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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Can you imagine an American grocery store chain letting its cashiers sit down?
What cashiers? We have to check ourselves out.
Am I the only one who prefers that experience most of the time?
I wouldn't mind if they passed the savings on to the consumer... But they won't.
Bingo, if these bananas are only going up in price then you're going to pay someone to punch the code in for me.
Seriously, there are a lot of things to hate but self-checkout is not one of them. Not having to interact with humans, being able to make sure everything is scanned correctly yourself, and being able to scan at your own pace is great. The only problem is when they don't have enough self-checkouts. Sure beats having a one or two conventional checkout open out of the 25 or so they have in the store. I would prefer they pass the savings on to the consumer, but that's the only fault I can find with self-checkout, well, that and the stupid weight sensor but more and more stores aren't requiring that stupid "place item in bagging area" thing anymore.
Well it's all fine and dandy until you try to buy some spinach, fumble around on the touchscreen for a while until you figure out how to add something manually, then can't find spinach anywhere and finally ask for help, feeling like a total idiot who can't use a touchscreen interface that a boomer soccer mom could figure out, but then you figure out it was listed under "leafy green spinach" so now you're mad at both at yourself and whoever decided that was a good idea.
Stuff like that has never been unique to self-checkout. I remember in my teens in the 90s you'd run into things like the credit card system being down or the check-checking system being down when you went through the line with a physical cashier, or some barcode not scanning because it's some niche product that didn't make it into the system. Or you only had a $50 on you and the cashier was struggling to make change because it was too early/too late in the day, so you had to hold on while they flagged down someone who could help them open another register to break it. Or there was a coupon being weird, or, or or...there was always something now and again. If not for you, for someone ahead of you in line.
Basically, minor inconveniences always happen now and again regardless of your method of checkout or payment. Feeding your own anxiety by stressing out whether you look stupid because a touchscreen has stumped you for this or that reason is unproductive.
Like--yeah, I get it. I've felt frustration too. I have felt the same things you talk about.
But I consider my own feelings a "me" thing? I've always felt that was a thing I had to overcome in myself, my own impatience, my own frustration over an everyday minor blunder. My own fears that I look "stupid".
Blaming the world around me (such as the self-checkouts) for being imperfect is...unrealistic, to me? There will always be minor things, minor delays--it's just a facet of life that will never change.
So it's always seemed to me that it's more productive to be zen about it. Especially when looking at my own memories I remember just as many minor checkout "upsets" when going through a line with a physical cashier as I have encountered in the self-checkout. Small errors happen regardless of system, so why not learn to flow with it?
If I'm paying the same costs for things... Why wouldn't I want someone who's better at scanning the shit than I am to do the job? Why do I want to fumble with knowing the vegetable codes? Or waiting 8 minutes for an employee to come over when the scanner freaks out because the 3 oz item isn't in the bag... even though it's definitely in the fucking bag. I also have to wonder if theft goes up considerable with more self-checkouts in play. That means that costs can actually go up over time... no?
They can be an okay experience... But a lot of times they're not.
This was only an experience one time, but I was waiting in line to checkout at Walmart and listed to the registers's beeps. I could hear about one beep per second from 3 or 4 registers combined. (all the ones they had staffed.) I could scan faster than a single register that day.
That being said, I hate the turn to self checkout. A conglomerate like Walmart has no excuse to not pay and staff properly. Or give me a discount for providing my labor.
The machines ALWAYS bitch about not putting something in the bag or putting something in the bag not scanned. The system is too slow. I hate how slow I have to scan stuff.
One reason I shop at Aldi's. Their cashiers sat down. I respect that. I shop there.
American
The Fred Meyer (Kroger) in my neighborhood has 4-5 armed and body armored security guards stationed at the entrance and exits. They ask to check your receipts at the exit and search all your bags.
Its actually illegal to force someone to stop since its not a private club like Costco, so you can just tell them no and keep walking. Thats not well known though so you have stormtroopers checking old ladies papers and searching all their belongings.
Oregon allows off duty officers to moonlight as armed guards so a lot of them are cops from various departments. During the 2020 protests there were a few Federal Protective Service agents patrolling the store.
I think we shop at the same Freddy's.