Comment by waterbear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by waterbear | Hacker News Reader

  Mr. McDonald said that if Ms. Thompson’s daughter took 
  the groceries without scanning them properly, it was 
  by mistake. Video surveillance, reviewed by The New 
  York Times, shows her daughter trying to scan and 
  rescan groceries at the checkout machine for about 17 
  minutes.

I really have a mixed impression of self checkout lanes, as they currently exist. Ten years ago, if you had asked me if they sound like a good idea, I have responded with an emphatic yes.

But experiencing them on perhaps a monthly basis these days, I’ve developed an overwhelming urge to avoid them at all costs. And not because of incidents as described by this article.

It’s reached the point that even when I’m holding a single item, and there are five people with full shoppings carts in front of me, I get annoyed at people who suggest self checkout to me. I know damn well that there’s a self checkout lane, and it’s my time to waste. I’m waiting in precisely the lane I intend to be in.

Even though I totally agree that working a cash register should very nearly be an anachronistic job at this point, self checkout lanes are a horrid abomination in their modern form. Waiting for these machines to prompt me through the task of ringing my own items up is so far from my own experiences of actually working as a cashier, that I shake my head in dismay nearly every time.

When I used to work register at no less than ten other jobs, I could rip through a collection of 20 or 30 items in a minute or less (as long as barcodes or price tags were legible), and accept payment as fast as you could hand it to me. But self checkout prompts. Stops. Waits. Prompts. Stops. Fails. Back to square one. Prompt. Wait... Wait... Prompt. And so on.

Why is it so bad? Why is it worse than vending machines? So much worse. And restaraunts are trying to pull the same trick. Self service touchscreens leave you sitting at tables, unserved for half an hour, until you walk over to the bar and complain.

The future is hell.

The key gem I remember from an UI/UX rant posted here recently[0] is this: computer should wait on humans, not the other way around. This is what I hate about self-checkout machines. The process is infuriatingly slow. I could get out there in 1/10th of the time if the stupid machine wasn't so full of modal dialogs, talking, and if not for the weird delays in processing of the scanned barcode. Just let me scan items as fast as I can pick them up from my basket, and then press a button and pay.

I can't imagine how you can fail so spectacularly at your job as to design the self-checkout experience, so I'm forced to believe that all those issues are there on purpose.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682494 -> https://brandur.org/interfaces

Then, once one is abroad not speaking the local language and switches the self-checkout to English, a loud voice sounds out (louder than the voice in native language) "START YOUR CHECKOUT, SCAN YOUR ITEMS", basically screaming "this is a foreigner, they have no idea what they are doing", only adding to the stress level.

A few years ago Target changed their self checkout machines to be less infuriating. It doesn't yell at you to place your item in the bagging area and then yell at you for putting an unexpected item in the bagging area. It lets you scan items as fast as you want. When I use some other store's self checkout machines it's a serious step backwards.

I’ve noticed the same thing with Walmart in Canada. It’s not a bad experience now.

Although scanning each item individually is still time consuming. Removing that requirement would be awesome.

Maybe the machine is not designed for your expectation of a bad ass checkout experience. Maybe the main considerations are getting acceptable performance when used by people with an extremely wide range of technical literacy and cognitive skills.

One does not exclude the other. Accessability doesn't require slowing users down.

It’s the assumption that people (clients) are stupid and frauds (weighting items, „unexpected item!”), plus the fact that creating the software is created at the lowest possible cost. Yes that’s the future - the quantity of resources and services is fixed, robots and machines will guard people from accessing them, while overzealously detecting and punishing potential frauds. The profits from "automating out" the things will not go the pocket of the consumer/end user/client/claimant.

As others have pointed out, I've used two kinds of self-checkout mechanisms in grocery stores (France).

The mechanism in as shown in the article (bring all the bags to the check-out lane, scan, weight, pay) is just horrid, and way slower. I just go to the regular checkout in these cases. I've seen a store which replaced all regular queues with self-checkout lanes, and now I just avoid it.

The second method is by taking a barcode gun with you at the entrance, scan the items as you go, and simply pay at the exit. There are random-rechecks, but they are performed by the cashier, so they're quick. On average, it's actually faster, and I do prefer this method. The barcode scanner takes the tally for you and can do a price check, which is another convenience to have sometimes.

Every store I've seen using this tech was from Siemens and I'm pretty happy about the implementation.

Some shops in Japan has another combination of automation.

There is a cashier that scans your items as normal (from one basket into another basket) but each cashier station has two automated pay stations (they can also be shareD).

Once your stuff is scanned the cashier sends you to one of the stations with your basket and you pay ther. You then pack you bags in a dedicated packing area.

It removes the frustration of dealing with scanning yourself. Paying is quick and simple and a separate bagging area (which is std in Japan to be honest) ensures no bottle-necks.

I gotta say I like this system a lot

I was under the impression that these automated systems had "reduce personnel" as their primary goal, more than speed.

This would explain why the bad, but still automated, scanning stations still exist.

I've always seen a bagging area just after the scanning station here. I'm not sure it's the same in Japan. But all the people I've seen start to bag while the items are scanned. This results in the cashier waiting for you to pay, blocking people in the line.

With the systems I've discussed in the beginning, you basically bag your items as you go. In the normal case of no-recheck, you pay and leave.

I always use the self checkouts at Home Depot. You just drag every item across the scanner and then pay. If something is too large to scan, the assistant will hand-scan it for you.

At the grocery store, it's a totally different story. Every time I try to use the self-checkouts, I end up regretting it. I think the difference is that the grocery store machine attempts to make sure you don't steal anything by verifying that nothing is put in the bags without a scan, or that the weight of that something agrees with what is scanned. This never works, it always says "unexpected item in bagging area", and then you have to wait for a store person to clear it for you. It ends up taking forever. (Not to mention the vegetables without bar codes that the actual checkers have all the codes memorized for but that you have to search through a long list to find...)

In some European supermarkets, you can borrow a scan gun and scan things as you put them in your bag. Then you use the self checkout machine for payment. Sometimes you get flagged for verification, and an employee has to scan X random items. It's very smooth, especially with card-only terminals.

It's perhaps a problem where you live. I've never had any problems with any of them in Belgium. As misterman101 said, you can either borrow a scanner and then put it back. Or do it all at once at the self-checkout which is almost always faster than waiting in line for a checkout.

I vastly prefer self-checkouts, I hate having to hurry up at the checkout just so the person after me doesn't have to wait for me to put everything in my bag. Let me take it slow, I honestly hate the "normal checkout".

Gosh, I love the self-checkouts. Always use them.

I avoid supermarkets that don't have them!

We have them in Singapore, they are amazing, you cannot take a shopping cart to them, only a basket, the older ones were weight based and sometimes didn't work properly, the new ones don't bother with weight and everything scans 100% of the time.

I had an issue getting an item to scan in the self-checkout lane the other day. I've only used the machines a few times before.

Eventually I got it to scan, but I'm pretty sure I would have been able to call over a member of staff to do it manually if not.

In this case I wonder if an attempt at calling staff was made. If not, perhaps the instructions were not clear enough about what to do in that situation.

After 17 minutes with frozen items melting beside me, I'd probably start to panic and behave more irrationally too.

I refuse to use self checkout. Once upon a time these were entry level jobs for ordinary people, checking or bagging groceries or pumping gas. As a society we seem intent on creating a large population of unemployed, hopeless and generally excluded from the economy. This is both cruel and foolish.

This is also what keeps the prices of goods low for low wage earners. Automation is good, to the extend they are cost effective. Humans are good at shifting jobs. No need to do something that can be done by a robot

The problem is the way the labor market works, if you have no special training or credential, and particularly if you are young or otherwise just starting out, you are stuck with an entry job. Once you have a year or more of work experience things get a little better. What happens when we eliminate all the "first jobs"?

Catch-22, i presume. Without eliminating first jobs, there wouldn't be more automation maybe.

I was reading jobs that became part of history recently, like the movie seat showing guy/gal, or elevator guy/gal. I only saw the format, but thinking latter was interesting.

Years from now, a lot of jobs will look "interesting" to next generations. Like the guy that carries construction material around - it'll be robots.

It will all be better eventually, but what will happen in the interim. Maybe that's how social nets form.

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