My local grocery store is Safeway. It took me a while, but now I love it.
I use the cotton bags from Trader Joe’s and they are heavy. The scale would always throw an error. Annoying, but I still continued to use the self checkout. But I’ve solved that problem. Now I don’t even bag my items. I leave my bags in the car.
I use the handheld scanner and scan all items in my cart, and I leave them in the cart. When I shop and pull items from the shelves, I arrange the items in the cart so that the barcode is pointed up for easy scanning. No transferring of items to the scale, and then back to the cart after paying. None of that
So my groceries are only transferred twice: in the store, from the shelf to the cart, and at my car, from the cart to the bag and into my car. I bag my groceries when I’m at my car.
Easy, and super quick!
I didn’t read the thread. Don’t know if another Doper is doing it this way also.
That’s a great idea, But my W-M doesn’t have ANY hand scanners in ANY of the self checkout stations. Not even the clerks in that area have one. If a package is too big to put on the scanner, the clerk will punch in something manually.
The store I work at has you use your phone as your bar-code scanner for the shopping app. Solves all sorts of problems, like whether or not a hand-scanner is available or customers accidentally going home with a scanner.
Not so convenient for customers that don’t have smart phones, though.
One annoyance I had with the self checkouts at Target – for a while their self-checkouts thought tonic water was alcohol. It is in the same aisle as the alcohol, and I was planning on mixing it with alcohol which I had legally purchased elsewhere, but tonic water on its own is not alcohol (which I assume we all know).
So I would pick up some tonic water along with some other groceries, go to the self-checkout (because I didn’t have any alcohol – I’m in California, where, as others mentioned, it’s against the law to buy alcohol at the self-checkout), and have the machine stop when I tried to scan it. Then an employee would have to come over and override the machine. They were always like “Yep, that’s not alcohol. Sorry about that, but they refuse to change it in the system.” But apparently they did fix it at some point, because I bought some recently and now the self-checkout is perfectly happy with it.
This just happened a few days ago: I pretty much always use the self-checkout because they are plentiful and no waiting. Additionally, the lady that usually mans them knows me and can over-ride my booze remotely. All I do is call out her name and say “Booze!”. Bingo, done.
But, the other day, I go to checkout and there is a big ass line. Half the machines are closed. I asked the lady why. She said that there was only one of her, and people were taking advantage and walking out with too much stuff.
Then hire more people! And don’t fucking tell me there are no candidates. My Goddamn kid has had an application on file for months! Meanwhile, he’s driving 100 miles round-trip for a job with gas at over $5/gal.
You have every right to be pissed! The constant rhetoric right now is “ooooohhhhh, nobody wants to work, wahhh!” but I’ve had two really fantastic job interviews lately that promptly ghosted me entirely. Even after I sent a brief follow-up email the next day, had what seemed like good rapport with the hiring manager, and all that good crap.
I dislike them intensely. I will use them if I’ve got just 3 or 4 items, but anything much more than that, and it’s faster to go to a lane with a live human.
A couple months ago, I did some grocery shopping (we had just started doing it again in person after 2 years of delivery). It was about 10:30 or 11 PM. I had a cartload of stuff. And I got to the front of the store and there was not a single live cashier. It would have taken me most of a half hour to scan and bag it all myself. I was seriously contemplating just leaving the whole cartful of food at the front of the store - when an attendant saw me and said she was available for real checkout duty. She wasn’t at a register, and the one she went to did not have a light on. They were really trying to discourage people from using a staffed checkout line.
Several stores also have a gimmick now where you scan your stuff as you shop. I tried that once or twice (you’d pick up a handheld gadget as you entered the store). And you could bag your stuff as you shopped.
Checkout was, then, lightning fast (unless you got selected for a random bag check, which only happened to me once). Of course, the shopping itself took 3 times as long…
I’ve always used them where I can, and the latest machines stuff up far less than a few years ago. A cute new thing, it can have a stab at what produce you’ve plonked down by ascertaining its colour.
This is very true - an experienced cashier is going to be faster than self-checkout. People don’t always believe that, but it’s true.
In fact, even as an experienced cashier, checking myself out is still slower than going to a lane with a cashier myself. That’s because when I’m working as a cashier the machine I use has some features that allow me to do things faster than anything on the self-checkout.
That’s probably because there was no one else to watch over the self-checkout. Leaving that unattended means the risk of theft goes way, way up. It’s a staffing issue, of course.
Yep.
So much for do-it-yourself being better. But some people really do think they can do it faster than the pros.
If the store you went to works the same as my store does, the overnight cashier is also expected to clean and restock the front end when they don’t have customers, which would probably explain why they didn’t have a light on.
This is likely true…if there’s no line at the live checkout. Usually there is, and there is no line at the self-checkout making it much faster than waiting for a cashier (depending on the size of your cart).
When was this? This is similar to my experience way back when self-checkouts first became a thing, but lately the process has been much more smooth and seamless—and, judging by the posts in this thread, I’m not alone in this.
You have to pick up an item and put it in your cart no matter what you do. I don’t see how quickly scanning it while it’s in your hand makes it “3 times as long” unless you are just very slow doing things. But that’s on the user not the device. I’ve used that system in Stop and Shop and it makes it so much faster.
A large part of that is that the customer has already unloaded the cart for you and put it on a convenient belt for you to pick up from and scan. Then you just drop the items into a bag, and the customer then places the bag into the cart. With self-checkout, you are doing both.
Other than the fact that either the app or my phone sometimes gets wonky, when it works, it is significantly faster. Pick up item, scan it, put it in the bag that I want it to be in to make unloading groceries at home easier. Takes far less time than waiting in line for a lane to open up, and takes far less time when I get home.
They could improve it by having a dedicated pay station, or letting you pay over your phone, rather than having you go through the self checkout line to pay, as there is often a line to wait in there as well.
I went to my grocery store once with my friend. When he went to check out, all the self-checkout stands were closed. Disappointed, he said, “Oh no, now I’ve got to talk to someone.”
Because you’re not just grabbing an item, and taking 3 seconds to scan it, you are also placing it in a bag right then and there. And as you go, you may find you need to reorganize the bags.
If I were simply scanning items and tossing them in the cart, yes, it’d take a usual amount of time - but then that poses the issue of how do I get the stuff into the car, then into the house.
Did the whole experience take 3 times as long? Likely not, when you factor in checkout time. I’d bet it took twice as long overall as doing a more traditional checkout.
Plus: when you’re working as a cashier, the customer is doing the task of grabbing things from the cart and putting them on the belt - all stuff that, when you’re doing self-checkout, you are doing in addition to the scanning / bagging portion.
The perfect combination is customer + cashier + bagger. It’s extraordinarily rare to have someone help bag these days.
I organize my bags as I go. I put my dairy in one bag, frozen items in another, produce in yet another, and meats in the last. But, I do come to the store with a pretty good idea as to what I am going to get ahead of time.
That’s the cool thing, it’s already bagged, so you just take the bags out of the cart, then take them out of the car to the house. How else would you do it?
In my neighborhood, some groceries have checkout lanes marked “you bag” or “we bag” so you can choose. Occasionally a youth group steps in for a day with multiple volunteer baggers, all hoping for a tip to finance their particular activity project, like a trip to Washington DC.
At Wal-Mart, the cashier bags as she rings 'em up, as the bagging carousel is just to the left of the scanner. It would be difficult for a customer to do this without reaching over the counter or walking around and snuggling up to the cashier, which might not be appreciated by all.
(I have anger issues)