Comment by asimpleusecase | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asimpleusecase | Hacker News Reader

In the UK there has been a big push for self checkout. Tesco is a leading food market and has hand scanners you can carry around with you to scan as you shop. I have used them for a couple of years now. I almost stopped going to Tesco as it seemed every time I would check out my basket/trolley of goods was selected for a random “ check scan” where a worker came and scanned items until the check out gave a green checkmark and indicator. I always passed the test. So it became really annoying to have this “random check” happen ten times in a row. However it appears they have now built my profile and I have not had a “random check” in almost a year. I think this giant scale is silly. If you are trying to play the system you could scan a lower priced good and take the name brand of the same weight. If I were pulled over to have my whole basket/trolley load rescanned I would quickly get fed up with that. There are just too many ways to get a false positive.

I thought that RFID was supposed to solve this 20 years ago. All stores have anti theft scanner that are the last line of defense but I never see anyone approached if that alarm goes off any more.

So what is a technically sane way to solved the self scan problem, and avoid replicating the security theatre at airports?

I use the dash carts at the Amazon Fresh near me and they are pretty slick and problem-free. The overall Amazon Fresh experience with selection and stock has had some teething pains but they've been getting a lot better recently, probably learning from Whole Foods.

Sign in with the app then you scan the barcodes as you put items in the cart and I think it does some combo of weight and camera stuff to verify. You can also see/edit the list of everything it thinks is in the cart on the cart's display. If it does mess up (rare) you can fix it on the spot easily and without assistance.

Then you just go walk through the designated dash cart checkout lane, it blinks green and you're done and you walk out with the bags and the receipt is in your account history. Unless you need an ID check for something then an employee has to assist but they're generally pretty quick, but most of my trips don't require it.

Compared to "traditional" self checkout it's WAY better.

> probably learning from Whole Foods.

Oddly our local Whole Foods, is just a couple years old, and has very poor self check-outs. They error out on random bar codes and stop until a human staff member unlocks them. The Prime barcode scanner is “broken” half the time, and can’t be overridden by the human staff. It’s bad. I go on the human side now exclusively, where they also have hilarious problems. It's like grocery store management peaked, was utterly and perfectly solved, but Whole Foods can’t stop trying new things that only make the shopping experience worse.

I meant more in the general operations of running and stocking a grocery store, which Amazon Fresh struggled with for a while but has also improved significantly. Now it's on par or better than most of my local Safeway/Kroger type stores I'd say.

Fresh seems to also be their technology test bed, and I hope the good parts can spread to Whole Foods as it gets perfected.

Can you describe why there's a big push for self checkout? I suspect there's a bigggg difference between countries, so this all sounds very alien. In my experience at Tescos (outside the UK) checkout has been great.

They tend to have a zillion aisles operating, with the cashier picking up and scanning every single item directly from your cart. At the exit there's always a 'check' but it's pretty farcical. Somebody glances at your cart, glances at the receipt, and then stamps it in about 0.5 seconds total.

The only downside is the requirement for self bagging (she simply puts the items right back in the cart - even if you bring bags), but that obviously wouldn't change with self checkout.

To me people pushing for self checkout sounds like somebody preferring self service over full service gas stations - I find it difficult to understand.

> To me people pushing for self checkout sounds like somebody preferring self service over full service gas stations - I find it difficult to understand.

For gas stations, it’s faster for me to not have to wait for an attendant. I don’t have to let someone else touch my credit card and/or give them my zip code. And I don’t have someone else continue filling the tank after the pump automatically stops, preventing gas to drip down the side of the car.

For retail stores, self checkout is quicker, as stores are mostly not staffed well enough to compete with the self checkout lanes.

> Can you describe why there's a big push for self checkout?

Fewer employees to hire and manage. Seems like a straightforward benefit. I haven't seen a fully staffed grocery store in what feels like fifteen years but is probably more like five. This feels like a continuation of the same "disruption" that predated widespread self-checkout.

There are also people who claim to hate interacting with cashiers but I have a difficulty imagining this is the majority of people.

For me it's because when I visit a store it's for a small amount of items. My main shopping is online and delivered (by Tesco) once a week. But there are always other things needed during the week. The big Tesco near me mostly has people doing their big shop at the tills so the queue will be 5 minutes plus. Scan as you shop ( as mentioned by the GP) now works well and doesn't check you each time so it's easy to do - particularly as you can use your bag as you go and don't need to repack when you check out.

>At the exit there's always a 'check' but it's pretty farcical.

Hence moving to AI

> Once you get to a checkout, hi-tech cameras above the self-checkout machines now track all items being scanned and bagged.

> After that, smart gates will lock automatically to prevent anyone with unscanned items leaving the store, sounding an alarm in the process.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/eat/coles-introducing...

Those two points are infuriatingly well rolled out in Australia since that article - if your bagging technique does not match the AI model or the color of your fruit/vegetables does not match the AI model for the thing you choose, even if the weight is correct, it requires a staff member. If any shopper in the self checkout area has violated the AI, nobody is allowed to leave the store until the staff member does their check (it's like those automatic gates you'd see on an office building lobby).

> Can you describe why there's a big push for self checkout? I suspect there's a bigggg difference between countries, so this all sounds very alien.

I love self-checkout as long as they give you the scanner to carry around (or mount on the shopping cart). The entire shopping process is just so much quicker, havent waited in a checkout line in years. The same amount of space for 3 cashiers can have 10+ self-checkout machines as least.

> To me people pushing for self checkout sounds like somebody preferring self service over full service gas stations - I find it difficult to understand.

Might be cultural, but full-service gas stations sound bizarre. Why would you need an attendant to do something so basic? Like a lift operator to press buttons for you.

Full service gas stations are popular for the same reason drive thru 'everything' is popular. It's just much more convenient. Drive in, hand some cash over, wait a few moments, perhaps have some random banter with the attendant, drive off.

In the U.K. specifically supermarkets are having a tough time hiring and retaining staff, but self-checkout is also popular in similar countries like France where the job market is not as tight.

I think this depends a lot on the store. For example, Waitrose Oxford has self-checkout but they have disabled those tricky weighting sensors, which is great because they always slow you down. In contrast, Waitrose Abingdon not only has them enabled, but you are "randomly" checked every single time. I imagine Abingdon has a higher rate of shoplifting.

> hand scanners you can carry around with you to scan as you shop

The local Kroger tried to push those a while back, and then at some point they disappeared again.

In the U.S. they have one or two employees, monitor, you know, four to six or eight self-scan stations.

Apparently they're losing less in shrink than they would paying cashiers, so it works out for them.

I have to say I'm guessing about that last statement because I have no idea, but if it wasn't saving them money, I don't see why they would do it.

I do notice that nearly every self checkout lane has no cash accepted though for some reason, at least by me.

There was a flurry of news reports last year about self checkouts being removed by some chains. For example:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna160234

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7188556

The US strategy seems to vary widely by store. Some observations:

Target and Whole Foods have minimal oversight and the machines are efficient and permissive. Delightful!

Costco has machines that are not permissive and complain a lot. I find this odd, considering that Costco is members-only and double-checks everyone when they leave.

IKEA has one employee per 1-2 machines. The machines are terrible. The scanners are unreliable, and the machines are slow beyond belief. I suspect they’re accidentally quadratic (with a bad constant factor), and I’ve had to pay part way through and start a new transaction to make forward progress at a reasonable rate. The employees might be there more to babysit the machines than to deter theft.

> The scanners are unreliable, and the machines are slow beyond belief.

That's on purpose so they can monitor for theft from the customers and colluding cashiers. I worked in a grocery store with 1980's era IBM terminals and they were lightning fast compared to modern machines. You could throw cans rapid fire with just a twist across the scanner and have nearly 100% success.

Can you explain in a bit more detail? I don't follow the connection you made.

I think the implication is that the faster a customer is scanning items, the harder it is to keep an eye on them to see if they're doing it correctly.

Even babysitting 2 checkouts is still better than employing 2 cashiers. And that is assuming you can even find cashiers. Way back when I was a child the supermarket cashiers were women in their 40s who got divorced and needed a low skilled job. But thanks to equal education opportunities for men and women that group is gone.

We are going to have to come to terms with the reality that for the first time since the plague employable humans are scarce. Now do you want them to work at Ikea or work in a hospital or school?

> Even babysitting 2 checkouts is still better than employing 2 cashiers.

This assumes self-checkout is as efficient as a cashier? I'd say a good cashier is at least 5 times faster than I am, some discount store cashiers maybe even 10 times faster.

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