The Case Against Self-Checkouts | Hacker News Reader

The Case Against Self-Checkouts

gadallon.substack.com

8 pointsgadallon13 comments

The case against self checkout is simply this: it is better for humans to do complex things like customer service. Automation should be used for non customer facing jobs like restocking. I wouldn't mind shopping around a robot as much as I dislike having my shopping experience dinner by self checkout.

You are raising an excellent point, which is not only the question of operations, but also how it is to be a customer among robots. We know, for example, that one of the most common accidents of self driving cars is being rear-ended.

Given how often self-checkouts shit themselves and I'm left waiting for 10-15 minutes to actually get some help from a real human being, I now choose to shop only at stores that have real human beings on the checkout.

I would frankly rather pay slightly more per item and not spend any more time than I need to in a store. I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, expecting me to screw around with moving shopping from a cart to a weighing area, a bag, and messing with the touchscreen is just too much for me after a long day. I'm willing to pay for service.

Not once have I ever been able to use self-checkout at a major grocery chain like Safeway without violating whatever weight constraints the machine has. Not once. It's absurd. It's been over 10 years, though for most of that time I only ever try about once or less a year and never by choice.

By contrast, I can't remember the last time violating the constraints at a CVS, and I've used it at many. I want to say that it used to happen regularly many years ago, but in any event it's easily been at least 7 years, now. I've also regularly been using self-checkout at a small City Target for the past several years, again without any issues.

Maybe some engineer in the industry can chime in, but my working theory is that CVS either disables their scales or uses huge margins on the thresholds. And CVS can do this because of the already ridiculous markups, whereas margins tend to be razor thin at major grocery chains. Similarly, the pricing and product selection at the City Target I frequent is much more like a CVS or Walgreens than a grocery store, and they also have at least 2 security people standing 15 feet away and watching everything like a hawk, along with the checkout clerks directly face the machines.

I have the same problem at Kroger. I'm slow because the machine forces me to place an item fully on the scale (and wait a second or so) before it will accept the scanning of another. I'm usually waving an item in frustration across the laser multiple times while it figures out what happened to the last item I scanned. Customers are not the problem, IMO. It's dead simple to use these machines, usability issues aside.

Gad is one of the professors at Kellogg that is a little full of himself- perhaps, most all of the Ops Management profs are. I anticipated some application of Little's Law or other Ops formula, instead of merely begging the question. While the pandemic has made us more aware of the possibility of better/safer retail models, self-checkout is definitely a step in the better/safer direction.

The better/safer option?

Perhaps. It's hard to know what the future holds. But I hate self-checkout in today's grocery stores. It's frustrating, annoying, and doesn't improve anything for me as a shopper.

Given how much they are used, the market disagrees with your preference

I'll take this as a compliment. I wish I could use Little's Law in this case, but alas, just an ordinary analysis.

To the point: I think self checkouts can be a step in the right direction, if used them solely rather than having a choice between them and humans (you can read more in the post). I do think however that there are much better options from Amazon Go to dark stores, etc.

I am now curious if you were in fact a student in my class, in which case, at least say hello. Moved to Wharton, BTW.

In fact, I was in your core Ops Management course, but I dropped it & completed the requirement with another instructor. I hope you’re enjoying Phillie; I’m still in Chicago. BTW, I really enjoy your blog posts!

Thanks!

For me, if it’s a few things, like a single hand basket, self checkout is fine and I’m happy to go that route in most cases.

Anything beyond a hand basket, or where I know one or more items in the list will require human intervention regardless, and then I think it’s better to go through the regular line.

What requires human intervention depends on how good the self-checkout is, and how much the store is oriented toward "weird items".

Buying similar carts full of groceries from one of the nicer Walmarts I've ever seen, I never had a single issue with the self-checkout. Going to a Safeway self-checkout with more than 3 items, I am sure to get the thing complaining about the bag weighing mechanism and needing an assistant to unlock it.

I regularly buy $300-500 dollar carts full of stuff from Sam's Club, and scan everything on my phone at the moment I put it in the cart. No need to remove the items from the cart again at the checkout, just pay on your phone and push the cart as-is to your car. (Of course, Sam's is like Costco, and everything is pre-bundled, no weighing of produce required.)

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