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.
When talking about unemployment, I think people focus on wrong aspect. Replacing people with machines is good, that's why we make them. The problem is with how our society functions. Rather than less work for same pay, we get unemployment as a problem.
As for machines, I hate their weight checking. Sometimes it just needs me picking up the item and slamming it onto the bagging area. In the past, some of them used to show weight difference from expected weight, so I would be able to figure out what to shuffle around.
There's also issues with permissions. For example, removing items or completely exiting shopping requires employee permission. What for?
Also, recently 2 shops decided to change the UI. In the past, you could type in number of items if you had multiple, especially useful for pastry. The new UI requires repeatedly pressing +/- buttons. Really nice when you have 15 of something.
Lastly, scanner cooldown. They seem to have a large cooldown. I just want to quickly scan the items, but no, gotta wait 2 seconds between each item.
The only places where it's a bliss are supermarkets with systems like scan&shop. You take a portable scanner and scan everything as you put it into a cart, then just pay at the end in a few seconds.