Plastic bags are no longer available in many Canadian stores. Some checkouts detect your recyclable bag there and ask if you added one. But these also seem to occasionally detect a lot of stuff that isn’t there. It is also not uncommon that some of the machines are stuck and not functioning. The article reflects my experiences, which are easy and straightforward about 80% of the time.
Kind of ironic that an article lamenting tech also offers subscribers the ability to listen to the article as read by an AI-generated voice.
Talk about lacking a personal touch.
I only use self checkout for small purchases.
The anti theft features can make it frustrating. I scan item and put in bag. Machine says “remove unscanned item”. 
I use a cashier for a shopping cart of groceries.
I’ve heard of such stores (particularly that Amazon was testing them), but I’ve not ever seen one IRL, and a bit of googling indicates that, while various retailers are testing them, it looks like there are only a relative handful of such stores out there at this point.
Some tech bro came up with an automated bodega like that. The idea was reportedly unpopular, I guess people like their bodegas. I have no experience with them, being Canadian, but hear they make a mean sandwich.
Hate them, never use them. I’m old I manage.
I tried using them a couple of times, but always required help. They then had problems, got flustered but cashed me out. When I got outside and checked I had not been charged for two items. I left anyway, (10+ mins now spent between me and the assistant!)
After that, I swore off and haven’t used them since. I just stand in front of the actual register until some one turns up. If they insist, I say I’m paying cash, if they still insist, or leave me at the register waiting forever, I just leave the items at the register and leave the shop.
And, I always choose the longer line at Walmart to use a real checkout. I am not alone. At my Walmart, many more people would seem to do the same. The self checkouts stand unused while a large line waits at the manned checkout.
I will always choose the store with cashiers over ones without.
Yeah, in my limited experience, self-checkouts nowadays work better than they used to, and the ones I’ve had most recent experience with don’t even check for “unexpected items in the bagging area.”
A year later and I still love them. The stores I go to don’t have the “Unidentified item” thing, and they don’t seem to care if you put the heavy jug of detergent or bulky paper towel pack right back in your cart instead of on the scale. I still will do a full cart of shopping (unless the store is stupid-busy, but I generally don’t do a full shop at those times anyway), and I’m not much slower than a regular lane because of the way I pre-organize what I’m scanning and where it’s packed.
Usually the only time I need cashier assistance is if I’m buying wine, or run into something that won’t scan and can’t be pulled up by hand on the menu. It’s not often.
People come up with all sorts of justifications for stealing.
The main problem I have with self checkouts is they don’t leave you a lot of space if you have a grocery cart full of items.
And now the retailers are all crying about the massive increase in shoplifting when they know the losses are increasing due to self-checkout fraud, employee theft and vendor fraud. All of which is driven by cutting staffing levels.
They are deploying more surveillance (cameras and AI) and drowning in false positives that they don’t have the labor to chase down either.
You’re just one of many people to say this, so please don’t interpret this as me directly criticizing you (or anyone else for that matter). But I’m flabbergasted at the idea of using self-checkout for anything beyond a handful of items.
To me, the self-checkouts are intended to be the express lines of the express lines. IOW, if the staffed express line is backed up or too slow, move over to the self-check.
I make many groc runs for a handful of items and prefer to use self-checkout since walking up to an unoccupied self-check station is so much faster than waiting behind just 1 person at the staffed express line. And unoccupied self-checks are the norm around here. Not that they’re unused, but that the stores I frequent at the off-peak times I shop have enough stations that most times I’m shopping, at least one will be vacant as I walk up. Ditto at the drug store or home depot or wherever.
IMO running a whole cart through self-check is more challenging for the customer, statistically more likely to encounter a snag needing a staffer, and is really misusing them versus their intended purpose.
I grant that I do not see signs at any self-check at any store saying “10 items maximum” or whatever. So apparently this selfcheck-is-express idea is my own (crazy?) invention. But i know I’d be pissed if I did arrive at a store with all self-checks occupied by folks scanning a cart or two of groceries.
I also do not see this behavior around here. Nobody I’ve noticed scans whole carts at self-checks. I wonder if that’s one of those regional things that catches on after somebody tries it, likes it, then soon others begin to imitate and it becomes commonplace at least around there.
I’d also suspect the relative crowding of stores and typical cashier lines have a big impact on how driven Joe or jane average is to switch to self-check for a cartload.
I went to our local Wal-Mart last night. There was 1 Cashier (at the smoke checkout line). NONE of the belt registers were open. Then only checkouts available were the Very small registers that have room for a bottle of ketchup and a loaf of bread.
Sometimes there are no other options.
The problem is, you’re wrong about the “intended use”, at least for a lot of stores.
My closest grocery store added self-checkouts mid-pandemic, and now routinely only has one traditional cashier checkout line open. So probably 90% of customers use the self checkouts regardless of how much they’re buying.
And this store actually exemplifies the problem mentioned, of not having enough room. It’s a smaller store, and they replaced 2 traditional checkouts with 6 self checkouts crammed into the same space - so the surface area of the bagging area with the scale is too small on all of them. Even just the moderate amount of groceries I buy as a single guy often take up too much room. I end up constructing an elaborate pyramid of groceries to try to get it all on there.
I generally don’t mind them now. The tech seems to have gotten better about not triggering “Unexpected item in bagging area” and I can almost always do it without any assistance. My only complaint is that the shelf where you put the stuff is low to the ground and I’m not very flexible so it can be awkward. But that’s on me really.
Also, the store I use, Shopper’s, has a full size self checkout lane if your cart is full.
I will actively avoid stores without a self-checkout option.
Queing in a store is the worst way to spend time.
The store I go to had a thing going where you would take a handheld scanner and scan things as you put them in your basket. It was a real freaking pain for produce. If the bar code was on the supporting shelf and not the item itself if often would not scan. Once you get that sorted out, you had to go to a scale and weigh it and scan the scale.
Then, you went to a self check out and weighed your bags (you remembered to put all your stuff in bags, right?)
All this system did was add a level of complexity and possible failure. It was a total pain in the ass.
They abandoned it after a couple of months.
Other wise self checkouts are fine if I only have about 4-5 items.
Yeah I was going to say the same thing. Usually it’s Walmart where we get an entire shopping cart full of groceries and they unusually don’t have more than a couple of human cashiers.
Really more than a handfull of items I don’t want to use the self checkout at all.
Our local Wal Mart opened up huge banks of self checkouts. More than half of the self-checkout registers have bagging areas with 3 bag hangers (like this). These are definitely meant for a large order. My brother and I routinely go through with full carts of groceries.
Those types of checkouts don’t seem to weigh bagged items, either. There’s lots of stuff I scan with the hand scanner and leave in my cart.
Aaah, that explains it. I don’t go to Wal*Mart. I can’t say I’ve never been in one, but it’s close.
My regular store did the same thing. I think they did it because people with really full carts were using the small self check out stations and spilling onto the adjacent stations. I hate it. I generally have less than 10 items, and with the small station I can get into a Rythm of scan, bag, scan, bag, then pay and walk out with my bag. At the long station, its scan, put on the belt, scan put on the belt, and then walk down to the end of the station and bag everything one by one. Waste of my time. But the attendant always waves me over to the large station if it is empty and gets confused when i wave him off.
I always use self checkout. When the store gets crowded and the manned checkout and self check out all have long lines, it’s simple: wait in one long line for 6 self checkouts or wait in a slightly shorter, but still long line for a single manned checkout. Roughly speaking the self checkout line has to be 5-6 times as long as the manned station line to be slower.