There are 2 supermarkets near me with self checkout. One of them has the scales in the bagging area turned off. The other one doesn’t. I don’t use self checkout at the second one because of the all the errors. At the first one, they turned the scales back on for a while because of the amount of shoplifting, but they are off again now.
I think Macca26 has the right idea for how to manage the weight sensor, but being that linear is too much work. I don’t want to have to concentrate that hard just to check out my groceries. Luckily, there are still options to shop at the more tolerant place, or go to a human cashier. If it ever gets turned over entirely to computers, I’m screwed.
The old system was SO SLOW and SO ERROR-PRONE that I’m really happy they got rid of it. Now they have people checking receipts on the way out at my Walmart, but I don’t know if that’s specific to our area.
I like self-checkout. The only issue I have is, I believe, a calibration issue, but it happens once per trip.
I scan 20. oz. jar of mayonnaise.
The machine says, “Three dollars and seventy-nine cents.”
I then put the mayo in the bag.
Machine: Please remove unscanned item from bagging area.
Me: I don’t HAVE an unscanned item in the bagging area!
Machine: Please resume scanning.
I confess to getting a bit irked at this, but then I imagine the digital voice is actually that of a real woman who talks that way all the time: “Please. Pass. The mustard.” or during intimacy: “Please. Place. Condom. In the shagging area.”
I’ve had this problem too. It took me a while to notice that sometimes my jacket will touch the scale as I lean over to grab them items or whatever. And that’s enough to make the thing fuss at me for putting an “unscanned” item in the bad. That scale is very sensitive.
We quit going to the grocery store about a year ago. We almost exclusively use AmazonFresh. My wife does the shopping in bed on her iPad before she goes to sleep, and sets the delivery time between 5-7 am the next morning. When I get up at 6:30, the bags are usually on the front porch. They do a great job even picking out the produce. The monthly fee of $15 is more than worth the hassle and time of actually physically going to the grocery store.
Cameras only go so far- a guy near where I used to live managed to scam a couple of £100 worth of miscellaneous items from a small branch of a local grocery chain by putting them all through as ‘loose onions’. He came in regularly for weeks, getting a few items at a time. On the camera, it wasn’t that obvious that he was putting high value items through as something far cheaper, and the scales didn’t help either, 'cos the weight was right.
Only thing that finally tipped off the store was- they didn’t actually sell loose onions in that branch…
If you ever work retail, you quickly realise how many dumb petty thieves there really are.
How long does it get to keep that excuse? They’ve been pretty widespread for 15 years or so, haven’t they?
I don’t use them, unless I have so few/small items they fit in two bags (so maybe twice a year). They were so frustrating when I first used them that I’ve rarely wanted to use them again. Not that having two lanes open for the entire non-self-checkout section is much less frustrating. But at least then, it’s only waiting once.
I mean, I get why companies do it - saves them money. And people will choose a less desirable option for a cheaper price (airline tickets prove that). But when do we get to complain about self-checkouts without being chastised that we’re the problem, that’s what I want to know?
Those people giving stink-eye if I’m not fast enough can go sit on a tack. I am patient as I wait in line for all kinds of idiots who have never seen a scanner before, so everyone behind me can just be patient with me if I have to look at a PLU on something I buy every week.
As for the rest of the complaints, about how it’s too difficult, or the scale is too sensitive, or it’s assuming I’m a criminal, then please don’t use it. I’ll get to the front of the line and to a scanner, where I generally have no problems dealing with it, all the sooner. Ta.
Off-topic, but a cute story about self-checkout to share. Kpop idols Kim Do Yeon and Choi Yoo Jung’s (Weki Meki, IOI) visited L.A. last year for special training. In the final episode they go to a store (Target?) and Do Yeon says when she was younger (she’ll be 19 this year) she wanted to be a grocery cashier and is so excited to use the self checkout, ending with “Dream come true.” It’s so cute because she’s being following by her own personal VJ, has appeared before tens of thousands of fans, is known by millions, yet is excited by self-checkout.
I work in a grocery store and I occasionally handle the SCO monitor shift.
The bagging scales are notoriously fickle, I’ll concede that. The ones at our store are calibrated to 1/1000th of a pound, and I swear you can set them off by breathing on them. That being said, the majority of weighing errors can be avoided if you’re savvy enough to how the bagging scale works. The tips I would offer;
If you have your own bags, hit the “I’m using my own bag” button AT THE BEGINNING and put all your bags on the bagging scale before you scan anything.
If you’re buying paper bags, use the button for that before you put them on the bagging scale.
Place your item on the bagging scale right away after scanning it. Don’t dither or hesitate.
Don’t move stuff around once it’s on the bagging scale. Don’t rearrange anything. If you must, just throw everything on the scale and wait until after you’ve paid to bag it.
Don’t press “I don’t want to bag this item” and then put it on the bagging scale anyway.
Don’t press “I don’t want to bag this item” for EVERYTHING and insist on bagging it in your cart. It’s going to take you longer and the clerk is going to have to override you every three or four times.
The larger your order is, the more finicky the scale is going to get. Per management decree I’m not allowed to tell you you can’t use the SCO if you waltz over with a full cart, but trust me, you’re not going to get done any quicker than if you went through a regular lane.
If you get in a situation where the clerk has to override you, don’t move anything while the clerk is doing so, because then it’s going to bug out again.
Read the directions on the screen and listen to what the clerk is telling you. I assure you that neither I nor the machine are trying to trick you.
My beef with self-checkout is that the stupid weight-verifier/scale is too small. If I have say a gallon of milk, a whole brisket, and two twelve-packs of soda I have already exceeded the physical space of the bagging area. So if I remove the larger items to make way for other things I get an error message, which requires the assistance of a store employee. If I buy alcohol it requires the assistance of a store employee. If I use a coupon it requires the assistance of a store employee. I have to look up the code for produce if it’s not on an affixed sticker, and then weigh it or enter the number of items, depending on how it is being sold on any given day.
The regular checkout line is always quicker.
And for those who have complained about people who have full carts using the self-checkout: then why are they there? If I had 15 items or fewer I could go to the express checkout with a human cashier and be out in seconds. There’s never a line at that one.
In every store where I have tried this, the clerk has to come over and confirm that what I have placed on the scale is, indeed, bags. As explained above, it is much more efficient to save bags and bagging until after payment. Especially so for me, since I have floppy nylon bags instead of stiff plastic ones that stand up on their own. Also I don’t have to scan things in the right order for packing, I can scan them as they come to my hand in the cart, thus saving me another nanosecond or two.
I’ve never had a problem with the self-checkouts at Target (except for one time when the whole machine froze) but I don’t think they use the weight scales. I always have to move bags over when they’re full and it’s never given any kind of error.
I’m reading this thinking ‘I hand’t thought of that, it would totally bypass the scales if you’re trying to shoplift’, then I got to the end. People that are stealing and fall into a pattern of ‘this works, so I’ll keep doing it’ tend to get caught eventually.
My grocery store has them, Target has them and Home Depot has them. Of all the places I shop on a regular basis, those are the only three that have them.
Poking around on the internet, I see that cash registers (mechanical) have been around for well over a hundred years. Electronic ones have been used for 60 or 70 years with laser scanners showing up about 40 years ago. Self checkouts have been here for, what, 10 years?
I think it’s fair that they’re still going through some growing pains, especially since there aren’t that many of them.
Wiki says there’s somewhere in the area of 250,000 self checkouts, but there’s millions of merchants.
Give it time.
And to answer the question, I’d say it stops being new when a store (especially a big box/large store) puts them in and you don’t think anything of it because ‘everyone has them’.
I went to a different grocery yesterday and didn’t have any problems scanning and checking out.
Maybe my regular store has set the scale more sensitive because of theft? They may feel the false errors are a minor inconvenience to protect the store?
Someone mentioned tv dinners in this thread. They can be tricky to scan without error. Probably because they are bagged standing up on their end. The scale sees the weight along that narrow edge.
Unfortunately I have to buy a lot of healthy choice dinners & lean cuisine for my mom. I’m going to start using the full service checkout when I have a cart full of them.
That’s not how scales work. You can put an object on it any which way it will always give the same readout.
The poster that mentioned the TV Dinners was saying that they can be difficult because they fall over in the bag which makes it harder to put the next thing in.
Cashier/assistant trying to herd customers into the self-checkout area: “Would you like to try the self-checkout?”
Me: “Only if you do all the work.”
C/A: “OK.”
Problem solved. I don’t have to lift a finger. It’s almost like the store created a new & novel way to check out: An experienced clerk. What will they invent next?
