The age of the fast self-checkout lane is over
devnull.land
devnull.land
Living in a high trust society is nice. We should work on scaling this
Sometimes I might get randomly selected for a manual review by a staff member. But in general it's like they are interested in selling more than stoping thieves
But I also share the author's frustrations. I've had a number of times where it decides the weight of something is wrong or for some other reason stops functioning until a store employee intervenes. But sometimes there is no store employee there at all, and I'm standing there at the self-checkout with no way to resolve the situation.
In some of those cases, I've just left my groceries there at the machine and walked out the store. I tell myself "That'll show 'em, they'll have to put all that stuff back on the shelf!" But it obviously doesn't show them anything: they never fix the broken parts of the self-checkout and I end up having to return to that supermarket (or another) for the reason that brought me into the store in the first place.
That's because corporate headquarters doesn't track how often stuff gets left where it doesn't belong, and the individuals employees have no way to make feature requests or report bugs that aren't severe. (I can report that the system chokes if a guest tries to pay with card, but I can't report that I have to kill the app every so often because it won't let me backstock(there's like 5 different ways it breaks backstocking))
And these features, while understandable, make me despise using the self-checkout. I've always mused that we should have a TSA PreCheck for grocery store checkout. Do a background check on me, I promise I'm not going to steal your shit, now let me just check out without all the checks that constantly break and slow me down. But then I get annoyed at my own solution because of privacy concerns. And so I always just end up leaving the store in a bad mood.
This seems... like a pretty lame take.
I bet in most cases the employees will never know why someone just left their stuff there. Some of it could be perishable so it'll need to be tossed rather than re-stocked onto the shelves.
And not only that, I doubt the people responsible for those machines at whatever corporate level are really checking metrics on why someone starts a checkout and then randomly stops. That's just too many steps removed.
However, there should definitely be a better way. I just don't think this is it.
I can scan things straight into the bag in my trolley. And if I've used my phone as the scanner, I can pay and leave without going anywhere near a physical terminal. If this could be the experience for the 90%, and you only needed a couple of tills open, supermarkets could reclaim 10% of their floorspace and several jobs.
When self-checkout kiosks came alone, there was an argument that the supermarket is making you do their job, but there's little I resent more than loading everything into a trolley, and then having to get it all out again before repacking it all in a massive hurry. I'd much sooner fight an awful app on my phone and do it once than do it all twice.
Hell, I'd buy a barcode scanner that connects to your headphone jack, just for this (assuming it exists.)
So many options, such glacial movement.
https://smartshop.sainsburys.co.uk/ https://secure.tesco.com/clubcard/scan-as-you-shop
The Metro grocery store in the same mall also is half self-checkout, half human. The IKEA where I shop is also half-human and half-self checkout.
The drug store I go to has 1 human checkout, and a row of self-checkout systems. I don't spend a lot of time at the drug store, but so far, I've only ever seen the elderly prefer the human checkout there.
I don't see this ending soon. I'm getting very acquainted with not having to make small talk with someone who has already chatted about the weather 30 times in the past hour. And it is faster.
I've never had an issue with the scales or the scanners. They have always worked exactly like you'd expect them to. And if they don't, there's always at least one staff member nearby anyway. I've just never needed that service, I guess. Scanning things one at a time doesn't take any more time than pressing the * key and a multiplier. You have to pick everything up to put them into your bag anyway.
I would still use the "old" checkout when I have a wagon full of wares, as that makes it easier to pack the bags. The self-checkout counters are quite small and so are inconvenient for large amounts of items.
The guy went through the trouble of scanning every item he was going to steal and then just walked out.
I have never seen such a system where you had to scan anything after the fact or there were even some bars/obstacles to be able to leave.
That said, I'm very indifferent. The one at IKEA seems to work fine, the one in the local hardware store I've had problems both times I tried to use it. First there was no barcode on some item I had (maybe if you do it more often and only have 4 things you will check beforehand?) and the second time it wouldn't accept my card, so maybe the latter doesn't necessarily count as "self-check out didn't work" but more 'register broken'.
And where it would totally help - my local grocery store where more often than not I only have a couple things in my hand and no trolley and the 1 or 2 lines are very long.. of course they don't have one :(
Maybe they are written in Electron now :)
Through automated tracking it detects what’s you’ve picked up and bills you after you walk out.
Stores have few to no employees most of the time.
Publix, of course, has human checkout.
Even if you are scanning certain bulky or heavy items, if it wants you to bag it, you have to wait five seconds for a timeout to say "skip bagging".
No, I don't want to shove my six pack of triple mega toilet paper into a plastic bag.
Again, I know theft deterrence is a thing, but come on. Also in Texas at least, self checkout is for ten items or less, so any time optimization will add up to little.
I was expecting a joke to follow, because naturally I thought you meant a firearm.
BJ's Warehouse Club self checkouts used to weigh your purchase, but also had infrared sensors to ensure it went on the belt after scanning. The sensors could not detect anything shorter than about 3/4" of an inch (20mm), so if you bought something like an SD card it would yell at you to re-scan it. You might think you could hold it up as the belt moved but they knew how many infrared beams should be broken by it - and would yell at you. I solved the problem by not renewing my membership.
The Costco self checkouts (mentioned by the author) don't have hand-scanners like they do at Sam's Club. So if you buy something heavy like a case of drinks you have to either muscle it up onto the scanner or wait for the attendant. This is something they can improve.
Sam's now has an app that lets you scan and pay for your purchases through your phone. You will still get your cart looked over at the exit by an employee, but the experience has been very good. I think Walmart will be offering a branded version for their stores soon.
It happens often here where some person will steal many bottles of expensive liquor and walk out.
In my city a pair of thieves made off with an entire wheel of cheese.
P.S. I have at least twice ordered missing ingredients mid cooking and luckily both those times, delivery was under 10 minutes.
1) venture capitalists are subsidizing it to monopolize the market
2) there's an extra surcharge built into the prices of the individual items which you don't notice
3) delivery couriers are getting screwed but don't realize it yet
4) the stores are getting screwed and don't realize it yet
In any case, that's not a sustainable solution and prices will go up and/or the quality of the service will go down over time.
2) Not entirely true. On average you may be right, but some specific items that I care about, like some good brands of milk, are actually cheaper on the app than at the store (my reference store is Rewe which is the closest to me and a bit on the expensive side).
3) If the price of items is higher as you say, then shouldn't that cover the salaries of the couriers? Also they have a guaranteed minimum wage and tips. They get a great workout since it's all based on bicycles.
4) The deliveries happen from a warehouse and not the grocery store. I assume the warehouse is optimized for deliveries and not foot fall.
On average I do pay more per week, maybe +10€, which is well worth it since I have a toddler at home and every hour is accounted for.
P.S. German cities are very compact and have decent bicycle lanes.
Self introspectively I have a conflict: I don't like that self checkout takes jobs away, but there are some businesses where self-checkout is very helpful; McDonalds. I envision a future in which you place your order at the fast food place on a kiosk, and then someone hands you the food, three employees max while a computer makes the food.
Grocery stores...feel different, and perhaps it is the social aspect of it.
I used to work as a supermarket cashier. It was incredibly boring. Self-checkouts, for all their flaws, are a step forward for humanity.
I remember growing up, cashiers needed to know the price of every single vegetable (no PLUs) and fruit. Prices were labelled on boxes, but otherwise memorization was required.
Then you had to make change, too, although by that point the amount was already calculated.
1) We can barely train employees to operate POS machines consistently, without mistakes and frequent interventions by roving managers. Now every customer is supposed to learn your awful, shifting UI. Critiques of specific UI mistakes miss the forest for the trees - if they were going to be perfected, they would already have been; we've been trying to teach 16 year olds to use them for decades. Maybe it would work if all grocers settled on a single UI, never changed it, and everybody got a couple of hours of instruction and a quiz devoted to it in school.
2) Part of what cashiers do is block the exit doors so you can't just walk out with things.
And no master how much you save by getting rid of cashiers and replacing shelf stackers, if there was no staff in the store at all, we would not call it looting, just high energy shopping
Self-checkout software is more or less a layer on top of (antique) PoS software (usually provided by IBM or whoever they sold it to since).
What you see here is an artefact of that, as that's exactly how most cashier-operated PoS systems behave.
So I have to do this awkward dance where I hold the jar of tomato sauce with one hand (for scanning) while the other moves the other jars from the cart to the bag (for the weight check.)
Occasional audits apply, about every 10-20 shopping trips I've got to let them check I indeed scanned 2-3 items. Total re-scan about twice a year.
you carry a scanner gun with you around the store scanning items as you put them in your cart. then it takes the guns results and weighs the cart, and assuming they are within tolerances, lets you bag, pack up and leave. of course, things aren't always within tolerances, but generally they seem to be.
Of course, as far as I could tell they never even approached that. Maybe during Black Friday a but I’m not insane enough to go to a Walmart of all places on that day. Even before they had self checkouts put in the most I ever saw was perhaps 3 or 4 staffed. Now that they have (too few) self checkouts I think they often don’t even have a single one staffed.
Our local Target is a far smaller store, with maybe 8 checkout lanes. They’re usually all staffed, and by people who actually try to do a good job.
I'm skeptical as to whether more tech is the right answer to serving the elderly. Self-checkouts are essentially saying "hey, you're as capable of scanning and bagging as the next person, so do it yourself with a small number of groceries." By definition, the elderly won't be as good of candidates for this on average because they will tend to be slower and not as fluent with tech that serves the majority.
A technological solution might be able to serve both if it could adjust to the user. Since these checkouts are hesitant to implement a more full-fledged user management system, I doubt we will see such a thing any time soon. With user accounts with profiles and settings (beyond just having a store card), the experience could be tailored to what is most useful to the user and make suggestions.
If we're not going to get that, then regular checkouts are the better answer for the elderly or anyone else who will be prone to issues with self-checkouts.
In the land I live, I just do this:
1. Enter the store and immediately present my loyalty barcode from my phone app to the scanner
2. Pickup a hand scanner which is now associated with me for this visit (I could even use my phone as a scanner, but I haven't tried it; I assume it wouldn't be as fast as the good laser hand scanner device).
3. Scan every item as I put it into my cart. If I buy multiples, I tap the + button on the scanner after I scan. If I buy produce that needs to be weighed, I go to the scale kiosk, put the thing on the scale, make no more than 3 taps of the screen, and then stick the printed label on my item and scan it.
4. To finish my shopping, I go to the checkout area and drop my scanner into a slot. Then I walk to the checkout kiosk of my choice and scan my loyalty barcode (from my phone app or from a plastic keyfob thing). The screen shows details of what I bought, but I ignore that and quickly pull up Apple pay with my bank card, move the phone near the card reader, and pay my bill.
5. Tap the screen to choose physical short receipt (just a barcode used to pass the exit gate), long receipt with barcode, or opt to use my loyalty barcode to exit.
All of this is so easy, and the experience is refined to the point where there's little left to improve.
And no offense :), but I don't go to the grocery store to make friends. I have much better or more interesting things to do. If I could get fast reliable delivery and not even have to go, I would choose that option.
The point relevant to the OP is that self-checkout systems can be implemented well.
My grocery store, however, is 20 minutes away in a neighboring town. They have a large staff which is in frequent rotation. The staff also is mostly early 20s or younger age. Add all these things up, and it just doesn't make much sense for me (or them) to go out of our way to socialize.
You fundamentally need to trust that your customers won’t try to steal from you, and that if they do they will be moderate enough that you can track it as a cost of business - or so extreme that your staff will catch it easily (and care enough to fix it).
Many people, unfortunately, do not live in such places.
If they could make this system work with anonymous accounts (walk up, swipe credit card and pick up scanner, put back scanner when done and the previously-authorized credit card is charged the appropriate amount) it would be lovely.
Of course, when you checkout with a non-cash payment, they can keep records of what you bought based on your payment info.
"Unexpected item in bagging area!" That's my bag to put the groceries in.
"Place item in bagging area!" I just did, your scale just sucks. Let me pick it up and put it down again...
"Unexpected item in bagging area!"
Really, f*ck these user-hostile abominations.
(has to wait five minutes for a member of staff to appear to “Age verify”)
Also, I wish it would display the actual (total) weight vs expected. If it's off by 1g I know it's just a measuring error and bumping the scale will fix it - if it's off by 100g I know I need to look further and there might actually be an unexpected item.
> I've got an item of produce without a barcode (places on scales)
>> Ok, I've clearly taken a picture and decided it's a banana because that's the only option I'm showing you
> Yes, it's a banana
>> That's x amount by weight, please bag it
> Ok
...
And then 2 minutes later when I try to pay, it summons the cashier and shows them the picture it took of the banana, because it no longer thinks it looks like a banana.