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Comment by thinkling | Hacker News Reader

Another thing: I'm guessing they don't have paid staff to bag groceries for customers like many US stores, but what they may have that's common in Europe but unknown in the US: the boat-tiller-like divider in the conveyor belt space past the cashier.

Customer A's things get rung up and continue to side A. When done with customer A, the cashier shoves the divider across so the belt now takes customer B's stuff to side B while customer A continues to put their stuff in their bag or their cart.

My DuckDuck-Fu is failing me to find a picture of this.

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> unknown in the US

Commonly seen in the US in fact, such as in WinCo stores [0].

0 - https://images.app.goo.gl/HN1mQyCw5fUbcnTr8

Aka the grocery store that doesn't take credit cards.

? Do you mean debit cards too?

They do take those, and gosh, I feel bad for people who need to put food on credit.

Debit cards often have transaction fees associated with them that the customer pays (as opposed to the merchant paying). Even when they don't, running it as debit doesn't get you cash back or rewards or various things that running a card as credit gets you.

Your typical bank card can be run as either debit or credit (same card, same bank account). But running it as debit usually has some serious drawbacks to running it as credit. You always want to run your American debit card as a credit card if the merchant allows.

It's often not about needing to put food on credit.

Many relatively well-off people run all of their expenses through a credit card (and pay it off in full at the end of the month) - some in chase of reward points, some just for convenience of carrying a single card.

It's a combination of convenience of carrying a single card plus the rewards, plus the interest free loan plus not having to remember a PIN.

This confluence of facts led to a situation where my bank chose PINs for its customers and I didn't remember my PIN. Fortunately I had some cash, but that was a bit annoying.

At least at the Aldi I shop at, they don't even have that. The cashier is at the very end of the line; the next thing past them is a shopping cart, and scanned items get placed directly into it.

When you're done paying, you wheel that cart away, leave the one you had in its place, and go to a separate counter where you can bag or box your stuff.

If you had a basket, you throw the basket in the cart, the cashier drops stuff in there, and you take it with you. Which, they didn't mention this in the article, but that's also nice - it encourages customers to put their baskets back in the stack by the door. Which, again, saves everyone time. Employees don't have to stop what they're doing to collect baskets and move them to the door, and customers don't have to wander around the checkout aisles looking for baskets stashed under the conveyor when the stack by the door is empty because things are too busy for that to happen.

"scanned items get placed directly into it."

More like thrown into it - or if you're lucky, dropped into it, at my local Aldi. You learn not to put canned goods ahead of bread on the belt so that cans don't land on your bread.

Aldi staff are pretty high-performing at what they're paid to do. So much so that successfully shopping at Aldi may be even more skilled a profession than working there.

It's part of the charm. :)

And social rules have involved to minimise delays:

0. You place the groceries on the band "in the right order", ie heavy/solid goods first, light/fragile things last (so everything can just be shoved into the cart)

1. When your turn is coming up, you wait until the previous customer has removed their cart, and quickly put yours in place.

2. Next you help the cashier shoving the groceries into your cart, maybe arranging them a bit.

3. As the end of your purchases approaches, you prepare to pay (while the cashier is still scanning your last items), pull cash/card from the wallet, hand it over, and boom, take your cart away while the cashier starts scanning the next customer's items. (This works even faster if you are not alone.)

4. GOTO 1.

I miss Aldi.

Our local WinCo, a US West Coast chain, utilizes checkout dividers to great effect (and employs some of the other cost saving measures mentioned in this article). People aren't nearly familiar enough with using them, though, they park their cart alongside the conveyor belt blocking the next customer instead of going to the end of the conveyor to bag their groceries. An efficient cashier can move faster than two slow customer bagging groceries, some of the local cashiers will have three customers bagging at once.

I've not seen these in the UK for a couple of decades.

Indeed they've reduced the space at the end of checkouts. Aldi have a tiny area so you can't pack easily at the checkout (you're supposed to take it to a packing area). But Tesco removed the extra space, reduced their post-checkout space, and will now both offer to pack for you, and wait until you finish before starting to serve the next person.

I'm not really sure of the rationale: I think they can fit more checkouts in if they're narrower, but also if you want to not wait you might do self-checkout of one kind or other.

EDIT: disregard, misread.

Thats not what he means.

No, that's not it. Those things are common everywhere. Thinkling meant that there are two conveyor belts past the cashier, and the tiller arm switches between them. See your sibling comment for a WinCo photo.

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