago
And it almost always DOES go wrong. Seriously 75% of the time when I'm done scanning and I press "pay now," it inexplicably says "calling for assistance" and refuses to do anything until an employee comes over. WHY? And now assholes are intentionally taking alcohol through the self-checkout, deliberately taking up that one employee's time making him or her perform the workaround to check the items out. And the 20+ years of "unexpected item in the bagging area" bullshit... just get rid of it.
- kiwijamo 3y ago
  Strangely that issue has almost vasnished for me in the last couple of years, here in New Zealand at least across the several supermarket chains I frequent (although they all seem to use the same self service POS supplier). Sure it was a big issue when these first came into stores but I think they've realised they need to increase the tolerances a bit (e.g. accept even if the weight is <1% off) and it all just works close to 100% of the time for me. I do however generally avoid adding bags to the weight area (as I've found these to trigger false warnings) and just load my shopping directly onto the weighted area and then once I've paid I'll just bag my shopping then. Works like a charm.
  - FourOnTheFloor 3y ago
    OK, I will admit the "unexpected item" nonsense has diminished... only to be replaced by the "calling for assistance" out of nowhere.
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    I do that, too (scan, pay then bag), but it's a tradeoff - you get smoother checkout experience in exchange for some speed. If everyone was throwing all their scanned stuff in a bag immediately, the checkout would be a lot faster.

bombcar 3y ago

It's really tunable and some stores are tuned to "Fort Knox" where even a fly landing UNKNOWN ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Others are so loose that you don't even have to take things out of your cart, scan and pay and go.

kevingadd 3y ago
The Whole Foods location nearest to me has self-checkout stations that don't even have a scale under the bagging area. You just scan, put it in your bag and go. I assume they can afford to tank the shrinkage that results from this due to their high profit margins, or they just don't consider the costs associated with the scales to be worth it.
- thejohnconway 3y ago
  All the local self-checkouts where I am in London are just scan and go, no scales.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Probably a nicer area.
    - thejohnconway 3y ago
      Than what? Not the average.
- BytesAndGears 3y ago
  That’s how the popular grocery chains in the Netherlands all work. You just scan a few things, put it in your bag, and leave. I almost never interact with anyone. It uses your rewards card to determine your “risk”, I think. Just a theory. But whenever I’ve gotten a new card, they come check my bag a lot. Then after a dozen successes or so, they stop checking so often. Then hardly at all. One of my friends forgot to scan an item once when they checked, and he had someone come to check his bag way more often for a while.
- hnbad 3y ago
  There was a news story a while back about how some chain stores were not going after most shoplifters directly but would keep the recordings on file and press felony charges once a certain total had been exceeded, so instead of getting a slap on the wrist for a few dollars of shrinkage here or there they'd drop the entire weight of the law on shoplifters once those few dollars added up to an amount that qualified for felony theft. Given that "just walk out" apparently means "replace cashiers with offshore video analysts" I'd wager Whole Foods might do something similar and policing shrinkage in self-checkout is too expensive compared to just keeping track of cheats and throwing the book at them if they make a habit out of it.
darepublic 3y ago
Where I live most stores started off in fort Knox mode but had to tone it down. The bagging area was usually miniscule and trying to fit all the groceries of even a medium grocery list on there without locking the system was nigh impossible

semi-extrinsic 3y ago

Having used the UK/US type self checkout machines while travelling, I must say it is so nice to live in Northern Europe where the self checkout machines are largely just based on trust, with randomly sampling ~five items of every 100 shoppers. There is no weighing at any of the stores. If you don't get randomly selected for inspection, there is nothing stopping you from just walking out with groceries you didn't pay for worth a hundred dollars easy. People just don't. Another benefit of having a proper social safety net I guess.

dambi0 3y ago
A lot of the waiting is for age restricted items or machine errors rather than trust issues. I have never once been randomly sampled after self surface purchase in either the UK/US.
- DangitBobby 3y ago
  Without trust issues there would be no machine errors in my experience. Anytime there's an issue it's because I'm scanning too fast for the machine and it can't figure out how the weights work. Or I selected the wrong type of garlic and only the associate is allowed to remove items (why would you not let me remove items I personally added??).
  - dambi0 3y ago
    Fair, the inability to remove your own items seems maybe a hang-up from an older view of privileged cashiers. The store I currently use doesn’t have weight checks except for weighed produce. You can leave your stuff in the cart and with the wireless scanner and a bit of forethought everything can stay in there. Different trust models makes things interesting. I have never been checked leaving the store and I don’t think social safety net or otherwise is the driving factor
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      Yeah, the not being able to remove items grinds my gears. It's especially annoying when I am waving an item furiously, trying to get the poorly printed barcode to scan, and when it finally accepts it, it double scans the item. Then when I have to stand there waiting for someone to remove the item is usually where I get disgusted with the process and give up on shopping, especially when it happens multiple times.

FourOnTheFloor 3y ago

And it almost always DOES go wrong. Seriously 75% of the time when I'm done scanning and I press "pay now," it inexplicably says "calling for assistance" and refuses to do anything until an employee comes over. WHY? And now assholes are intentionally taking alcohol through the self-checkout, deliberately taking up that one employee's time making him or her perform the workaround to check the items out. And the 20+ years of "unexpected item in the bagging area" bullshit... just get rid of it.

kiwijamo 3y ago
Strangely that issue has almost vasnished for me in the last couple of years, here in New Zealand at least across the several supermarket chains I frequent (although they all seem to use the same self service POS supplier). Sure it was a big issue when these first came into stores but I think they've realised they need to increase the tolerances a bit (e.g. accept even if the weight is <1% off) and it all just works close to 100% of the time for me. I do however generally avoid adding bags to the weight area (as I've found these to trigger false warnings) and just load my shopping directly onto the weighted area and then once I've paid I'll just bag my shopping then. Works like a charm.
- FourOnTheFloor 3y ago
  OK, I will admit the "unexpected item" nonsense has diminished... only to be replaced by the "calling for assistance" out of nowhere.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  I do that, too (scan, pay then bag), but it's a tradeoff - you get smoother checkout experience in exchange for some speed. If everyone was throwing all their scanned stuff in a bag immediately, the checkout would be a lot faster.