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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>there would be an uncomfortably larg number of people justifying their theft as "payment for doing a cashier's job".

I realize you probably don't hold this position, but legality aside, that argument falls flat on its face when you consider the value of your time vs the value of items you're stealing. Self-checking out groceries takes maybe 3 minutes for a full cart? Suppose the store would have otherwise needed to hire a cashier earning $20/hr. Let's double that to account for other expenses like payroll taxes and insurance. $40/hr for 3 minutes works out to $2. That entitles you to a free candy bar, not ringing up a pack of steaks as bananas.

>Basically "if you don't want me to steal, then hire someone to watch me".

At the risk of being called a "corpo bootlicker" or whatever, this is basically along the same lines as "if you don't want me to grope you, don't dress provocatively".

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It's incorrect to assume that a customer should be happy being compensated for minutes at the same hourly wage the store would have paid a dedicated cashier over the course of a whole day. Rather for on-demand piecemeal work done by a more skilled generalist, a much higher rate is appropriate. In addition to a minimum call out time, of course.

Personally I just avoid self checkout unless I only have one or two items and the lines are bad. But even then it's not often worth getting annoyed by the sluggish hyperprescriptive workflows.

Usually full-time jobs are paid a better rate than on-demand piecemeal work done by generalists.

Self checkout isn't that quicker and is often slower than a regular manned checkout given a few obvious conditions. It's not really the speed that self checkout solves.

It may feel quicker to the consumer, speed is probably more predictable and it could increase throughput and efficiently use space. Most benefits are for the shop.

Needless to say a shop is able to reduce the speed of regular checkout to black pattern people into using self checkout

The stores I visit usually have 10+ self checkouts. It swallows a lot more people so you don't have to queue like in a regular store. It also allows people with fewer items to bypass the people with a full shopping cart because there are 9 other checkouts.

You also save time by putting the scanned items directly into your bag instead of putting them on a band for the cashier to scan, before you can put them into your bag.

So my experience is that it's faster most of the time.

I'm quite often waiting in line for self checkout. In theory people with only a few items go through, in practice people will sometimes go crazy with it. And of course some customers can be quite slow or get hung up so it isn't really predictable.

Drives me nuts to wait to take care of myself. I think they should give you a scanner gun you walk around the store with, then I can just leave.

You're absolutely right, the excuse is unacceptable.

Also unacceptable is requiring customers to do the job of an employee.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

I've never seen a Target store require people to self checkout.

Most I've been to in the past few years staff so sparsely that they have one maybe two staffed checkouts, even at peak "grab stuff on the way home from work" times. So your choice is to wait in that line for the single checkout, or the self checkout line for the 6-10 self checkout stations.

>Also unacceptable is requiring customers to do the job of an employee.

That's entirely subjective though. Around a century ago, Piggly Wiggly introduced the supermarket shopping experience as we know it today (ie. the shopper was responsible for picking items off the shelves, rather than having a clerk do it). I'm sure back then you could make the same argument that "unacceptable is requiring customers to do the job of an employee".

> Also unacceptable is requiring customers to do the job of an employee.

A grocery store is a store that takes money in exchange for groceries, not a store that takes money in exchange for poking buttons nor a store that takes money in exchange for putting things into bags. There's nothing inherently "job of an employee" about any button poking or bagging peripheral to trading payment for goods.

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