Empty-eyed meat cows at the self scanner

You’d figure anybody smart enough to drive the bascart that they’ve oh-so-considerately piled with a couple of month’s worth of vittles would be able to handle scanning their bags of pizza rolls and LEAVING THEM ON THE MOTHERFUCKING SCALE, but no; after scanning that 12 pack of Tab (on the tenth try, natch) they proceed to place it back in the cart instead of on the thingie that makes sure you’re not fucking stealing anything, and stand there, utterly befuddled, when they’re not permitted to scan in any more items.

“It’s not woooorking,” they mewl, with tears misting in their eyes.

“No shit, you moron,” the poor benighted clerk/chaperone doesn’t say. Instead, they sigh, for the two thousandth time that day “Sir/m’am, you need to put all your purchases on the scale.”

“But I’m buying tooo mmmuuuch stuff. It won’t fiiiit.”

Well, pigfucker, perhaps if you’d bother to reset your lexicon from Self Absorbed Turdperson to Half Sapient, you’d note that perhaps when the store says “Self Scanner: Small Purchases” on the sign, what they really mean is “Self Scanner: Purchases Of A Volume That Could Reasonable Be Expected To Fit On The Fucking Scale. Don’t Be A Dickhead.”

Meanwhile, I’m probably standing there with a couple of two liters and a twelve pack of Sierra Nevada slowly pulling my arm out of the socket. Smiling blandly, of course.

Attn, jackasses, a rule of thumb to bounce off your empty melon: if it can fit in a little shopping basket, or be carried by one person with two arms, you can self scan it. If you need a wheeled cart, get in a regular lane with the rest of the herd.

Okay, I’m all better now.

Ugh, I hate those assholes. I just want to buzz their head with a pack of frozen hotdogs.

I know how you feel but it’s from the other side, mostly - I worked at Wal Mart for two years and in that time, I came to realize that none (or a percentage so small that it’s too negligible to even bother calculating) of the customers bother reading the signs posted in the store, especially those hung around the register.

Empty-eyed, indeed.

Graaaaaaaaaaaar!

I was behind an older lady in Meijer’s once who decided to try her hand at the U-Scan (or whatever Meijer’s calls them). I almost had an aneurysm watching her take a bag of cherries (i.e. “Produce”) that she had procured from the produce section. I see her ignore the “Produce” button on the screen and instead keep sliding the clear plastic bag with her custom amount of cherries over and over the scanner. What the FUCK, lady??? Do you think the magical cherry microchips are gonna be read by that scanner? There’s NO FUCKING BARCODE! THINK FOR A GODDAMN SECOND!

Finally I just politely butted in and helped her with the rest of her order. I don’t care whether or not I was obligated to; getting her the hell out of there resulted in one less murder that day.

I love the self scan isles, hate waiting behind numbnuts who can’t manage the process.

First, realize that the scanning machine is just a fucking machine! It can’t think (neither can you, apparently) and will work a million times better if you make sure you do things the way it wants them done. It only does things one way, YOU can change and do things the way it wants.

Scan one item at a time. When it scans, place it in the appropriate area, then select another item and scan it. Do not try to scan 3 items at a time, do not scan the next item before putting away the first, just do it one at a time.

Produce, if it has a code number, USE THE CODE NUMBER, don’t go through 8 screens of pictures to pick out a lemon when the damn thing has a sticker that says #4432 on it, that’s what the sticker is for. If it doesn’t have a code number, know what you’re buying.

Last, learn how to pay. I can’t tell you how many dumb looks I see when the machine bleats out “insert cash in the slot” or whatever the fuck it says.

People don’t want to learn how things work, so they just waste everyones time with their confused nonsense.

Argh, the damned self-check lane.
I always get stuck behind the people who have never used it before. Last time I went to grab a few groceries, and got stuck behind a couple of girls with a huge basket full of stuff, who didn’t know how to use the machine at all. The lady behind me, though, was being a complete bitch about it, exclaiming loudly that “SIGH THIS IS TAKING SO LONG.” and SIGH IF PEOPLE CAN’T WORK THE MACHINE, THEY NEED TO GO TO A DIFFERENT LANE."
She only had one item, so I offered to let her go in front of me, and it took her at least 5 minutes to scan and pay for her one item, because every time it got to the “Scan next item or push “done” to pay,” she’s freak out and go “I only have one item! How do I pay?” Then, she’d call the worker over to help her, and when the worker walked off, she’d try to scan her item again.

Why are you going to bitch about other people not knowing what the fuck is going on if you don’t know what the fuck is going on yourself?

Shouldn’t there be a “training lane” for those that have not yet gotten the hang of the “U-Scan”?

Welcome to my world!

I am cursed. Some people cross a magician and are cursed; some ignore the warning signs, open the mummy’s tomb, and are cursed… Me? I dunno what I did, but I’m cursed none-the-less.

Whatever line I get into, whether it be self-scan, express, or just the regular old wait-your-turn lines, ends up being the slowest line in the store! This has been verified by several people, from my best friend D (who will no longer accompany me into a store unless he needs something himself, in which case he hangs back until I have selected a line, then chooses a different line for himself), to the lovely, and ever hopeful, Astrogirl, who is still trying to break the curse by choosing for herself which line we get into (and she’s still amazed, after almost 10 years together, that as soon as I get in the line things go to hell).

The reasons for the delay vary in an ever-amusing sort of way, never repeating in any discernable pattern… old lady with a thousand coupons crumpled together in a wad the size of a politician’s lie, price check on the one brand of tampons that no employee in the store seems to possess knowledge regarding the location of same, dude purchasing a whole shopping cart full of bachelor chow discovering that the twelve-pack of beer he got was from the floor and was not cold deciding to go back for a cold one… it’s amazing.

A while back, Astrogirl and I were in line for the self-scanner in a VERY busy Home Depot… all had gone well so far, and we had only been waiting in line for 20 minutes or so to scan the flower pots we were purchasing, when the lady in front of us managed not only to drop her credit card whilst extricating it from her wallet, but also managed to kick the card before it hit the floor, sending it skittering beneath the machine! If we had left our place in that line and gone to another, we would have faced a new wait of 20 or 30 minutes… so we kept our place as seemingly every employee in the store was summoned to help move the scanning machine and retrieve the credit card. Argh. Home Depot doesn’t carry the Weekly World News, so I had nothing to do while we waited, and you know who kept muttering under her breath in Korean, “It’s all your fault!”

I live in hell.

Where do you people live where the self-scanner works properly when used properly? At my local Albertson’s, the goddamned thing sees me, looks up my information, sees I have a Bachelor’s in Comp Sci, and then proceeds to mock me mercilessly. I scan the item, it says put it in the holding area. I put it in the holding area, it says please remove unexpected item from the holding area. I remove it, it says put it back. I hit cancel to start over, it laughs at me and does the same fucking thing. I threaten it with violence, it briefly acquiesces but slyly introduces more glitches as I continue. I threaten it with water, it behaves a little longer but like an evil child it can’t resist needling me yet again. I begin chanting a forbidden ritual to cast its vile form deep into the Abyss, and it cackles madly with blandly cheerful, prerecorded glee. Meanwhile my wife, the less technical of us, cajoles and coaxes and charms it until it obeys. Infernal machines!

I had a moment of glory, just yesterday.

I walked into the Shoppers Food Warehouse. I picked up a newspaper, my only intended purchase, and walked to the auto check out. Before the machine even began its litany of helpful instructions I scannedthe paper, put exact change in the coin slot, and walked away. As I left, the silly machine asked if I wanted to skip bagging, told me where to put my money, and finally said “Thank you for using the fast lane.” I left singing.

The lady that had been in front of me in line said, “I didn’t know you could do that!”

Tris

Ah, yes. The bane of my shopper’s existance, the self-check lanes.

Not only do I detest shopping, I detest people who are also shopping. What keeps me sane about it, though, is watching the aforementioned empty-eyed herd try and wrangle these machines into doing things their way. Hmm, self check lanes in a Wal-Mart frequented by absolute bumpkins…where you’re just as likely to hear “What? How does that little window know how much my John Deere t-shirt costs?” as you are to hear “But I only have one, two, three, four…” Not only does most every patron in front of me find these lanes more challenging than counting over ten, the machines are programmed to speak out quite loudly the price of each item scanned, with other voice instructions for each part of the operation. I have yet to use anything but cash in them, because I am afraid then if I scanned the Debit card it would say “Oh, yes, Bank of Money Keeping debit account. Please enter PIN. Confirming PIN as 1180. Assuming PIN to be associated with your birthdate, November, 1980. Confirming name on account as Deva Lastnamehere…” It’s scary. Not only to me, but apparently to the folks who hear “Please take the last item scanned out of the bag.” They freak out and faint.

Am I mistaken in believing that there is a function on most cash registers to ease the purchase of multiples of the same item? I want to scream when the checker scans the 50 packs of Kool-Aid for the woman ahead of me one at a time.

If this is incoherent in any way, I have two excuses. It’s hard to describe what causes my phobias, and I have a migraine from Hell. My point, I think, is that the entertainment value helps to offset the murderous rage and trembling fear I feel when it comes to dealing with humanity in public. Not much, though.

There USED to be a function that did that back in my grocery store days, but then the store management removed it, “in order to keep track of which flavors were being sold, to ensure proper re-ordering”. Which sort of makes sense, if you think about it. It also forces each and every item to be run across the scanner, preventing employees from “helping out” a friend that came through their line. That way, if you see a cashier bypassing the scanner with ANY item, you become suspicious.

Ahhh, a rant after my own heart- excellent OP. I also detest shopping and people. Who may or may not be shopping at the same time as me. I fully admit to my blossoming curmudgeon status.

However, I am not saved by people that don’t know how to use the self-check lanes. The self-check lanes are great because they (usually) minimize the amount of people I have to deal with when I go shopping, which is always a plus. However, once in a while I pick the wrong time to go shopping and there will be any number of idiots trying their hands at self-check. Only they are too STUPID to manage. It makes my brain hurt and my blood boil watching these people take 10 minutes to scan 3 items. And don’t get me started on the 12 steps it takes for them to figure out how to pay.

When I can go to my scan spot, swipe my grocery card, scan my items (more than person Brain Dead), bag them, pay, and start walking out before aforementioned person has finished, when they started at the same time or before me? They don’t belong in the self check lane! GET OUT!!!

I think we should introduce national IQ tests for several (ok, more than several) things, self-check stands being one of them. If you pass you get a card you swipe in and you can use them. If not, then when you swipe your card the machine says, “Sorry, you have been deemed too stupid to operate me. Please exit the line and go see one of our available checkers.”

I never use anything but my Debit card - no worries, it’s no different than using it at the check stand - same machine/procedue except instead of the cashier handing you your receipt and telling you how much you “saved”, the machine says something like, “Please take your receipt and bags and get the fuck out of my store already!” :smiley:

I’m damn good at the U-Scan. Damn good. I keep my head down, scan my items, and get myself out (I’ve used cash, credit cards, and debit cards with no problems). See, as a techno-geek, I appreciate watching old fuddies and mothers with six children bring themselves into the modern age. I’m patient. And as a former employee of this particular grocery store, I respect that U-Scan saves a lot of money and hassle. Watching the trials and tribulations of a first-timer is both amusing and satisfying. What I hate more than the meat cows is the newly trained U-Scan employee.

Do not come over and check my paper bag, which I had to unfold onto the bed, and see if it’s empty. Just hit the goddamn button.

If something gets out of wack and there is a conflict between me and the scanner, do not come over and lecture me on how the anti-theft scale thingie works. I know better than you. Just hit the goddamn button.

If I cannot quickly find a sticker on my obscure fruit, and I wave it at you so that you can tell me the code, do not come over, take my fruit, and type it in for me. Just yell from over there.

Do not help me!

Do not hover! Go away!

I live a good life. Nothing is worse than seeing a U-Scan checkout guru that’s unfamiliar.

((I find it beautiful that this is the first thread I’ve enjoyed since ponying up my cash.))

I neither freak out nor do I faint. I simply mutter “asshat programmers.”

Fellow Charter Member Dopers, here is your chance to fight a bit of ignorance, and just a few scant hours before I stand in line in front of what may turn out to be one of you – what the fuck is that “remove last item scanned from the bag” thing all about? How do I get around this nth-level loop hell?

Perhaps Albertson’s and its minions has worse self-checkers than others. I rarely get through the Jewel (owned by Albertson’s) self-checkers gracefully. But I try, anyway. It’s my duty as a technically savvy old crank who likes to yell at machines to help them get the bugs out of the program. Today it was how they don’t take checks. The regular cashier stations have The World’s Slowest Dot-Matrix Printers that can print out the whole check; all you have to do is sign it. Could they install something like that on the automated stations so somebody doesn’t have to come over from the service desk and do it manually? Apparently not, though they can automate everything else.

The local Winn-Dixie added the self checkout lines a few months ago. They added in two half size stations where you only have room on the scale for 2 bags and 2 stations with a belt much like you would find on the cashier run checkouts. They have a zone where it optically measures the item on the belt and makes sure it matches the product size you just scanned. Once they hit the end the items can be taken off the belt and bagged.

I really like the self checkout lines but the wifey has some sort of aversion to them.

See, you all need to move into my retiree-saturated area. When the self-checkouts came, the letters to the editor started rolling in. They’re taking away jobs! They’re just trying to confuse us!! Technology is evil!!! Boycott the self-checkouts!!!

Now, I can go into the grocery store and be the only one using the things. Seriously, there will be one line open with 10 people standing in it and not one single person at the self-checkout.

(Incidentally, this isn’t the only technology that’s eschewed by my fellow residents. We just had a new mall open last week that contains the first escalators in a store in our county. They interviewed people on our radio station who had *never ridden and escalator * and were a little leery - they were looking for the elevator, instead.)

Thanks to the morons, you can’t scan in produce at our local self-check lines any longer.

Not, that is, unless your produce is bananas, lemons, apples, avocados, or tomatoes.

Usetabe, you hit the produce button and it asked you to type in the 4-digit code on the produce. On the off chance that your produce didn’t have a sticker (e.g., it was loose salad greens), you could look it up on a handy chart.

But apparently that was too complicated for people, or else morons were cheating the store by buying avocados at the price of bananas or something. Now, if it’s not one of those five items listed, you have to wait until the single employee manning the four self-check lines notices your frantically waving hand, looks at what’s on your scale, and types the damn code in for you.

Gee, that saves a lot of time, doesn’t it? Instead of relying on one cashier per person, now you’re relying on one cashier per four people.

Thank god nobody else buys produce, or it would really slow us down.

Daniel

Now, one thing I can’t figure out. It would be so much easier if the grocery store had a bunch of those little tabs like in the bulk food area, so if you’re getting produce that is only randonly stickered (or stuff from the big bins, likeloose salad greens) you can write the number down yourself.

I’m speedy at the self-checkouts. Why? Because my first stop is the bulk food area, I grab a handfull of those tags and a wee pencil. So I am confident that ALL my produce has the four digit number. No need to look it up.

I’ve found the chart can be time consuming if stuff isn’t where I’d think it ought be listed (you know, radishes, apples, and tomatoes are all red…). But with numbers on all my tags on all my baggies… I’m laughin’.