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Comment by Macha | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised cashiers are listed as the job most likely to be replaced in the graphics in the article. Unattended self-checkouts have been possible for like 15 years now, and it feels like 5 years ago was peak self-checkout, with some stores drawing back from entirely self-checkout experiences and expansion slowing in others.

My understanding is that the obstacles to stores replacing the remaining cashiers with self-checkouts is not so much "we need a better machine" but (a) the shoplifting deterrence effect of staffing, (b) customers are slower at packing than cashiers, which can cause queues and other inefficiencies.

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> customers are slower at packing than cashiers

Where I'm from, cashiers don't pack the groceries of customers

And,even if customers are slower, having 20 self checkout kiosks is still faster than 3 cashiers.

My biggest gripe with self checkout is if I make a mistake, they call it theft. I haven't been trained and certified on the register, so I can't accept the potential for getting a criminal record due to a scanning error. Example: Walmart will successfully "beep" when scanning, but will display "system busy" on the screen, and the scanned items don't show up on the receipt.

Interesting. I'd be mortified if things happened that way here, because I regularly forget to bleep items, and have quite a few time been checked in those cases. the only consequence was some embarrassment and the need to allow the employee to re-check every item. usually they were even apologetic about it.

Yeah, this makes very little sense. Around me, it's pretty much just self-checkouts now, outside of peak times. There's generally one manual till open to sell cigarettes, and that's it.

Tellingly, the newest supermarket in the area (Tesco, not any sort of weird startup) only has space for one manual checkout, plus about 15 self-checkouts.

I'm so sick of this hype. My (college-aged) teenage daughter works at a grocery store. Their new "AI" enabled cash-registers are supposed to show them which scanned items go together in a bag. It suggested: 4 packs of hamburger buns should go together in a plastic bag with 2 soda can boxes. Next it suggested a dozen eggs should go together with a gallon of milk.

Self-checkout won.

Every time I go to Target there are two lanes manned by staff. Everything else is self-checkout. This is every Target I go to in my state.

Every time I go to Home Depot, there is one person manning the checkout. Everything else is self-checkout.

Even fast food places have self-checkout stalls that seem to be growing in popularity. In the last few years, McDonalds has been rapidly deploying the tech.

Boba places. Self-checkout has been promoted to first-class and is the only way to order at several of them.

It's everywhere. When I was growing up, Kroger used to have every single checkout aisle staffed. Now they have one or two.

I'm honestly shocked that the perception is that self-checkout hasn't won. It's everywhere and dominates the checkout modalities.

> the shoplifting deterrence effect of staffing

This is all cost modeled. They have lots of cameras and security staff by the door. Even if the tech doesn't work, the mere threat of getting caught is enough to stop most losses. The business accepts that they won't catch everything. They're still saving money by using automated checkout.

It's uneven, I do see places that seem to have kept self-checkout minimal or nonexistent, but I think that you're right that overall it's winning.

Isn't the perceived worsening of service (maybe more the various boycotts) one of the reasons Target is hemorrhaging foot traffic?

Hmmm… I have not seen that. Everything I’ve read is the boycotts have really hit Target’s foot traffic.

I was thinking of Angela Collier's video (she is a famous YouTuber around these parts) where she listed the rebrand/longer lines as one of the reasons people don't go as much.

> Self-checkout won.

I guess my point is that it won in the past. Cashiers that could be replaced by self-checkouts... have already been replaced by self-checkouts. AI doesn't seem to change that situation.

> Even if the tech doesn't work, the mere threat of getting caught is enough to stop most losses.

This is not true. A store near me recently removed all of their self-checkout registers due to an abundance of shoplifting. When I read “Self-checkout won” I immediately thought, “Actually, shoplifting won where I’m from.” (Salt Lake City, Utah; not crime free, of course, but also not really known for crime.)

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