-17
The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending
(gizmodo.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
-17 points (36.9% liked)
Technology
59197 readers
939 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Man, where does everyone in the comments live that it still works like this? Where I'm at, they basically have attempted to replace like 90% of cashier jobs with these machines. There is often either no cashier at all, or one single cashier with like 5 people in their line, each with shopping carts filled to the brim.
The self checkout lines routinely reach lines of 10+ people with many old people who struggle using the machines forced to use them and gumming up the operations more. I avoid going to the grocery store like the plague during any kind of higher traffic time because I don't want to wait in line for 15 mins.
Other issue with self checkout machines is that some places (Kroger, looking at you) weigh the bag every time you scan an item before you can scan the next, which makes things go soooooo slow.
That’s how it is by me too; very few lines open with an actual person. I’d prefer not interacting with anyone, but the self checkouts are just a reason to hire fewer people. Years ago, they used to have two people at every register at grocery stores; one to ring people up and the other to pack the bags up. You rarely see this anymore unless the cashier is being trained.
In addition to that, on the occasions that I do use self checkout, I almost always have an issue with one of the items and then the one person they have overseeing ten checkout lanes needs to finish what they’re doing and come over to me just to fix the issue so I can finish scanning the rest of my stuff.
So when I’m using self checkout, I’m doing unpaid labor just because the store wants to increase profits and it often ends up being slower depending on how much produce I’m buying.
The weighing thing is really the biggest unsolved issue so far. Too often they freeze the process and call for a checker on any little bump where the weight appears to momentarily change.