this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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Have you tried our self checkout. We make you work for us so we don't have to hire more employees and you pay the exact same price.
the walmart here must be experiencing a high rate self-checkout 'discounts'. they've added more 'watchers' who are actually watching everything. enough extra bodies now that they could just staff the regular registers, and with less waiting in line for the customer.
They won't staff them until they consistently have longer queues and see a risk.
Only way to get more checkouts is favour shops with staff and shorter queues that are staffed.
Meh, self-checkout is blessing. I don't have to stand in a irritated line of idiots, don't have to deal with overworked and really doing their best impression of not suffering clerk at the checkout and all that taking like what, three times as long as self-checkout?
Ya all really are masochists just so some tortured soul would smile at ya and pretend shit's fine.
Edit: Folks repeat some points, so I am gonna respond in edit - sorry folk ;-; - but overall I need to check my privilige. THE FUCK YOU MEAN CAMERA. THE FUCK YOU MEAN AI. I live in Europe and we got a scale, a barcode scanner and one person watching 4-8 self-checkouts. Line moves blazingly fast, you scan your shit, you maybe get bothered by machine for a sec if you have loyalty card and that's it, pack your shit, pay, and go. Oh, some shops even have barcode scanner at exit - some of these catch my barcode before I position it fully. I...feel even more sorry for you, Americans ;-;
A good cashier/bagger is much faster than self-checkout. If I only have like 10 items or something, I use self-checkout, otherwise I go to the cashier. Granted, I rarely get a fast cashier/bagger anymore; makes think the company does that on purpose.
I haven’t had a good bagger since they started using the cheap plastic bags. The worst was before they started outlawing them and I had checkers put 2 or 3 items in one bag and then start a new one so you end up with 12 bags for 30 items.
Good baggers would plan out your heavy items for the bottom and bread and eggs on top and fill those paper bags well. They got rid of those employees first.
My local supermarkets have a portable barcode scanner that you use to scan products as you take them from the shelf. When you're done you just use self-checkout to pay and you can leave immediately.
I’ve tried to argue this with my wife on multiple occasions. Especially if you have some age-restricted thing like beer or cough medicine.
Self checkout is a blessing when you have, like, six items in your cart. Any more than that, and it's a punishment. Have you ever tried to be fast with those torture kiosks? They've added cameras and shitty AI so that they complain if you're holding the next item in hand while putting the first item in your bag. It forces you to pick something up, scan it, put it in the bag, wait for the scale to register it, and only then pick up the next item - and heaven help you if you have a second person helping you. Having worked at grocery stores in the distant past, it's agony.
The actual checkers can scan an item with one hand while picking up the next item, passing each item to the bagger behind them in a steady stream without having to wait for anything. It's not quite an order of magnitude faster, but it's close. The only reason self-checkout is 'faster' is because one cashier can watch six kiosks at a time, and payment takes the same amount of time no matter how many items you have.
I've used self-checkouts in Canada and in The Netherlands. The ones here in Canada are just like the miserable experience you describe. Especially the weight sensor and the machine complaining. In The Netherlands I never had that issue (even with a second person helping me). I'm convinced companies have just turned the anti-theft settings up to aggravating false-positive levels over here.
Yep, that's exactly it and why no-one understands each other on these threads.
North America is three months away from Boston Dynamic Replicants gruesomly executing and dismembering single mothers in public because a little bit of flour fell out of the bag at the counter and Peter Thiel's AI decided it was Space Fentanyl.
I like self-checkout in general. I have already been a cashier and I don't mind. I can keep my headphones on and just go about my day without a social interaction for a few items.
However there's one thing that I started to not like about some of these, and it's the giant camera pointed in your face. Sometimes with the image on the screen so that you can see yourself. It makes me wonder how many layers of software are analyzing that data. I'm under no illusions that they are also compiling data from the checkouts with employees, but it's never so literally in your face.
You're literally describing the self checkout line here.
I refuse to believe you've never been in line, absolutely seething while the poor grandma in front of you is trying lookup, scan and bag her groceries while multiple store employees stand by and watch... And then they needed to help anyway because she has a purse full of expired coupons!
I have but the beauty of self checkout is that there are six kiosks for one line, so when granny is taking forever there are five other stations that can finish up before her.
Yeah well, one is offline for no reason, another is broken, two people are buying alcohol and waiting for the attendant to notice the flashing lights, one has a person with an over packed shopping cart and the last one has someone yapping into their cell on speaker while one-handing the entire process.
All those people would go much faster in a full service line, leaving you free to self-check if you wanted to.
Sounds like you're just lucky enough to have self-checkouts that aren't shit
You seem to be on point. And to think when I was a child USA was seen as a place of high technology...
I'm in Canada myself, but we have issues with self-checkouts too, and it very much depends on the store. Some suck, some don't.
In Poland pretty much all stores follow the same formula, only deviation is whether there's barcode scanner at exit, and even that isn't bothersome if it's at least relatively newly made. Old ones take some time, new ones are lightning fast.
Every self-checkout I’ve ever seen still has a line of irritated idiots. Generally its the only line since the other manned registers are never open.
I sort of feel like this is the sort of challenge people should be faced with. Like the idea of exercising your feet to walk to the store.
I’m an introvert. I’ve left many parties early. But it’d never get so bad I’d hate interfacing briefly with a cashier for pleasantries. Having those skills, while certainly a challenge for some, is a worthwhile challenge to overcome. I’ve also had some great interactions with cashiers that cheered me up.
Introvert here too and I don't believe it one bit. It's wastr of both my and cashiers time. The cashier is there because they are getting paid to do it, not because they want to.
If I wanted to exercise small talk, maybe park? Dunno. Or some place tied to my hobby, where I know I have topics I can rely on.
To me it's a little bit like the convention of praising things that are handmade. Yes, a perfectly efficient world would factory-produce every item with clear-cut lines, but that gives people fewer meaningful jobs, and exposes us to fewer interesting flaws.
One other very tangible negative related to having mostly self-checkouts is petty theft. Many of us heard about the large rings of criminals that would steal massive numbers of low-value items from stores, no one would stopping them because there's hardly anyone staffing those stores, and those that are there are overworked.
What I've seen happen is that shops around here bolstered security when they lowered amount of cashiers. Especially shop near me, which delayed adding self-checkouts due to high level of theft, simply puts either a security guard or normal employee at the self-checkout section at all times.
And about praising things made handmade - I believe there is a place for handmade things, but being a cashier ain't it. Behind the cash register you're nothing else than overpraised payment processor, and I both see of others and got to experience how souless that job is, especially in high turnout places. There's only pain in there, mostly due to understaffing.
yes, but some of us got social anxiety and would much rather not have to interact with people when shopping.
And still, you can ignore the person, swipe card and you keep someone in a job.
Staff don't always want to talk, but they still would like a job.
If we stay in our comfort zone, our comfort zone shrinks smaller.
I work retail too and I hate having to interact with people just the same. i ain't opposed to having an employee ring me up cause some store don't have self checkout. but I like having the option provided to me
also anxiety is wayyyy more than just comfort zones
I am someone that has had anxiety and sought professional help for it.
The way I didn't improve it, was by avoiding it and staying in my comfort zone. I had to push myself into situations that made me anxious in order to de-arm it. So the bodies fight or flight reflex doesn't kick in. So the body becomes aware it isn't a threat that requires that physical reaction. Expanding my comfort zone if you will. Obviously some folk will have very valid reasons why that approach may be much more challenging, but avoiding supermarket checkout staff is an extreme level of avoidance. Professional help would be much better for that than self-service tills.
nah
I don't get social anxiety, but sometimes I dont want to talk. Just through in some "yeah, that's right" and "Oh yeah?". They can just talk while you think about the next loot drop you'll get in your favorite game.
They won't know the difference.
Alternatively, if you're sick of people talking to you. Just break the convo and start trying to sell them stuff. People shut up real quick.
You're already asking too much from someone with social anxiety.
Again, what use is this advice to someone who will spend the rest of the week losing sleep over whether that "yeah, that's right" was used appropriately or not?
If you can't say 3 words to someone and blow off convos. How can you even survive in the workplace? Social anxiety, sure, but too much for an "Oh yeah?" Come on.
How will you interact with co-workers or customers?
I go through the “oh for real?” “Damn that’s crazy” “lol wow” “I get that”
People say I’m really good at listening and a great conversationalist 🤷♂️
Problem is being on autopilot and then someone asks you about it later or something specific and you gotta zone back in and play it off.
🤣 this is true!
Do you feel the same way about getting the stuff off the shelves yourself?
It is the store who wants payment from you and is responsible for collecting it.
It is the customer who wants an item so he may be reponsible for picking it up.
Not how it uses to work.
Its wonderful how humans don't have a problem with contradictions when they see one side as "normal"
There aren’t people who will lose the jobs they currently hold because customers get their own products from the store, but there are people who will lose their jobs if everyone switches to self checkout. It’s not a contradiction to view them differently, just like it’s not a contradiction to view the sewing machine and generative ai differently
But people did lose their jobs when shops switched to customers getting their own stuff off the shelves.
Yes, and had I been asked at the time, I would have opposed it, unless efforts were made to provide anyone laid off as a result with equal or better work. Given how businesses and governments treat people working as cashiers, that doesn’t seem likely to happen for people laid off as a result of self checkout kiosks.
I've stopped using the self-check out all together. My grocery store has clearly been trying to do more with less. So I want the bean counter to see people using normal check outs so they're more inclined to hire more people. It's sold to customers as "a convenience" when really it's just having 1 person watch 4-12 self-checkouts instead of hiring more people and having 3 or 4 lanes open.
Also, self check outs are prone to failure, and if multiple fail at a time there's usually a single person having to manage all of them.
My personal belief, if you can't carry the items in your hands, then you have too much stuff. I find it very inconsiderate people who roll up with full carts. I don't care you're reason, but especially if you're like "I have social anxiety", buddy everyone is glaring at you. You couldn't have more eyes on you and more people pissed off at you. And then if there's any error, even more people are looking at you and you're still going to have to deal with someone.
A well trained person will get you through the check-out much faster. I've also had cashier's double check items to ensure they're good (like eggs), or apply coupons for you, or in rare instances I've had something fail to scan so they do an over-ride and set whatever it was to $1 because they just don't care.
Meh, it's more efficient to make less trips to the store and buy all you need in one go, than to go to the store often (less fuel/electricity/time). Some people have large families and multi-generational households as well.
Yes, and it's more efficient to use a normal check out. Which is what people have been doing for hundreds of years. If you're going through self-check out and you have enough food for multi-generation, you're an asshole. We used to have the express lane, which was for 10 items or less (though it should have said fewer), which was meant to get people with only a few things, through quickly. Self checkout replaced the express lanes. And now people will waste 10-30 minutes scanning things because they have a full cart and can't think about another person, they only consider themselves.
Yes, I did. It's faster. It's the only way I shop since it's been introduced.
The good ones are better because I can scan faster than your trained clerks. (I never had a job scanning so I'm not trained, and my wife does most of our shopping so I'm out of practice - despite that I'm still faster than most clerks)
I used to be a cashier, I'd scan things fast too...and then get yelled at for not being gentle with people's food.
Ours are now limited to 15 items or less in nearly every store.
Pisses me off I have to wait in line with everyone else and be behind the social butterflies who want to carry on a conversation. I’m just trying to get my shit and go home.
I keep hearing this argument, but having to put all my stuff up for scanning fucking sucks. In my ideal world stuff gets scanned when I put it into my cart and at the end I simply pay. Everything else is dogshit. Sadly, there are too few supermarkets that offer this.