There are apparently also people who can make an entire batch of chocolate chip cookies.
For me, there’s some sort of { nom } black hole between the { snarf } making of the dough { nom } the shaping of the cookies { nom nom } and the sliding of the baking sheet into the oven, where the “Makes 20-24 Cookies” recipe turns into a scant dozen anna half.
… to turn back the hijack, though, it’s the “came in for a coupla things, need to pay for 23 zillion items” that can really bite ya in the ass on self checkout. There just isn’t room for all this stuff, so you hafta play Musical Chairs with the stuff in your cart, and now you - and security - are keeping track of what is and isn’t scanned (or got scanned twice) and that can require significant mental & physical energy.
I seem to be able to. Mind, my routine has me going past a couple of supermarkets and a Walmart every day, so it’s easy to stop in and just get a few things.
I will say that I wish that, say, Walmart had a limit on the amount of things you can take through the self-checkout, and enforced it. My local Walmart’s self-checkouts were clogged the other day with two couples, each taking full shopping carts through the self checkout. The lineup—mostly people with only a few things—stretched back into the store. If Walmart had somebody standing by, saying to those couples, “That’s too much for here; you’ll have to go to one of the staffed lanes,” we all, with only a few items, could have got out of there faster.
I can do that - for the grocery I walk to. If it won’t go into my backpack, I won’t buy it.
We now have a Costco I can walk to - but I’d never make it back with paper towels and Kleenex.
It’s possible, I can do it. It takes training though, and a 32 quart mixer. When you’re making batches of 12 dozen at a time, cookie dough rapidly loses its appeal.
Interestingly, was a time not long ago you could get a chinese mixer for just $700 on amazon.
As for shopping, again training and habit. I used to shop for groceries, two weeks worth at a time. Now I only shop for a week at a time and stick to whatever menu was planned for the week. Usually amounts to less than half a cart. Saves on waste and spoilage
Watch out for shop lifting (but not stop it - just report it and Asset Protection will pull the video and deal with it later)
Clean up after jerks who storm out, leaving a mess behind.
The worker bee who is standing there is not deserving of your ire. He’s just doing his job which, yes, sometimes involves standing there with nothing to do because typically they’re not allowed to wander off to other things, they have to stay at their station. He didn’t design the checkout machines, and he has no control over how the system is supposed to work, or how it actually does (or doesn’t) work.
Well, if that’s how the machine was designed and set up, that you must put your scanned items on the shelf/scale or it won’t continue to work, that’s not the attendant’s fault. But go right ahead and ignore that and you can just stand there wondering why nothing is working.
If you’re disabled and can’t bend over then that’s one of the reasons to ask the attendant for help - tell him that you have trouble bending/picking stuff up and he’ll come over, pick it up for you, and put it back in your hands.
You’re correct, there isn’t - if that’s such a trauma to you there is a person standing nearby whose entire job is to assist customers. Instead of asking for help you work yourself up then storm out.
Alright, we won’t, but … yes, I will tell you that actually IS why they’re so low. Also so short people and people in wheelchairs can reach them easily. Although they, too, are welcome to ask the attendant for help.
I’ll just note that it’s not a design choice - it’s the law that these things have to be ADA compatible. Where they can’t be made so that’s another for there to be a human being to help.
Most people seem to work it out. I will say that my employer turned off the scales on our self-checkouts because they were such an aggravation. In my store you can keep things in your hands (go ahead, watching people juggling their purchases is always amusing), put them down, put them back in a cart… we don’t care as long as you ring everything up.
But yes, a lot of places still have the scales and they’re annoying as hell.
When I’m assigned to one of our SCO clusters I’m there to help you. I help a lot of people for a lot of reasons. You just have to ask, there’s no application or forms to fill out. Just ask.
And if you’re in a store where asking for help gets you bupkis then just don’t go back because that’s crappy customer service.
^ This.
On the other hand - it’s one reason companies can’t eliminate human workers entirely and why some of us still have jobs.
I don’t know if it’s still the case but awhile back the Walmarts in my area eliminated all the staffed checkouts leaving just to SCO’s… in which case those people don’t have a choice, it’s a full cart at the SCO.
My local Walmart’s clerked checkouts were clogged the other day with two couples, each taking full shopping carts through the checkout. The lineup—mostly people with only a few things—stretched back into the store. If Walmart had somebody standing by, saying to those couples, “That’s too much for here; you’ll have to go to one of the self-checkouts,” we all, with only a few items, could have got out of there faster.
My gf does the grocery shopping on Saturday with a cart. When I go it’s to get a few things I need for that night’s dinner. I use a basket thing. I haven’t used a cart in many years.
Speaking as someone who rarely uses self checkout, i find those attendants super helpful, and I’m always glad they are there to tell me what this machine needs. Otherwise, I’d be really slow and annoy the customers behind me.
Returning to my previously mentioned (and hated) local Stop & Shop, there are never more than two manned lanes open, and one is always 15 items or less. So then there’s a pen with about 10 self-checkouts that isn’t nearly large enough for all the carts that go in there. Because the lines at the manned ones are insane. And the surface area of the scale isn’t nearly large enough to accommodate a full cart load.
Of course, but even that’s a huge problem. If you move something once it’s on the scale, say because you don’t want to put the milk on top of the bread, it freaks out and makes you get an attendant.
And then there was the time the stupid thing wanted me to put 10 pumpkins on a scale that’s maybe 4 square feet…
What’s funny to me is that, on heavy shopping days, there is also a waiting line in the self-checkout lane! Hah! Imagine having to wait for the “privilege” of doing all your own checkout and bagging work.
I agree. The self-checkout at Stop & Shop is all but unusable to me if I get more than a few items. In particular I frequently buy spring water for drinking and distilled water for my CPAP, and maybe a gallon or two of milk. There’s never enough room, and I don’t feel like unloading everything anyway. If I go through the line I can just put one on the belt, and tell the checker that there are three more in the cart.
Home Depot has a better system. The self-checkout has a gun so that you can leave items in or on the cart…like eight 40-lb bags of salt for my water softener.
One of our brand new local supermarkets has the option to “skip bagging” for large items, and it will encourage you to skip bagging if you scan a large item. You scan a 20lb bag of cat litter and it says “Please For God’s Sake Don’t Put That Thing On The Scale! Leave It In The Cart!”
That doesn’t seem to be the case these days. The grocery I regularly go to (a Meijer, for those who care) recently went to mostly self-checkout, with only a relatively small number of assisted checkouts. There do not appear to be any limits on how many items you can take through the self-checkout. At least, there are no signs posted to that effect.
Several times, when I have been waiting at one of the assisted checkouts with my very full cart, in a long line of people who likewise have very full carts, some of the attendants have called out things like “Self-checkout is open. No wait at self-checkout.” It seems like they are trying to direct some of the traffic into the self-checkout lanes, regardless of how many items the customer has.
I do use the self-checkout when I can, but I don’t like to use it when I have a whole lot of stuff. There just isn’t enough room for everything.
Thank you for all the front-line info. I’ll note that I was explaining, not complaining about how things are built.
As to this one snip above …
As you rightly say, ADA etc drives a bunch of this. Infirmities come in lots of flavors and as @Spiderman indicates, accommodations for e.g. wheelchair users amounts to a dis-accomodation for them and others like them. Somehow we all gotta get along.
Speaking just for me I like the idea that the bagging area is lower than the scanning platform. Such that the bag top is roughly even with the scanning platform. When I’m checking out, with very few exceptions, stuff gets scanned then unceremoniously swept to the side to fall into the waiting bag. Clunk, clunk, clunk, and I’m done. Bye! It’s all about “fast”; “careful” has nothing to do with it. For me. Somehow we all gotta get along.
As to the full carts through self-serve, the stores really need to either beat 'em or join 'em.
If they aren’t going to prohibit large orders going through self-check, then they need to provision empty carts at the self checkout stations so folks can scan items out of their full cart and into the waiting empty cart. Then when they walk away with their newly full cart of paid-for stuff, their formerly full cart is waiting as the empty cart for the next person.
This is the highly efficient system Aldi uses at their staffed check stations and it works great. Having customers trying to juggle paid and not-paid items out of and back into the same cart is a recipe for wasted time and rampant theft. Plus a bunch of honestly inadvertent underrings.
In my local Wal-Mart, they have typically 1 or 2 full-checkout lanes and 7 self-checkout ones. Neither have signs as you want, and there are no “10 items or less” lines.
The machines have been reprogrammed to not require weighing any bag; in fact, there is an area on either side of the reader/scale. You can put items, in or not in a bag, on either side, or back in the cart if you wish. The scale is part of the scanner, and is needed only for grocery items that are sold by weight.
It works pretty well. I never get any voice telling me that the item is in the wrong place; I can bag or not bag any item(s) as I desire, from either side of the cart or machine. They have even installed a whole new set of machines where the annoying voice prompt is nearly eliminated.
After using the self-checkout for a long time, I find that I can scan & bag items as fast (maybe faster) than some clerks, especially the ones new to the job.
The only objection I have is you can’t buy liquor without ringing for an attendant. I’ve heard that there are some machines that can scan, read, and approve an ID without an attendant, but I don’t think these do. Since Wal-Mart starting requiring an ID for ALL liquor purchases (which I don’t carry), even if you are using a walker and are obviously 80, or even if you are a personal friend of the clerk, I stopped buying liquor at Wal-Mart. The nearest “normal” grocery store is right across the street, where they treat you with dignity and I haven’t been asked for an ID there for 40 years.
ETA: This Wal-Mart is now undergoing a major remodel, and it looks like they have expanded (expanded in quantity, which makes for less space for each machine or aisle) the self-checkout area. So I guess the store thinks it is a good idea based on customer acceptance.
