Planet Money: Self Checkout [audio] | Hacker News Reader

Planet Money: Self Checkout [audio]

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26 pointssndean44 comments

It seems like I'm the only person in this thread who's had pretty much nothing but good experiences with self checkout machines. And this is despite the fact that I usually do grocery trips with at least 15-20 items. I don't have a problem with human contact with a cashier, I just prefer self checkout because it pretty much never has lines. I've also not experienced the horribly buggy machines that everyone else here seems to be exposed to.

Me too... though it's very hard to find supermarkets nearby with one these days.

To me it's a lot like pumping your own gas. It's weird when I go back to NJ and have to sit in the car and wait for the one dude working on 6 pumps.

But if you talk to people from NJ who have never been outside of NJ it would seem obvious that someone else does it. All of the comments in this thread against self service are the exact arguments NJ people have against pumping your own gas.

I've never had a pump in NJ or elsewhere not work. Self-checkout machines on the other hand, don't work often. That's the difference.

I don't know what you're basing that on, I live in Australia and I've never had a self checkout machine not work. They are consistently good and I use them all the time.

Your experience has been very different than mine.

Note that the machines have many tolerances that can be set to trade-off theft vs. annoyance of the customer. (E.g. the product weight when placed in the bagging area.) The machines can we way less annoying when they are set to be more trusting.

I also generally found them to work better in Australia than in the US, though the technology seems to be the same. I guess it's because of these tolerances being set differently, but that's just speculation.

You could be correct, just recently the Australian supermarkets announced a crackdown on self-checkout theft (mentioned in the podcast) which would seem unlikely if tolerances weren't currently lenient. In the last week the Coles supermarket I went to had rolled out entirely new software / UI on the machines, and for the first time in ages there were long self checkout queues and people seemed to be taking longer.

I've never come across a self-checkout machine that doesn't work, but that's just anecdotal. It seems silly to base one's general opinion on the concept of self-checkout machines on how broken the ones you've experienced are. When I was traveling, I spent time in countries where toilets would back up more often than not, and that didn't make me think "Toilets are ridiculous,why do they exist".

Likewise here. I've basically memorized self checkout flows as a physical pattern and can quickly scan / scale and go without much issue. Usually prefer them over human cashiers.

You're not the only one, I love using them and I do use them all the time. If I'm doing about half a trolley or less of groceries I will use them. Never had experience with lots of broken self-checkout systems or extensive manual intervention. The only thing I wish you could do is delete items you've scanned twice by accident.

I also don't understand how they are "slow" compared to going through the checkout with a cashier.

I actually like using self checkout. It's great for quick purchases, but not so much when you're buying lots of groceries. One thing I usually buy quickly is beer - but here in California, there is a State law against using the self checkout lane for alcohol purchases. This is ostensibly to avoid alcohol theft, but I have a sneaky conspiracy theory it's to make these self checkouts even less used, all to appease the unions and keep labor up.

My theory was along the lines of alcohol being prohibited because under age customers would buy there and get through without being ID'ed

If you scan alcohol in a self checkout lane, you get a message to wait for a store assistant to validate your ID before you can continue. If the customer doesn't ring the alcohol... that's a different story.

I always refuse to use Self Checkout, even when a store clerk offers to operate it for me. The process always takes longer than doing it "the old fashioned way". Maybe it's because I'm over 50, but I prefer face-to-face interaction with a cashier. BTW, I'm not a technophobe by any measure. I'm probably more tech savvy than most people here.

Being pretty antisocial, I tend to go to the self checkout if it's available. Though I've noticed that if there's a problem with something, and the store clerk comes over to help, that leads to far more human interaction than the old fashioned way (explaining the problem vs. "Hi")

> BTW, I'm not a technophobe by any measure. I'm probably more tech savvy than most people here.

At least in my circle of friends, it seems like it's less about being tech savvy/phobic and more introverted/extroverted

I tend to prefer less human interaction as well, but these machines offer the worst of both worlds: frustration due to dealing with a poorly designed machine, PLUS the joy of waiting around for a person to come rescue you.

I hate the self checkout but I use them because they tend not to have lines.

They really are slow.

If I have less than 5 items, the self checkout is usually faster but anything over that and then it's just too trouble to do all that stuff myself.

For one single item, which happens sometimes, it can be significantly more efficient.

I wonder if that's part of the disconnect for people - I love self checkout, but I live alone, all my shopping fits in one basket, and I walk to & from the store. If you're shopping for a family and filling a whole shopping cart to take to a car, you probably have more items than are reasonable for efficient self checkout.

That face-to-face interaction is unnaturally reducing the performance bonus of management. Think any of the headcount savings $ goes to stockpeople?

A Home Depot person always walks by me in line, saying "Self-checkout is open!" to which I always reply "Never." Craig Menear doesn't need those micropennies for anything other than scorekeeping with his golf buddies.

But these are all just rationalizations. Self-checkout was a broken hassle years ago when I first tried it. I'm not under the impression much has changed, and my sympathies have grown with the labor argument. This seems especially evident in the lack of baggers (and bagging skills) at my local large grocery store. I think they stopped teaching it, but regardless The headcount-reduction engine doesn't result in a business I want to give more money to.

I have no problem with self-checkout generally but I find it pretty bad for a "real" grocery shopping (as opposed to picking up a few barcoded items). I'm almost always picking up a fair bit of produce and other items that don't have barcodes and dealing with these is very painful compared to having a cashier.

Home improvement stores can be a pain too because of awkward shapes but, of course, it depends on what you're buying.

Shaws, a grocery store near where I live in Somerville, MA used to have self checkouts, but got rid of them. They also ended their customer loyalty card system. The paticular store where I shop has limited space, so the checkers allow more customer throughput. The old self-checkouts failed pretty often for me so I'm happy they're gone.

I always do self-checkout at Home Depot. It usually works perfectly, and when the attendants have to scan something large or a by-foot cut of something, it's usually quick.

At grocery stores, it's a different story entirely. Buying 3 things? Doesn't matter, you'd better put your bag in the "packing area" before scanning anything because it'll stop working when you try to pack something. Or pack it into the bag as you scan? Nope, it'll stop working. It does however make me appreciate the considerable number of memorized vegetable and loose-weight codes the cashiers remember.

Self checkout is almost mandatory in many UK shops.

Wait in a long slow line for a regular checkout, or short-to-no line for self-checkout? Easy choice. Very fast once you get the hang of them, and no chit-chat!

The only time I sometimes prefer the human checkout is when buying alcohol as you need to call over an attendant to approve your purchase, which is a little annoying.

The problem with lines could be solved instead by re-instituting the original meaning of express lanes. It used to be under ten items, then 10-11 items. Now the store I shop at says "about 15 items" to avoid doing any actual counting. Today I was buying a single item and all the self-checkout machines were in use. So I go into the express lane with two people ahead of me. Not only was one of the customers buying more than 15 items, they BOTH paid with a personal check!

Limit the express lane to strictly 11 items or less and only accept cards and cash (or even cards only) and it will move quicker than the self-service machines.

I use the self-checkouts because I like to see how fast I can go, like speed-running a video game.

I like the self checkout, I generally feel like I had a net time savings against waiting in line. I appreciate how truly sensitive they are and I take some mild precautions to avoid getting stuck in one of the machine's pitfalls. I know some folks might scoff and call these limitations a regression but I think it's a net win for me.

Stuff to look out for:

1. shopping w/the kids (they love to "help" but don't know the precautions)

2. certain items requiring special attention (items with theft deterrents, age-controlled items, etc).

3. quickly getting item delivered from scanner to scale. Too many items will leave you limited in how you can make room on the scale.

Some stores have some customizations which show them as having different priorities. At Walmart the transaction is well-optimized for speed (CC bypasses signature for cheap transactions, CC swipe bypasses primary console prompting/confirmation, also one or two "non-bagged items" grace). Others seem to focus more on risk/theft controls.

If I can scan the item and then place it in the bag, I have no problem using self checkout machines. (The local CVS and Harris-Teeter stores, for example.) If I scan the item and can't bag it; but, have to put it on a belt and let it go to the bagging end? I rarely use it. Why? I want to bag my groceries without worrying about bagging those of the person behind me. If I scan everything, pay, and then start bagging, the majority of the time, the person behind me starts scanning their items before I'm done bagging.

Why hire and pay someone to work a checkout counter when you can get taxpayers to shoulder the cost for you:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-06/nsw-police-to-crackdow...

I refuse. The prices are usually too high to warrant scanning my own groceries.

Wait, the machines charge you higher prices? Where do you live? I don't think I've ever heard of this.

Rather, you don't get a discount for using the self-checkout. The price you are paying has the cost of a human cashier built into it. If you use self-checkout, you're providing that service yourself for free, but the company still collects the premium they charge for human service.

In Australia you pay even more (via tax dollars) for using self-checkout: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-06/nsw-police-to-crackdow...

Maybe the wage savings offset the shoplifting costs.

Oh gotcha. I misunderstood his implication.

> The price you are paying has the cost of a human cashier built into it. If you use self-checkout, you're providing that service yourself for free

While true, this is kind of a bizarre way to look at it; you should only be using the service if you prefer it to human checkout, in which case the fact that their costs are lower is irrelevant. It basically just means that both you and the company are both benefiting.

One may as well say "I always make sure to use the bathroom when I go to the grocery store. If I don't, the company still collects the premium they charge for providing a bathroom". And yet if you'd rather not go to the bathroom, the premium they charge has nothing to do with your decision making process.

the machines don't cost anything?

They do, but way less than a human employee (or else they wouldn't use the machines.)

I wonder if anybody has ever suggested offering discounts for using them. I imagine an across-the-board x% off is anathema to the business gestalt.

The problem is that then people will use self-checkout even though they know that what they're buying is going to be time consuming, awkward, and require significant manual intervention in the self-checkout lane. This is especially true in home improvement stores where things like lumber really aren't designed to work with self-checkout at all.

Sure, but that cost would be more than compensated by a reduction in checkers.

My point is that giving a discount for self-checkout will tend to lead to an experience that is worse for the shopper and doesn't even necessarily result in reduced costs for the store because they'll now need more self-checkout helpers.

I hate these damn machines. Every one I've ever tried has been incredibly shitty. They're configured to prevent stealing, but that means they constantly stop normal shoppers just trying to check out and force everything to a halt until an assistant coms over. But whoops, the assistant always just stepped away for a moment, or is helping someone else, or, or...

Not to mention the basic fact that, screw you guys, it's YOUR job to do the checkout, not customers'.

> Not to mention the basic fact that, screw you guys, it's YOUR job to do the checkout, not customers'.

I don't understand this statement. How is this a basic fact? It seems like you've drawn an arbitrary line for things that they're responsible based on how it used to be and are randomly claiming that it must be universal. Why isn't it a "basic fact" that your gas station is responsible for an attendant pumping your gas, or your motel is responsible for a concierge to make reservations for you? Just because these existed in the past doesn't make it a "basic fact" that it's their fundamental responsibility.

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