Comment by 47282847 3 days ago
I make it a point not to use self-checkout systems because I want to support human interaction even if basic, and contribute to jobs for humans. And cash (most self-checkouts here are card-only).
I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.
> Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
I've seen this sentiment in recent years, but with respect to time, self-checkout was always faster than human cashiers. You didn't need to wait while the cashiers did procedures like counting the money in the drawer and waiting for a supervisor to sign-off on it. The lines were unified so that your line was served by 4-8 checkouts rather than 1 cashier (or 2 as is the case with walmart). That meant that any issue with a particular customer e.g. arguing over pricing presented on the shelf vs on the system, needing to send someone out to verify the shelf, didn't affect the time you needed to wait as much. They were a very positive thing for customers when they were introduced.
Basically, instead of having to get in a line of 3-6 people and having to wait for each of those to be served before you by one cashier, you just instantly check-out with usually no line.
With respect to labor, it's basically the same. That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
> That's unless, in your part of the world, they let you use the self-checkout with huge quantities of groceries that need bagging. In my experience, there's (always?) a limit on the number of items for self-checkout.
Where I am there is a limit that many people ignore and I have almost never seen any employee try to enforce
Also, self-checkout itself is faster here anyway. We don't have baggers, so in the cashier lanes you have to unload onto the conveyor and put your items into the bags yourself, with some awkward maneuvering since the register is between the conveyor and the bagging area. In self-checkout unloading and bagging is combined into one action: Lift item from cart, pass over scanner on the way to the bags, place in bag, and pay at the end without even having to move. No real additional work on the customer's part.
Also like the other response, I hadn't heard of explicit limits either, as long as everything fits on the bagging scale.
I think self check-out is only faster if you compare it to really, really slow checkout clerks with no dedicated bagger. I've been in grocery stores with fantastic checkout staff where 100 items were checked out and bagged in a minute and a half. Ain't no way I'm going to achieve that rate standing by myself there over a tiny kiosk where I need to find a bag, put every item into bags before scanning the next one.
They don't make a race of it, but I think they go at a reasonable "marathon" pace. There are also dedicated baggers. I should note that cashiers also accommodate other services like paying utility bills, or making withdrawals from one's checking account.
It's not just about speed, though, it's particularly about the unified lane and the fact that 2 self-checkout stations easily fit in the space of a single human cashier station (that may be unoccupied because of a store's hiring budget). It's also about peoples' patience. If a store hires less cashiers and enough people are still willing to wait in line such that there's profit, well...
If the self check out is configured to trust you, it is faster. Each store seems to implement this differently. It's good that you shop at a store that lets you do this yourself. There's one grocery store near me where I have to wait for an attendant to confirm each item because it doesn't like the weight of it, or I scanned it too fast, or something. That one is very much noticeably slower. I avoid shopping there.
The trust is the key. If we are trusted, Home Depot should not be secretly keeping tabs on us...
>Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
Yikes, the entitlement. Should they also have someone push your cart around the store and load it for you?
If you don't like it, you have the freedom of association to use a different store.
Same. And indeed a losing battle. Society is being dehumanized, and humans embrace this trend. Maybe it is because it is a means to face away of all the big challenges humanity faces. Being social in complex society requires skill and effort, causes stress. Facing life challenges, and the doom and gloom. The easy way is to flee that, to extract oneself, and technology is bliss here.
Why would I want to wait in line for 5 minutes, when I could be on my way?
Life goes by fast. I’d rather spend those small minutes lost with my loved ones or back to doing things I enjoy more. Over my lifetime that’s a lot of time.
I only shop in person at Whole Foods because it’s two blocks away. Every Tuesday they have some nice discounts and it’s fun to walk the aisles. Otherwise I just deliver groceries from Costco every 2 weeks or my Amazon prime subscriptions.
Why continue purposefully at a disadvantage? Makes no sense.
The bigger point I wanted to make is how pervasively small social interactions with other people are automated away all across the board. At the McDonalds you go through the menu on the monitor at the entrance, or used your mobile. No social exchange at the counter anymore. In the cinema you do the same. AI is going to break the bonds online by indirect agent intermediaries. People become isolated in small in-groups. Until in your local community you sail lonely with your family through a sea full of strangers. You probably can't talk about community anymore then. What is the societal impact of the loss of all these micro interactions? How can we have a tolerant society if we are so separate and individualist?
What genuine connections are you making waiting in line to get movie tickets and popcorn?
Why not just walk to the theater to your seats and actually get excited for the movie? That ticket seller is doing their job and Gtfo.
I think people are so doom and gloom about this stuff.
Isn’t it better to just like go sit at the seats with your family or friends and enjoy the trailers and talk about the movie before it starts? Idk. That’s actual connection building.
I saw Avengers in Japan and my friends and I were talking to Japanese people about the movie at our seats.. using google translate. Actual connection building.
I don’t think anyone goes to the movies to enjoy waiting in line to ask some college student who doesn’t give a shit for 4 tickets to Dune.
You wait in line because there weren't enough checkout points in the first place. Poor customer service by your supermarket. It is funny, in the supermarket near me people are coralled into a kind of scan barracks where underage teen guardians frisk their shoppings regularly. There is only one checkout with personnel still operating it. What regularly happens now is that there's a big crowd waiting for a free scan point, like cattle, while that one patient cashier is waiting idle. And will process the groceries much faster than any self-scanner can. Brave new world.
Myeah I think you're just going to badly managed stores. Here I just scan my groceries while putting them in my bag. Then I go to self checkout, put back the scanner and pay. It takes about one minute from entering the self checkout to leaving it and there is never any line.
At least at my Whole Foods there are two cashiers and 6 self checkouts. Tuesdays are usually busy.
Both have lines and the self is always faster. I’m that guy and I timed it myself when I was curious. Like I said. I don’t get it.
They run a business. I just need some stuff and I’m outta there. I don’t really care beyond that exchange.
I think that there's more than just a productivity angle, and that those 3 lines of friendly and casual social exchange with the checkout clerk on every visit are meaningful and valuable, even though on themself only in a small way. These small social exchange form part of the lubricant of a well-functioning society.
In the context of the parent post, don't miss the forest for the trees. 5 minutes away from your loved ones here or there is nothing if, for one example, your loved ones can't find jobs locally (working the till in retail is a common first job for kids, after all...) or otherwise disconnect, going out of our way to avoid interacting with anyone, because of the stress everyday life now requires, doom and gloom, etc. Plus, there's the option of bringing your loved ones with you, if that's your concern.
Even setting that aside, if you're so into min-maxing your free time that you can list waiting in line at the grocery store as one of your biggest regrets in life, then you gotta recognize how privileged a life you lead.
Of course I live a "privileged" life. I grew up without running water, a flushable toilet, and a tube light that worked 1/4 of the day at night.
I optimize my life because I get one life.
The actual privileged people are those who were born in first world and still manage to lose somehow.
> Society is being dehumanized, and humans embrace this trend.
Well... that's because capitalism incentivizes us to do it wrong. Instead of the dreams of the early sci-fi writers getting real - aka, robots and automation do the majority of the work, leaving humans time to socialize - we have it even worse nowadays, with even with the work force of women added to the labor pool, there still are constant political pushes to expand working hours or to even make it legal to hire children again.
If the profits from productivity gains over the last decades would have been distributed to the workers, either in terms of purchasing power or in free time, we wouldn't be in this entire mess.
Same, I refuse to use them. I'm not going to support making cashiers redundant.
On top of that I don't want to be in a position where I get accused of shoplifting when I forgot to scan something. I'm simply not trained on the 7+ different self-checkout terminals they have around here.
Do you also wish that elevators would go back to having attendants that drive you to your floor?
When a job doesn't need people, keeping a person there is not some kind of noble gesture. It's annoying.
Not sure if this is the same for the USA, but worker shortage is the main reason why self-checkout became popular here in Europe at least. Aging population, very low birthrate and higher educated people all contributed to this problem (although not for all countries in the EU).
> worker shortage is the main reason why self-checkout became popular here in Europe at least
What exactly do you mean?
That the companies moved to self checkout because they couldn't get the staff?
Or people prefer self checkout because the manned tills are few in number?
The first is very very hard to believe
>The first is very very hard to believe
Why?
At least in the US our unemployment rates have been very low. Higher demand for labor leads to higher labor costs which allows more expensive automation to be economical.
You can say "Well pay them more", but that doesn't get you out of a labor shortage. That just ensures you get the labor rather than someone else.
This is only true because of having to wait in line for the checkout personnel. Once you get to the person, if they're even reasonably skilled, they can check out your groceries faster than you can.
My local grocery store has something like 15 checkout aisles, and usually only have one or two open. If they manned each aisle, there would be no wait and self checkout would be pointless. But they are not going to staff properly because the CEO needs another yacht.
In Germany, the entire self-checkout section moves as fast as one human cashier (they're very skilled, this is no joke). And they have one human supervising it at all times. And it takes the space of two human cashier lines, so they double up one of the other lanes. At the end nothing is really gained except a little bit of privacy (but not really because the supervisor's terminal still shows everything you scan)
Self-checkouts are not the only place where facial recognition is used. Of course overhead cameras have long been present at actual staffed checkout counters. The new risk today is that every credit card POS device has a camera built into it as well. I go around and put little black stickers over them when I encounter them. These cameras are well-hidden and not disclosed at all.
Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency?
Like imagine being in the era when electricity was becoming more prevalent and I’m sure some people were complaining about some ideal then as well.
That said I do agree that self checkouts should not be using methods beyond what’s reasonably necessary.
>Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency?
I'm all for more efficiency. Me fumbling with self-checkout is the opposite of efficiency.
What's that? I should learn to do it better? How much would that cost in terms of both time and money? Multiply that by several hundred million, as compared with a few hundred thousand cashiers.
You're saying that (x)250,000,000 < (x)500,000, where x = the cost in time and money to become proficient in checking stuff out. Is that correct?
If so, your math seems a little off. AFAICT, the only folks who get the benefit of this "efficiency" are the store owners who, instead of paying folks to do the job, makes the customer do it instead.
What's that? Those savings are passed along to the customer? Give me even one example of this being the case. I've certainly never seen it.
>Peak efficiency is having someone else shop for you or just getting things delivered.
I do that as well. In fact, I have deliveries coming today.
But some things I prefer to get from West Side Market and/or H-Mart, which are right nearby me because of the superior selection and my ability to choose specific products for myself.
This is exactly why I love to leave my carts out in front of the entrance and in the parking lot.
Without me, there'd be no cart gatherer jobs.
I once said this without stating it as a joke, but was surprised to find people enthusiastically agreeing with me. /s
Yea, where’s the theft of my time and labor for now performing part of your business transaction process you should be performing by hiring staff to check me out.
You don’t want to pay people to do that and put yourself in a higher theft situation, then you haggle the customer even more by treating them like a criminal.
I had one of these happen at a self checkout the other day where the system did object tracking and it turns out I had many duplicate items to scan so I used the same item scan code to save time even though its weight system forces me to do one at a time I can at least have a prealigned code handy. I ended up doing some tricky hand switching between items (crossing over) while doing it quickly and that tripped up the object tracking system, so an employee came over and reviewed the video of my checkout right in front of me… at a grocery store for a $2 item.
The anti consumer sentiment is high for an economy based so highly off consumerism.