I’ve learned to tolerate them. Barely. I will use them if I only have a couple of items, or if the lines at the human check-out lanes are really long. But OMG, they are NOT efficient, and I almost always end up having to wait for a human attendant at least once with every transaction.
I hate them. I do NOT work there. I should not have to scan and bag my own groceries. They save the store money by requiring fewer employees. Does the store then charge me less? no.
Produce – Much of the WM produce actually has barcodes on it, and ones that do not seem to be pictured on the first screen I see, so I haven’t found that to be a problem.
[Jewish mother] The computer manufacturers’ jobs you don’t like? [/Jewish mother]
RE: 2.0 version
The machines look the same (at least from my inaccurate memory), but there must be some difference (in software?) because the newest WM ones simply don’t nag. And I’ve tried putting the “in” merchandise on the left first, or putting it on the right first, and the machine has never given me a hard time.
I’m sure the old ones are still around, because I went to a Festival Foods store in Green Bay recently and got so disgusted with their stupid, nagging machines that I dumped all my groceries back in the cart and went across the aisle to a clerk’s checkout lane. I thought that would be faster than wrestling with a brain-dead computer.
And here’s a recent article from CNN, obviously talking about the old technology:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/09/business/self-checkout-retail/index.html
As a former cashier, I prefer to use the cashiered lanes. Cashiers know things and are not usually patronizing jerks. An automated lane can’t tell me where to find something or replace my eggs if I discover that one cracked and is leaking over my other shopping items.
However, I used to train cashiers on the early electronic checkouts so I know how to do it myself. I will use self service when I only have a couple of items and the cashier lanes are long. I do talk back to the machines regularly, much to the amusement of the employees. The machines are so doggone complacent-sounding when they tell me to not forget the receipt (that hasn’t printed yet), I can’t help but get snarky. I do not get snarky at cashiers.
This pretty much, except that I haven’t boycotted walmart because, right now anyway, they are the best option for grocery shopping for me (closest to home, value, quality of products etc).
I used the one at a Fred Meyers today. I was not impressed, and Walmart (locally anyway) hasn’t gone down this road yet, thank goodness, but all the “insert club card or enter phone number now” blah blah bs. I just want to pay and go, ok? NO! You must first answer these questions before payment or no corndogs for YOU! f#cking hell, whoever thought harassing customers was a good idea needs to be taken out behind the barn and horsewhipped.
I love them when I have only a few items. They are fast, and there’s generally no queue. It’s a personal thing but if all else is equal I’d rather do something myself. In other words I’d rather get on with something myself that takes five minutes than wait five minutes for someone else to do the same thing.
For a household shop then I use the cashier, and not just because putting through that much stuff is impossible in the small area of a self-checkout - it’s just plain faster and more efficient to have a professional scan all the stuff through.
How come? It probably depends on the place but our favourite local Thai place has the “place order by tablet” system and I love it. So fast, no waiting for the wait staff to get to your table just sit down and “bam” - order’s in.
Hate it. When did I start working for Walmart? Will I have to start unboxing merchandise next? Unload the truck?
If Wmart didn’t have the call-in your grocery order/pick it up with my car feature we use, I’d never go there. Publix is just across the street.
Those saying they are doing the store’s work are just drawing an arbitrary line that has never been set in stone.
Go back 60 years and grocery store clerks fetched every item you asked for. I’m (just) old enough to recall older people wistfully recalling the days they didn’t have to pick out their items themselves.
Where I’m from supermarkets are highly competitive and operate on small margins. Just because staffing efficiencies leading to lower prices are too small to be noticed by the casual customer doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
For a relatively few supermarket items, self-checkout is acceptable. With a loaded cart or bulky items, the tiny Kroger robot brain tends to explode and help has to be summoned* and/or the Disembodied Voice suggests that I am plotting theft.
*no, I’m not going to wait until long-suffering store employees figure out what the flashing light means. I’ll head to another machine.
That’s why I leave shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot. Some teenager needs a job.
Never understood why stores never had enough cashiers to staff all the check out lanes they have. The entire point of every part of that business, from the building, parking lot, advertising, stockers, distribution centers, everything, is all for one thing - taking money from the customer. The entire thing exists for that transaction, and they act as if it’s too much trouble to do it. Weird.
I’m 60+ and I don’t recall that, at all.
Now if Wmart wants to put a self-checkout in place of a cashier at every lane, that would be OK, but the one next to me has one line that stretches across the entire store, then they split you off to go to a S-CO – all 10 are in one area and it’s about 20 feet by 10 feet, so it’s congested. Plus, they turned off the AC a couple years ago – that’s fun.
I’ll use 'em if I have just a couple items and/or the lines are long. I have the advantage that, because I actually am a cashier, I have a lot of the produce codes memorized.
But anything that would require human intervention, like buying alcohol, I prefer to take through a lane staffed by a human, and also large orders.
Neat! The few stores that still have bulk items? I use my phone and take a pic of the shelf tag and cashiers seem to like it. I’m not sure if it’s scannable off my phone, but it beats the cashier having to go over to read the shelf while everyone’s in line.
Since I usually bag my own groceries anyway, and I now can scan and pay for them faster than some checkout clerks, if it saves me time, it doesn’t matter if I am also saving the store money or not. Everyone wins!
I prefer manned checkout unless I have very few items; it generally works alright*
Sometimes it seems everybody in the store has the same idea and the automated lines are longer than the manned ones.
*Unless I’m buying alcohol, which requires someone to do an ID override, and always seems to take forever before someone is available to do so. Said staffer can be seen bouncing back and forth between various situations that require his/hers attention. This was just as common in BC ( before covid ) times. Sometimes produce was a pain in the ass because some items were ambiguous, code-wise.
That started to change 100 years ago, not 60. (1916 actually)
I only go to Wal*Mart when other places do not have multi-packs of Sugar Free Red Bull, and they’ve recently taken a step backwards: they used to have a single line for self-checkout with a chokepoint where, despite having 6 self-checkouts, you needed to all wait in line for the next available one. This was simple and fair. They deinstalled the single queue, and now you have to wait behind the line you think will be the shortest, just like in a regular checkout, which is the worst of both worlds.
Sexist!
Actually that makes more sense than what I said so thanks for the correction. My recollection is of older people (when I was young) commenting negatively on having to pick out their own groceries, so that timeline fits.
Unfortunately, after some incidents involving pictures of shelf tags and photoshop my store now has a policy against accepting pictorial information and we still have to have an employee verify the price. In other words, bad people are why we can’t have nice things.
On the other hand, if it’s the PLU code you’re scanning (the four-digit produce code) that we can use.