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Comment by draw_down | Hacker News Reader

Sounds great if it's not as unbelievably user-hostile as the self checkout machines. Those things are just total crap, every one I've ever tried.

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Once I got the hang of it, I've had almost zero problems with self-checkout machines

It's usually one of two things: a purchase that must be approved (either alcohol or some medicine) or scanning the single item barcode of a multi-item

They screw up for me about 60% of the time. Alcohol is annoying but understandable. More problematic is the weight sensor that misreads the product after I set it down and forces me to wait for an assistant to click a button that says it's okay. I'll occasionally get the register that isn't calibrated properly and then I need assistance for every item. That's fun.

I have given up on bagging as I check out. It goes crazy every time I open a bag and set it in the bagging area. So now I just pile up my groceries and bag them when I'm done, which wastes everyone's time.

It's actually an interesting problem to solve. You would think that a particular item weighs the same no matter which store you scan it in, but in reality item weight can vary. Sometimes it is due to the manufacturer changing the packaging or adding a free sample of some other product to the item, but more interesting it could be the region. One chain I worked in had issues w/self-checkout on paper items such as toilet paper, paper towels, etc. The items were all weighed in the home office in Massachusetts and input into the master item file. This worked fine in most of the stores. The stores in Florida however always had issues because, due to the humidity in the air, the paper would absorb some of that and be just heavier enough to trip the scales. Eventually it was fixed by adding a larger weight variance allowance to the southern stores' POS registers.

> I have given up on bagging as I check out. It goes crazy every time I open a bag and set it in the bagging area. So now I just pile up my groceries and bag them when I'm done, which wastes everyone's time.

This. Trying to do the following

a) Open one of the cellophane bags that are stuck closely together

b) Put the product I just scanned in it

c) Take my hand away so it reads the weight correctly

...are way too difficult for me to do without the machine locking up and saying "okay, assistance required, let's hold you up until the overworked 1 person for 12 checkout machines gets here". So I do the same thing you do, just throw them in the checkout area and bag later.

It wastes everyone's time, but sometimes allows me to bag more efficiently and use fewer plastic bags.

We don't have plastic bags anymore in Seattle. The act of opening a paper bag and setting it on the scale (or simply opening a reusable bag that I'd already set on the scale) is enough to make me "require assistance" 99% of the time.

The ones in supermarkets in Australia started off with a lot of weight related issues. Seems to work fine now, not sure if they have gotten smarter or just less picky with weights.

At the mall where I live, Woolworths insists on bag weighing but Coles actually has it turned off!

This is awesome, as it's incredibly time-saving. At Woolworths I generally have to look like a doofus holding my next item to scan in front of the scanner for at least 2 seconds while the machine is frozen as it slowly weight-checks the item I just bagged...

At Coles the bottleneck is the speed at which I can bag things. Usually I just cram as many things into one bag as possible (I always repack later) and checking out takes under a minute.

NB: The Coles where I live is toward the back of the mall and reasonably far away from the center's exits. I think this has had an impact on the number of items that go walkies, which is why they were able to disable it. (The Woolworths on the other hand is practically outside - leaving there is like going through airport security, they physically rummage through your bags!)

I think there are bigger problems, like how they implicitly assume everyone is a thief and are will to damage usability for everyone because that assumption.

That stupid scale isn't going to stop any shoplifter, but it does inconvenience me every time.

EDIt - Grammar.

It's not just to catch thieves, but to catch errors in scanning too. When I was a cashier (this was back in 2004 but these self check outs appear to be running the same UI), about 70% of the time I had override the machine, the person had thought they scanned something but didn't. And it rarely appeared to be an attempt to steal.

I even catch myself doing it. If you are smart you can notice the error, take it out of the bag and rescan and the machine will keep going.

Most people just freeze and wait for help.

That is not when the machine messes up for me. If I just got done scanning the 5th case of some beverage and it needs to be weighed what should I do. The screen provides little hint. Sometimes there is a "remove my bags" button but often its not there. If I try to move goods to my cart it complains and stops the process, I put the stuff I Just scanned directly in my cart I get an error.

If you say that the scale does find honest mistakes (which I doubt, I think you just have dumb shoplifters) and I say the scales are strictly harmful to user experience then it seems these things must have a bad UI until some advance comes along.

Right. They're user-hostile.

I always either get erroneously told to put item in the bag, or have to take an item out of the bag because for some reason it shouldn't be there according to the register.

The secret is to hate the environment and just use the plastic/paper that is already there.

For me: When I am doing my weekly food shopping, I just use plastic. When I am grabbing something I forgot or picking up beer or something during the week, I just leave everything in the area, pay, and then bag with my reusables after the fact.

These days I only need human interaction when I buy booze, and that consists of a cashier eyeballing me and approving it.

Also when something's on sale but the non-sale barcode scans. I think employees are trained to cover the barcodes but it doesn't always happen.

Tesco's last generation machines are particularly bad, although their newest ones have removed a huge amount of latency from the UI and weighing scales from what I've seen.

If you're shopping for a single item, scanning it and dropping it in the bagging area is sufficient to start the flow, then simply wait a second, click finish, then tap your contactless card is all required to complete a transaction, can be done in under 5 seconds

The best machines I've seen in the UK in terms of user flow are probably at Waitrose, they're just supremely faster to use than those at Tesco

You get what you pay for :-)

The Sainsbury's near me have started to go contactless as well, and it's great.

I had problems with early generations of self-checkout devices, but I have no such problems now. In fact, I will use them whenever I can.

I used to work in a grocery store many years ago though, so it's possible that I have some skills kicking around in my brain that make it easier for me to use them.

That's surprising to hear. I love them (at normal grocers, not Sam's Club) because I find I am faster at scanning and checking myself out than at least half of the cashiers I encounter.

Almost all cashiers in my country are under orders to scan things slowly enough that the customer doesn't feel rushed to put them away. There are discount stores (Aldi and Lidl) that don't do this, and the cashiers there scan things much faster.

I wish more stores employed bag boys/girls. They speed the process up so much. It's a good first job for teenagers and the mentally disabled.

I found it depends on the 'class' of the supermarket. The higher class the supermarket, the less calibrated they are to treat you like a shoplifter.

In Waitrose you can use your own rucksack without getting flagged!

At M&S, you must wait to get approval after indicating that you're using your own bags. Awful system.

I've had nothing but trouble with the self-checkouts I've used in the UK. I'm quite slow and methodical about it, but the machines always manage to inexplicably fuck up halfway through.

I find in Tesco and the Coop (don't think I've used M&S) they let you say you're using your own bags, but they assume that's a carrier bag and complain at my rucksack. I always leave packing until the end if I can now, although they'll still complain about unexpected items even after paying..

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