Off My Chest
RULES:
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It’s purely to save on wages and related expenses. At my local the self checkouts have one person watching to help when the self checkouts call them (weight/item mismatch, receipt paper low, etc). The amount of people these self checkouts process would require 2-3 tills minimum for standard foot traffic + approx at least 2 for peak times. This requires those 2-3 being paid for a full shift plus two other, checkout trained staff nearby to be available to open lanes for overflow. All handled by a total of 2-3 checkout staff instead of 4-6.
So less wages, less money lost on training checkout capable staff, less management having to maintain a roster of sufficient staff, with sufficient hours to keep them around. Checkout staff generally wouldn’t do many other tasks back in the day beyond click and collect either and had a lot of idle time, because obviously you can’t be far from a till.
Even if they were more practical, which they simply aren't due to their often terrible user interfaces, I would never dream of helping billion-dollar companies streamline away jobs. Solidarity, people!
I don't get it, you guys must shop at some really shit grocery stores. I haven't had an issue with self checkout UI in like 15 years. Sure, I've had a few annoying "please put item on scale" issues but it's been years since I've even seen that.
You have a good point about helping a corporation but this whole "they're worse" mindset people in this thread have is insane
I don’t disagree but I’m just presenting why every other retailer has them. As another commenter said though, I too am not a “small talk” type of person and hate that these stores train staff to try and engage in small talk with customers. I wasn’t checkout but was trained so I could help with overflow. I always only ever greeted people, with maybe one other follow up remark and then just got them out of there. Since I knew as a customer, I just wanted my shit scanned and to go home. For me it was more customers who seemed to want to have a yarn.
I'm the same. I really don't need all that small talk, hell I'd even say I hate it. But this is not about me or the other customers, it's about the employees, who need those jobs. So I take the plunge and only queue at cash registers with staff.