I was checking out some groceries today, and the person next to me was clearly doing something the machine didn’t like.
“Please scan the item before putting it in the bagging area”.
Over and over again. I started thinking about what an entirely bogus thing “self-checkout” is. It seems to have exactly zero benefits to the consumer. No bagger, no help if you’re missing a price sticker, not even ample room to put your groceries while you scan. You’re left with exactly one square foot of space to do this job.
Is it making groceries cheaper? After all now they don’t have to staff as many cashiers now. Nope! Groceries are higher than they’ve ever been! All that delicious margin gets sent straight to our benefactors at the Kroger corporation. Where would we be without them!
Not to mention the thing is calling you a thief every five seconds. The ones by me even film you and if they feel you’re swiping something, it will show a slow motion video of you in the act and it tells you to correct your mistake.
So it’s work that I have to do. That nobody is getting paid for. And that is taking videos of your face and your behaviors. And it’s constantly announcing that you’re a bread thief to everyone in the store.
And for what? To increase unemployment of course! It’s one of those things I can’t believe collective society has taken sitting down. It’s one of the most egregious examples of pure corporate greed at the expense of the consumer experience, all the while cutting swaths of entry level jobs.
I prefer self-checkout. I’m fast and I don’t really like small talk.
What really sucks is that modern self-checkout requires so much babysitting and cashier assistance, because they assume everyone is a criminal. The supermarket has become the panopticon.
The grocery store closest to me now has cameras on each self checkout register that are labeled as AI theft protection. In practice what that means is if you hover an item over the bagging area, even for a second, before scanning it it stops you and then plays the video of you “stealing” until the bored teenager making minimum wage comes over and just presses “continue” because they don’t give a shit and the line for the registers is like 10 people long.
It’s that long because despite having like 20 registers designed to be staffed by actual people they rarely open more than one because they fired most employees years ago. So now self checkout is basically the only option, even for people buying a months worth of groceries for a family of 8
I hate the future
Yep, exactly my experience at basically all the grocery stores near me.
Self-checkout used to be quick and easy, now it’s just an exercise in patience and being treated like a crook.
I prefer self checkout because I am a terrible cashier and keep forgetting to scan things or the wrong things. Did you know that a kilo of carrots is very cheap? And that you can put anything you want on the self scale to print a matching barcode?
I’m autistic so I really like self checkout but they’ve definitely gotten shittier over time. Many of the problems with them are really just the store itself being shitty and not self checkout.
I’m autistic and I hate most self checkouts. The video of me doing things and the bright blinking “we’re recording” light push me into sensory overload, especially after I’ve spent spoons on a big shopping trip.
Some are fine. I like them a decade ago before they had so many screens and blinking lights.
I like the ones where you scan the item while putting it into your cart much more. I can sort everything into my reusable bags right away. No needless shifting from the shelf to the cart to the cashier to the bag to the cart into the better bags in my car.
Only easier thing is when we order online and they put everything into sturdy baskets you can borrow instead of bags.
shop at aldi. the prices are better, a lot of the food is better, and you don’t give your money to kroger.
we switched to aldi and our grocery bill went down by 1/3 immediately. kroger sucks.
the Kroger corporation
There was your mistake. Kroger is a nightmare from dystopian hell.
It used to be a friendly place but no, that wasn’t enough money for them.
You sound like someone who complains about pumping your own gas.
I prefer self-checkout, a lot faster. Especially when you can scan your products with your phone while shopping.
One of the main reasons why I refuse to use self-checkout.
A few more reasons:
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In some stores, gift cards, discounts, coupons, etc can’t be used in self-checkout.
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It’s essentially making me do the job of the cashier for free. Fuck that noise. They want me to do it, they can pay me.
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The line for real registers is sometimes a bit longer, but it tends to move much faster, because it’s not full of a bunch of grandmas having their first experience with a robot accusing them of theft.
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Gross germs all over the self-checkout machines, which I’m sure are never cleaned at all.
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My local grocer is part of a small chain (3 locations, all in the same county). I know the owner by name, he’s a regular at my restaurant. They don’t have any self checkouts, just an express checkout and then 5 normal ones. It works out great. They’ve also got a State Store inside (where I live, only the State government is allowed to sell bottled spirits), which is a huge bonus. I went there yesterday since my vodka stash was running dry, and I needed to stock up on trash stickers for Spring cleaning. I picked up some cheese and buns while I was there. Had a chat with the butcher, small talk with the cashier, helped an old lady load her groceries into her car. It was a genuinely enjoyable, and very human, experience.
Contrast with the Walmart supercenter. They have 50 self checkouts, and just one manned register, which is only really used to buy age restricted products like cigarettes. I don’t physically go there anymore because the checkout experience is damn near torture. It feels sterile, more like a warehouse than a grocery store. If I need something from Wally World, I get it delivered to my door, usually in an hour or less.
I get what I can from a grocery store chain in my area. They have three stores in the same county as well but they’re part of an overall larger family of different named chains of a conglomerate if I remember right. They have no self checkout, and though the findings there are less than say Wal-Mart I’m not shopping at a big box store where the profits all leave the local area into some rich family’s pocket.
I never had a problem with self checkout and like it very much that I don’t need to talk to anyone or wait in line. Everywhere I go there’s also the old checkout method so you can always choose
I like self checkouts but I’m not in the US so ours aren’t garbage.
The only stupid thing I’ve seen is a certain hardware store where the self checkouts are closed 90% of the time, and there are only two normal checkouts, so you often have to wait in a huge line while the self checkouts just sit there, chained off and doing nothing. It’s ridiculous.
Someone clearly isn’t bothered by inane small talk. Check your privilege.
You have smalltalk at the cash register? All I say there is: ‘Hi!’ or ‘Good [part of the day]!’, cashier essentially repeats the same thing; the cashier scans groceries, I put them back into my cart, then when they’ve been scanned the cashier reads out the price, I pay, cashier gets ready to ask if I want a receipt, but I cut them off saying ‘I don’t need the receipt! Thanks, bye!’
All the criticisms of self checkout are valid. Can’t argue against them.
However I’ve been kind of a fan since they first came out. Simply because I don’t have to make smalltalk with a cashier.
I have to to deal with customers all day at work. Shopping is a chore I want to be over with without having to further drain my limited extroversion tank.
Time to start scanning everything as bananas. Deodorant? No, this is a banana. Shove that 10 dollar parmesan in a 2 dollar head of lettuce.
Personally I love using the machines. I don’t want to hear a clerk’s personal opinions or comments. People have lost a sense of professionalism.
However. If you are going to only have 6 machines available, and people waiting for long periods, you need to give Self Check users a 10% discount for their hard work. Either that or have all 30 machines open at all times.
Also you don’t have to deal with them bagging stuff in whatever random order they scan stuff in.
Was this at a Kroger or related store? Their stupid self checkouts are over tuned and constantly bitch about not scanning even if it scanned. The Walmart ones, for example, do not, ever. Not vocally anyway.
