My favorite grocery/dept store, when it first opened, had approximately 42 checkout lanes. They now have less than 20. You have to wait forever on a busy night. To make matters worse, about eight of the checkouts are “U-scan” I hate these things. You scan it yourself, pay for it by inserting cash, debit, or credit card into the machine. I don’t know about anyone else, but I see no convenience in the “U-scan” except for the store itself. Bottom line: They have to pay eight fewer people to cashier. Stupidity, IMHO. Some things just shouldn’t be self-serve/auotmated. This is one of them.
The store is much like Walmart, but still is much better than Walmart. Don’t even get me started on “Wal-ly world” I refuse to shop there for anything unless absolutely necessary. I hate Walmart with a passion, for many reasons.
Is it a Meijer store? We have one here now and I wasn’t too impressed.
I went in on a Friday afternoon and wanted to use the U-Scan thing so my kids wouldn’t go crazy waiting in of the TWO open lines (at 4:30 on Friday!! Come on!) but they’ll only let you use the U-Scan lanes if you have under 12 items. So we got to wait for 25 minutes instead.
Grrrrr.
I’d better stop bitching about grocery shopping or we’ll end up in the Pit!
–tygre
What gets me is when they have a bag-it-yourself system and then open so few lanes the lines are still long. How can they win if everyone hates the experience. All the good will they got with low prices is instantly gone.
Hey, what’s your problem? Wal-Mart rules!
And if you scan it yourself, you don’t have to deal with the incompetent, surly high school monkeys they have running the register. I wish they had something like that here.
Of course, I just don’t go the the store when it’s busy. That seems to work well enough.
Trip (don’t) Fall
Grocey stores will do just about anything to cut costs and increase profits. In my store, the checkers top out at almost 18 dollars an hour, times eight hours a day, times 365 days a year, the store is cutting almost a half million in costs. And most people don’t realize that most stores of that nature a lucky to make a 3% profit.
If I wasn’t unionized I am sure that I would have been canned for a machine long ago.
Around here there is such a labor shortage it’s hard to keep the cashier staff full. Especially during the summer, they take advantage of child labor laws and hire what must be 14-year-olds–doesn’t instill too much confidence.
It makes me wonder what will be next…
Perhaps we will be going in and stocking the shelves too.
I HAVE seen warehouse stores where you’re pretty much doing exactly that - removing the items from the shipping crate in order to purchase. Now, when it gets to the point where they point out the semi in the parking lot for ME to unload… :rolleyes:
Just for the other side of things . . . we really like the self-scan thingy. It’s much faster, and here, at least, (Kroger, in TN), they don’t stop you unless it won’t fit in the three grocery bags that the machine monitors. So I’ve used it with well over the 15 item limit. And it’s easier and much more plesant than waiting in ridiculous lines and dealing with the rather amazingly slow/stupid/unplesant (no, not all of them, but a rather large majority) who run the cash registers. Yes, part of it’s the novelty and newness of the setup, but I still think it’s a good thing.