The Boomers are right sometimes, like about keeping email.
Yeah, this response is a rare boomer W.
I have 20k emails in my inbox
I will only clean it when I get complaints
You’re either the kind of person who reads their emails in real time and freaks if that little blue number ever reads “2” or you’re the kind of person who selects their entire inbox and marks it as read twice a decade.
My wife is the former. I am the latter. I get too much junk. I go through my inbox a few times a day, read what looks important, and ignore the rest. I have 2,174 unread emails in my inbox and a folder called “auto junk” with 5,116 in it.
keeping emai
Please explain
As opposed to switching to proprietary messaging services.
Messaging services replace pagers, texting and phone calls more than email.
I’ve never understood the people who seem to not get that some people actually don’t mind scanning their stuff and putting it in bags, and insist that that’s the line between what the customer does and the employee. They also used to carry your groceries to the car for you, and you can also get them to pick everything up, bag it and bring it to your car or house. It’s not like the checkout process is the special part that can’t change.
Yeah, they want to save money by having fewer people get more customers checked out faster. I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
I don’t have a problem with self-check. I use it most the time because I usually have < 10 items.
I DO have a problem with only self-check lanes being open or only ONE regular clerk check lane open. both of which happen at walfart.
I know this because I used to work there and policy was to hire floor associates that can run a register so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
Aren’t walmart employees also required to stand all day? Kinda insane to me that they’re not allowed to just sit down
That’s true for pretty much all corporate retail in the US.
That’s not the actual animosity towards things like self checkout, most of the time. It’s a distaste for a large corporation to replace jobs with automation. Sure, it’s a menial job, but it was still an ability for someone to have a job if they needed one.
Labor shortages go up and down with time and what a lot of younger people don’t really understand was that sometimes the country would go years with it being hard to find any job. Even a bad one. The last 15 years have been pretty easy to find work, so a lot of the younger people can’t really know what it was like when you could go a long time just trying to find a job.
The check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different from those other services you mentioned.
Also,
I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
That was true until they realized they could enshittify by closing all the regular check-outs and force everyone into it. Now it’s just as slow as full-service used to be.
Have you ever rang a TV through as bulk onions?
I fucking love self check out!
I love self checkout. Conversation with strangers is difficult, slow and often not fun. Separating that aspect from checking out is the best customer service a lot of stores offer.
Some stores near me are removing or disabling self checkout. Apparently this better serves the customer. Can’t quite see how taking away options improves things, but …
I respect your preference, and for some people it could even be considered a “reasonable accommodation.”
But I prefer to have the person who does this all day whip through the scanning and bagging while I pay up. It may not be rocket surgery, but good cashiers have an efficiency of eye/brain/hand motion that I can’t match. Especially when there’s multiples of the same item, their machine trusts them to do it the efficient way rather than scanning and weighing each item. Or having the produce codes at their fingertips without stopping to read them. And since all machines have little quirks, it’s helpful to know exactly where to apply “percussive maintenance.”
I am comfortable speaking with strangers, so I always thank them and wish them a good day. And I don’t stand for entitled assholes giving them shit, either.
Having both options is best and should be part of ADA compliance.
Yea the issue is the employer doing it to make more profit instead of spreading the more profit they make to the workers. There is nothing wrong with self check out. There is something wrong with people being paid shit when the company is sending dividends to stockholders instead.
It doesn’t, it’s because people shoplift at self checkout all the time and the big retailers can’t figure out how to stop it. Almost every shop in my town forces you to do self checkout, they don’t even have cashiers most of the time. Last time I was at my local walmart they had like 6 self checkouts and 4 cashiers just standing there staring at everyone trying to find shoplifters. They still can’t find them though lol.
Which is bizarre, because shrinkage due to theft at all major retail chains is at historic lows, but they keep complaining that they can’t make any money due to rampant shoplifting. Then you look at their profits for each fiscal year and wonder what their deal is if losses due to shoplifting have never been lower and profits have never been higher?
It’s an easy scapegoat to justify closing low performing stores. It essentially shifts the blame onto the community, rather than the greedy suits.
I used to love using the self-checkout. But then it became a trend among the corporate overlords here to get all paranoid about people stealing food, so now they have the weight system calibrated too strict. Now if you breath on the items in the bag it locks you out and someone has to come unlock the system to continue scanning. So it’s not really worth the hassle, and seems kinda pointless since an employee has to unlock the system after every few items.
Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don’t even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?
That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “boomer” on the opposite side of the word “sucker”.
Okay boomer
Then offer a discount for self checkout.
In some places, they are making you subscribe to Walmart+ to use self checkout. Like, it wasn’t just annoying enough, now if you don’t have their subscription service, you have to stand in the extra long non-self checkout line. Can they make us hate it any more?
The best system I saw for self checkout was at a place in New Zealand about…shit. Nearly 20 years ago now.
You would walk in, scan a barcode on your store card, pick up a hand held scanner and scan the items as they went into the cart. Including fruit and veg, there was a weigh station for that. As you put stuff into the trolley you’d scan it.
When you got to the front there was a special lane. You didn’t unload, you walked through and paid. Randomly - like 1 time in 5 to start with - they’d ask you to rescan so you unload into the belt, which was faster because dedicated lane. But if you always had exactly the same items that you’d scan, the trust threshold in whatever system would greenlight you. No bagging either. Just the stock boxes on a table as you left, or like us you just shove it all in crates in the boot of the car.
There was a.minor rebate in terms of store points which unlocked specials for using it but holy shit it was sooooo much faster because it moved the scan point back to you loading the cart. You could see how much you were going to spend and delete items from the scanner itself.
I am not a grocery fan so to be able to do a full week shop in under 20 minutes was awesome. As per tradition we was young and on a tight budget so it was super easy to keep tabs on how much we were spending and saving.
Recently had a support call with a woman who was complaining about our 2 factor authentication system because she could only access one web page at a time. When I asked her if she couldn’t just open a new tab, she said she was too old to learn how computers work and couldn’t do that. She went on to claim that there’s a lot of people at her level of ineptitude, and that we shouldn’t have implemented 2fa because “most people don’t have multiple monitors.”
It was so, so hard not to throw out an OK Boomer as they proudly lectured me on the depths of their ignorance.
Can be funny for trivial stuff, but in the medical field this type of stuff is pretty messed up in my opinion. Some medical places implement stuff like that just because they refuse to pay people to staff the phones in scheduling.
Also, if the old lady doesnt want MFA thats her choice.
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Zimbabwe!
I get being mean to walmart because corporations are bad but being needlessly rude to random employees rubs me the wrong way. Most of us can’t get a job anywhere better despite having a degree. We have to deal with the mental abuse of people constantly treating us like dog shit just because we exist. The job situation is so fucked right now. I should not be having to compete with people that have masters degrees and decades of experience for tech support jobs that pay $15 an hour. Fuck this broken society.
The last time I was not underemployed was 2018.
I’d rather “work” than wait behind people with 100+ items. I can be out the door in 2 minutes.
even faster if u skip some items from being scanned
I don’t know where you live but here theft is a crime and very antisocial and despicable.
Someone has to pay for the thieves and prices rise because they have to compensate for theft. Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices, which, in essence, is yet again against consumers.
I don’t know where YOU live but Walmart is one of the biggest thieves in the USA. People working there still have to collect government assistance because they pay too little to live on.
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re being facetious.
I thought you were fully serious, but then I hit the line
Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices,
And assumed you were just poking fun and the poor widdle corporations and their giant profit margins, but then you continued with your paragrap, and now I’m not sure again…
But maybe you can explain where all the downvotes come from, because I don’t understand.
Is thievery good? Only when thieving from companies? Is is socially acceptable to take what is not yours from others? Only from companies? Or from a stranger who has more than you? From a friend? What’s this all about?
Yeah, it’s completely ethical to steal from big corporations. They steal from you every single day. Their entire existence is based on the amoral exploitation of other humans. Other people, small businesses, a very very very few medium-large corporations, it’s not ethical to steal from, they’re not a disgusting blight rotting away the foundations of society. Nor a friend, or stranger, or small business, etc. for the same reason.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly hard concept.
Bro relax. It was a joke
I actually prefer self checkout. Idk. I get it though.
My parents refused to use the self-checkout because “They take people’s jobs.”
They were hardcore republicans perfectly happy to make sure those jobs got paid shit.
Do they also book all their travel through travel agencies, always use full-service gas stations, valet their cars instead of parking on the street, make restaurant bookings through concierge services, etc? Those are people’s jobs too!
Also, let’s not forget that you are doing someone’s job simply for using a shopping cart at all. Traditional grocers didn’t have anything like the aisles we wander through now. Rather, there would basically be a warehouse with a counter at the front. You walked up with your list of items, gave it to the grocer, and they would grab the items for you. Customers gathering goods themselves didn’t come about until the age of the supermarket starting in the mid 20th century.
This is also why I have zero sympathy for stores that complain about theft and shrinkage. They’re the ones choosing to operate in a business model that makes theft easier. Traditional grocers didn’t have to worry about shoplifting, as everything was kept behind the counter. Sure, armed robbery was a concern then as it is now, but shoplifting wasn’t a concern.
When the grocery stores abandoned the traditional model, they realized the money they saved on labor would more than make up for the increased losses due to shoplifting. And that was simply a choice they made. And it’s the same with self-checkout. They made a business decision that would inevitably result in increased theft, and they have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they don’t like the increased theft, they can go back to cashiers. Or hell, there’s nothing stopping Walmart from going all the way back to the traditional dry goods store model even. That would work really well with online orders as well. You don’t even let customers wander through most of the store. You just have a very long counter at the front of the store that customers walk up and tell the workers what they want. And the workers gather the order. You either wait for them to gather it, or you place the order in advance and have it ready when you pick it up. If Walmart did this, shoplifting would become virtually impossible. Their labor costs would skyrocket, but Walmart has it in its power to completely eliminate shoplifting if they really want to.
I always go into stores to throw stuff from the racks onto the floor, to make sure the people whose job it is to clean that up stay employed.
I never buy anything of course, I don’t want stuff that’s been on the floor!
I’d book a flight through a travel agency if these still existed. Booking online is pure dread to me. I’m too young to have ever seen a travel agency but the concept of not having to deal with Ryanair and Wizzair is very luring.
Travel agent saved my ass about 10 years ago when my connecting flight was delayed in air while I was on it. Completely missed the final leg of my journey because of a storm. Middle of the night and she helped me switch everything over and rent a car to drive the rest of the way and even got me upgraded to a more fun one. This was when I was going to a job interview and flying in the night before.
IE. We like the idea of slavery! Someone to do the dirty work while we act superior…while shopping at Walmart.
- I don’t work here. Stop trying to get me to do the job for free, either pay a cashier to check me out or fuck off.
- There’s an epidemic of these machines not working and then the shopper getting charged with shoplifting over it, Wal-Mart is the worst at doing this.
I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.
At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.
I don’t mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you… but they are not a replacement for cashiers.
Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.
You don’t get to be 3 of the richest people on the planet by paying for labor
I’m 100% against self checkout.
They’ve put the burden of sale on you instead of themselves. If you fail to check something out accidentally, you are liable for theft.
If they don’t have a cashier, I go to customer service and tell them to ring me up even if it’s one item.
Which is why I’m against making people do big orders through self checkout, cause thats when an accident can happen.
Not when you’re getting your genital itch cream.
I can’t imagine a judge taking a case where someone unwittingly stole something
Don’t need to get to a judge. They can just tresspass you and then you have to drive 30 miles to another supermarket cause you cant ever set foot in that one again.
Thats enough to fuck shit up for a lot of people.
Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item
NAL, but i believe that they have to show intent in order to prosecute. As long as the legal system works properly, they would have to prove that you’re lying when you say “I forgot that was down there”
What’s so bad with self checkout I run through it faster then a cashier does
If you have more stuff than will fit in the weighing platform it’s a logistical disaster. Hence why the belts and bagger system were invented in the first place.
Walmarts keep the same number of cashiers before and after self checkouts are installed.
not in any walmart where i’ve witnessed the changeover.
I’m just basing it off of being married to a Walmart manager for 10 years but hey, maybe outsiders’ anecdotal feelings on the topic are more accurate than observed first hand experience.
Walmart is ALWAYS hiring cashiers.
Yeah, and you know where they are? stocking shelves and picking for the online pickup orders. Not running checkout lines.
I’m on Team Boomer on this one.
I am and I’m not. If it’s like 2 items, give me a self checkout. If it’s over 15. Bring on a cashier.
I always prefer self checkout because too many people suck at bagging.
Don’t put a leaking pack of meat with my deli you dumb shit. All while I see people pushing full carts that have meat touching produce…
The only place I trust to bag for me is Trader Joe’s. Tetris masters over there.
You buy meat pack that’s leaking?
To add to that, you don’t wash your produce before eating it?
Yeah I do and I also don’t buy any food from a store that is leaking.
So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven’t worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc), they’ve lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.
(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that the mighty MBA class are actually just short-sighted, trend-hopping, avaricious shitbags?
Yeah, if you can’t pay people enough to notice and/or care if I steal from you, I get to steal from you. Them’s the rules.
“If you aren’t able to stop me, I get to rape you. Them’s the rules.”
That’s how fucking stupid you sound.
I mean that’s literally how rape works. Not saying that’s a good thing, just that a law is mere words on a page if it’s not enforceable.
So, to be clear, are you saying that stealing from a corporation is equally as bad as raping someone?
Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items
In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?
- If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
- With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
- If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.
the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc)
What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.
The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.
In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
- Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
- Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
- In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
- The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
- The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don’t have bar codes.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
Age verification happens asynchronously and causes zero delay for anyone who doesn’t look like a teenager. The employee overseeing the self-checkout gets an alert on their tablet-thingie, they take one look at me and press approve. You can just keep scanning items while this happens. Usually the ‘your age may be checked’ alert disappears within seconds.
Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
They can where I live.
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
The conveyor belt slows things down. You take an item out of your basket, scan it and put it in your bag in one go instead of it being two separate actions. You’re only handling each item once instead of twice. Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items.
If you scan while you add items to your cart it takes less than 10 seconds to check out, regardless of how many items you have
That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
My local supermarket has a grand total of 1 regular cashier, versus 16 self checkouts. If you go during a busy time you have to stand in line. Since the regular cashier is basically only used by people who don’t want to or can’t use self-checkout for some reason (that is: usually elderly people) this line doesn’t move very fast.
When it’s a quiet time of day there often isn’t a regular cashier at all and you have to ask the person overseeing the self-checkout who then has to call someone to help you out as they cannot leave the self-checkout isle unattended so you end up waiting for a cashier to arrive.
Self checkout is always faster, by an order of magnitude.
The system you describe sounds good, however, it’s nothing I’ve ever encountered. May I ask where you live?
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
I use self checkout at certain stores, and avoid it at others.
And the store that this whole post is about, Wal-Mart, is definitely one of the stores I’ll avoid self checkout at. Their system sucks.
Your entire comment seems premised on the mistaken assumption that every self checkout system is implemented in the exact same way.
It basically is implemented the exact same way in every supermarket in my country.
So we’re having a conversation about the Wal-Mart style self checkouts, which you’ve not only never experienced, but apparently can’t even imagine.
To borrow from an earlier comment of yours, we’re in an “alternate reality,” so your conversation should be grounded in that understanding.
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
I’ve never seen that, and I’m not aware of any supermarket chain in my country that does this.
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time. This is to try to prevent theft. If you have more items than will fit into one bag, you have to periodically remove that bag and start a new bag. If you bump something or move things around while you bag (there’s very little room to work with), you often get one of these errors.
Besides, if you’re planning to get a lot of items you scan while shopping, not at checkout. You get a portable scanner, put it slot on your cart and just scan each item as you put it in your cart.
I’ve never been in a store that has this. What stores in what country are you referring to? The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts. It probably has to use RFID or something and be able to effectively compare all items you’re walking out with to what all was in the transaction. Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
Anyway, I think most of the people who are raving about how great self-checkout is are those who only buy a handful of items at a time, probably not stocking up on groceries or buying enough for a family.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them, people with full carts and the lines move very slowly compared to the ones with a cashier, where for the same length of line, my wait time is much shorter and then someone who’s better at it than me, with a conveyor belt and ability to scan quickly does it, and there is usually also another person bagging, or if not I can bag as they scan (depending on the store).
I’ve never been to a grocery store where the self checkout doesn’t weigh everything. That’s why people keep getting the “unexpected item in bagging area” error that requires an employee to come over to check and clear the error each time.
Sounds like a stupid system.
What stores in what country are you referring to?
Pretty much every supermarket in the Netherlands.
Here is a video of it in action
The anti-theft equipment for a system like this that would prevent someone stealing by simply not scanning something is probably a lot more expensive than the usual self checkouts.
There is no anti theft system other than randomized bag checks where they check up to 10 items from your bag to see if you scanned them. Takes about 1 minute and with daily supermarket visits this happens maybe once a month or so. (I think there is some kind of reputation system linked to your store loyalty card).
Do you exit the store through a specific gate that scans stuff or what?
You scan your receipt af the exit gate (you can also scan a barcode from the store’s app or choose a tiny receipt that only contains the exit barcode). You have to go through one or these gates regardless of wether you go through self checkout or not.
If the store is busy I never try to self checkout since there are lines at all of them
There are almost never lines at self checkout. There are 16 self checkout stations vs only one regular cashier. Self checkout is super fast and even if they are all occupied one usually frees up in less than a minute.
Sounds like a stupid system.
Yes! Now you’re getting it. I’m glad you have a system you like in your country, but this thread is about Walmart in the US. Yet for some reason you want to keep telling us we’re wrong about something you have no experience with, somehow thinking we’re talking about what you have in your country.
For me it’s not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it’s the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I’m walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.
Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
I’m a lot faster at bagging when I’m not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.
That sounds amazing! Can I ask where that is?
I live in the Netherlands
Scandinavia?
Netherlands :)
