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Comment by ndelage | Hacker News Reader

The last few times I've gone to my local pharmacy (Rite Aid) I've watched a single cashier operate more than one checkout registers at a time. She did this because it took so long to process payment and print a receipt -- e.g. while she waited for my payment to go through (via credit card) she'd ring up the next customer on another register.

She's trying to ring up the most customers per minute possible and using a second register helps her increase her checkout rate.

It's not unusual that I spend more time waiting to check out than I do actually shopping. I'd love solutions like "just walk out" since my experience lately seems to be something along the lines of "grab what I need and stand in line unnecessarily".

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Whilst Amazon Go is cool, that's not an argument in its favour. That's purely a US specific screwup. In the rest of the world you can clear contactless transactions in a few hundred milliseconds with competent retailers; that's why it's possible to tap your way through the gates at busy London Underground stations. And retailers love contactless exactly because it's so fast and it lets them reduce staffing/handle more customers.

I don't know about your part of the US but it's now pretty common everywhere in Europe to have nearly unmanned retail stores. All the checkouts are self service. You can grab a portable scanner at the front, scan items as you walk around grabbing them and then tap your card at a checkout kiosk.

Amazon's implementation sounds even easier (no scanning required), but in terms of raw throughput it's probably only a bit better.

That still doesn't solve the problem of waiting while people get all their items scanned, and I doubt that countries outside of the US have managed to solve that one.

Imo there is nothing in terms of convenience and speed that can beat "just walking out".

Serious question - how widespread is self checkout in the US? I rarely queue at local supermarkets in the UK, I can checkout in <30s with a few items.

Cannot speak for the whole country, but after living in cities on both coasts, I can say it is extremely widespread. The issue is that even with 10 self-checkout stations, there will be a queue at "normal" times of the day, as there are a lot of people shopping at any "normal" time. And that's not even a particularly large store I am talking about, it is a local QFC. I spend at least 5 minutes just waiting in line every time wanting to buy something. Not even mentioning the process of scanning, bagging, etc.

One cool thing about Amazon Go is that it actually sends you an email afterwards telling you how much time you spent at the store. Without failure, my overall times range between 30 seconds and 2.5 minutes. While for a regular grocery store, I would estimate it to be at the very least 10 mins for an equivalent amount of items purchased. Maybe it is my own quirk, but it deeply annoys me to spend time doing things in an inefficient manner, whereas I know I can do them much more efficiently AND with less effort.

Most of the major supermarket or big box stores has self checkout. They will always have a few lines with staff but the majority is self checkout these days. A good portion of the people buy a huge amount of stuff at a time and the lines can get long. Typically the people with a few items tend to go to the self checkout line.

Self checkout is nearly ubiquitous in US grocery stores, where I barely ever wait at all for checkout. It's rare in places like convenience stores or the large pharmacies (would you call it a chemist if it sells overpriced groceries too?)

Judging from visits to London, our grocery culture is different mainly in that we usually buy weeks of food at once. Some people still use checkers to help them efficiently get through a giant cart of food. And our grocery stores are often gigantic, maybe dozens of lanes of checkout side by side, where in Europe I often see maybe... two?

I've waited in lines in UK and European stores, (Fortnam during the holidays?), but rarely waited in grocery stores over there, even in places without self check. There's just much less foot traffic in any individual grocery because they're so much smaller.

But maybe I'm just comparing US suburbs with UK cities, not sure.

It seemed rare 3-4 years ago, but now Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Target, they all have ~6-12 s/c registers, sometimes at each end of the store (often so far apart a line forms at one, while the other remains empty).

There seem to be a lot of cashiers on weekends, but fewer overall. So many unused lanes, most of the year.

It's pretty widespread, but I frequently have to wait in line to use the self-checkout machines. It doesn't necessarily get me out the door faster.

you don't need to wait.. You get a portable scanner, you scan them as you pick them or whatever, no need to scan in a queue.

What waiting to get items scanned? I can't remember the last time I had to wait for that. (you're talking about people waiting in line for other people to scan their items, right?)

We have pretty close to instant transactions here in Australia but I every now and then I find a place where it takes 30-60 seconds for it to process. I think the issue is actually just the store has bad network coverage and the machine fails multiple times before it can send the transaction properly.

I believe they do some sort of local batching of transactions then settle them all at once. You can see this sometimes if you go shopping early in the morning and you're the first person to use a particular EFTPOS terminal for the day, the UI will show a few extra steps in the processing workflow.

I'm not sure how this would work. Surely they must have to contact the card company to process the payment as soon as it happens since they have to show the accepted/declined message before the customer walks off.

There are retailers in other countries and payment terminals that have implemented the self-checkout to be very close to "just walk out".

- no item weight confirmation - no steps in-between trying to sell me things - no annoying voice overs - decent UX (navigation) for the 99% case

Here is how I pay in those stores: - scan my item(s) placing them directly in my bag: taking ~1s per item - navigate through 3 screens by hammering the [Next] button that is in the same spot on all these screens: takes less than 1s - pay contactless with my creditcard: takes less than 1s

The US screwed up each of those 3 steps.

i duno where you live but at my local pharmacy there used to be 3 cashiers, now there are none (just 2 kiosks). a person is around but they seem to usually be doing something other than checking people out (just tending to the machines when there is, for example, an elderly lady using coins)

the first gen kiosks were pretty bad (slow, overly sensitive, no way to go back if you click the wrong thing, etc) but the current ones are solving those issues and have all but eliminated lines in my experience

I feel like self checkout kiosks already solve this. Commodotized Amazon Go tech is a minute improvement in convenience compared to traditional cashier -> self checkout.

Self checkouts allow paying with cash as well. Even more so than regular checkouts. I tend to just empty all of my low value coins in to the self checkout knowing a machine won't be pissed off about counting them all.

Minor compared to self checkout seems understating the impact depending on where you are and how busy the store is. I find myself waiting in line for a self checkout regularly. (Target and recently Home Depot.) Compared to just walking out, this would save at least 5 minutes for each visit in my experience.

Absolutely not. The difference in waiting times between cashiers and the self checkout lane is minimal (as it obviously should end up). Self checkouts require a reasonable amount of time to go through, even without a queue (when there often is one at the shops near me). Simply walking in and out would be a massive change from self checkout for buying a small number of items.

apart from the line up at the self-checkout, the number of people who can't seem to operate a self-checkout is still non-trivial.

The crucial difference is self checkouts displace the labor onto the end user with more or less the same delay as a checkout. This will remove both the delay and the checkout work task.

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