I wonder if the clueless that take forever are new or they never do catch on? I am using them less and less. We only had 3 places with them. HD closed. Wal-Mart is in the far end of town and since they remodeled, no longer carry much of what I used to buy. They aren’t worth the drive. The third place is even further away and I don’t go there much unless I am buying wine. May as well use the cashier.
I love them, but do still sometimes feel “lazy” and use the checkers. But I don’t like using them when there are people in line, too many people don’t know how to use them and they take FOREVER!
All of the U-scans at all of the stores I frequent have “Skip Bagging” options. Very handy for stuff that doesn’t fit in the bag, or if you’ve bought a bunch of stuff and need to clear the bagging area. The only thing I notice is (other than the aforementioned people who can’t/won’t get a clue about how to use them) is that the produce codes are often hard to read. I don’t carry my reading glasses with me everywhere, so I’m standing there squinting like crazy at my nectarine (or whatever)… is that a 1? or a 7? Arrrggggh
idly wonders how much all his stuff would cost to buy if across the board manufacturers and vendors skipped labor-saving machinery in order to employ real people and create jobs
If a self checkout register is open and there is a wait in the other lines I’m all over the self checkout. 99% of the time I guess. I’m in good shape, manually dexterous, usually shop a couple times a week so don’t have a cart full and hate standing in line. If a full service lane happens to be available and the clerk hasn’t skedaddled I’ll pay them a visit.
I use them when I’m buying a basketful of shopping. If it’s a trolley-full, I’ll queue at a proper checkout, as I can bag the items and pack them back into the trolley as they come through.
The store I go to has portable handheld scanners. Grab one when you get in the store, pick up an item, scan it, then bag it. If an item just won’t scan because of its label, back on the shelf and grab a different one. At the end, scan a barcode at the checkout, scan your shopper’s card at the register, pay and leave. It keeps a running tally of what’s in the cart. I have had a random audit done once, a cashier comes over and will scan 6 or so random items, just to check. And I can still use a manned register if I need to, or if the self check out lane is crowded. For produce, there are some scales that you put the produce on, enter the PLU, and it spits out a sticker with a barcode to scan, all in the produce area. I love it.
A few tips for the U-Scanning customers out there:
Most fruit and vegetables, unless bagged, will not ring up on its barcode. I don’t know why they even put a barcode sticker on the fruit half the time. The easiest way to get around this would be to type in the PLU code (four numbers on the sticker) under the item lookup, search for it on the screen (typing the name is way faster than sorting through the pictures) or simply ask the cashier to help you.
If you have any large items that take too much space on the bagging area or if you have too many groceries to make it a go in just one transaction, let the cashier know. They can cancel out the weight easily and scan large items with their scanner laser. Same goes for small items that may not register on the scale, such as kool-aid packets, or multiples of an item.
Most places do not allow you to scan your own coupons, so please don’t try. It just notifies the cashier to come take it from you. Coupons are taken at the end of the order.
While some of it is pretty straightforward, there is an order to the process. At Kroger, I can’t scan any of your coupons or bottle slips until you’ve hit “Pay Now”. Likewise, if you have a Kroger Card, you need to swipe it before hitting the “Pay Now” button. If you type in your Kroger number on the pinpad, you have to swipe one item through to see if it went through.
-The weights can be a little wonky at times. These things will ring even if it’s just a .04 of a pound difference, which happens pretty often. This can occur if a paper bag has been placed in the area or even if an item is swiped (such as a pre-cooked chicken) and its actual weight is different than what the computer expects to be.
I know you need that pop RIGHT NOW, but either be patient and put it in the bagging area until the transaction is finished, or hit the “skip bagging” button to let us know you don’t want to bag it. It isn’t too hard to do.
Buy-one-get-one-free items don’t come off of the total until you hit “Pay Now.”
I have to key in your birthdate for cigarettes and alcohol. We do it on the cash registers too (if you look old enough we just put in 01/01/1950 automatically) and it takes a little longer since the buttons can act finicky. Just fyi for everyone.
If a cashier isn’t helpful, gets pissy about having to help you, isn’t even paying attention to your requests or off wandering somewhere talking to other workers, complain to the manager.
Um, those are all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head. A good cashier will be attentive to all of the customers and attend to them in the order they asked for help. Sometimes it sucks to get bombareded by all four lanes at once, a little patience goes a long way for both the cashier and customers. It’s not a faultless setup, but it is geared to get people in and out quicker than if they had stood in line. Some people with huge orders like to use them too so they can see everything as it adds up and make sure we aren’t overcharging or ringing things up twice or something, I guess.
If they didn’t exist the stores wouldn’t be open, because it wouldn’t be cost effective to keep them open with that many people. I can remember, when you were pretty much screwed if you needed to buy anything after 9pm. I had some friends that got off work at midnight and I can remember when a Walmart first started staying open 24 hours a day in town.
I like the idea of them, but I always have difficulty with something not scanning correctly and invariably need assistance. I avoid them at all costs now.
This is something we always seem to forget about when we do a “Do you like self checkout?” thread.
There are two kinds of self checkout.
One kind is a group of 4 little awkward stalls with a pressure plate bag area. It’s hard to use and causes problems when you have a lot of groceries and/or big stuff. It’s also problematic when you have super tiny or light stuff. And if you bring your own bags.
The other kind is a normal-sized checkout register with a conveyor belt and a big bagging area. This type of register is just fine for large items and full carts. It is exactly like all of the registers with people behind them except there’s a computer and the scale is more important.
My grocery store has the latter type of self checkout. I shop every 2 or 3 weeks and am always buying 12-packs of pop, so my cart is jam-packed full. I have NO problems with this type of checkout. I can blow through and get my stuff all checked out really fast. I’m extra fast because someone is usually standing behind me in line and I get anxious.
If I’m lucky, the attendant will come bag for me. Then I’m lightening fast!
We have 4 such lanes in the store I go to. Usually 2 are occupied by people like me with full carts, and 2 are people with a few items trying to blow through. There is rarely a stupidity slowness at my particular store.
I seem to recall that my store installed a “stall type” self checkout once, perhaps as a super extra express lane. I think it was there at the same time the conveyor belt types were there. The stall type was nixed pretty quick. People must not have used it.
Anyway, in a poll like this I think it’s important to note the difference between the “stalls” type and the “conveyor belt” type. People who like self checkout, IMHO, like the conveyor belt type. The other type is hard to love, unless you loathe cashier interaction and have small purchases.
I usually prefer the conveyor belt models, but they have their drawbacks. If you have someone with you like a kid who can bag as you scan they’re great. Otherwise you get a built up and as soon as you finish and go down to bag the next person starts scanning. The little divider isn’t much help as it just causes his order to get backed up.
They’re also nice if the attendant is able to bag for you, but then people start *expecting *the attendant to bag. Which wouldn’t have been much of a problem for me when I worked one if not for the fact I was in charge of 3 (later 4) units and couldn’t possibly bag for every customer if more than one was in use. So I had to pick which customers got bagged (ie an old lady over a young man, someone with a big order over a small one, etc). And of course I had to stop bagging everytime somebody needed help or checked out at the attendant stand (required for EBT & check customers). Which often led to the same stupid variations on “Hey, if I half to scan it myself the least you could bag it instead of fooling around”.
When we first got one I really hated when people tried to check out with alot of the same small items. The was no customer quantity button. Not only that but the regular ID badges the attendants got didn’t have one either. So if you had a case of 24 little bottles of baby food you really did either have to scan every single bottle and put it on the belt one at the time (or go to a regular register). :smack: Finally they gave me a manager ID badges so I could access the quantity button and overide it (provided of course they were allthe same flavour).
Ours did allow customers to scan their own coupons after they pressed “Finish & Pay”. After you scanned the coupon it prompted out to put it in a little slot. Except the slot scanner couldn’t tell the difference between the coupon & any random piece of paper. Very frequently when I was closing them down at the end of the night I’d empty out the coupon box and find a bunch of post-its or pieces of newspaper. A couple times I actually caught people in the act of doing it. I year or two after I stopped working there I was in buying groceries, used the self-check and noticed that that little slot was gone and anyone with coupons had to suspend their order and pay at the attendant stand.
You can’t simply assume this. These stores have been open 24/7 long before the advent of these machines. People like to portray every cost savings effort as essential as if every business was just a tiny sliver away from utter failure at all times, but sometimes they just decide treating their customers well isn’t worth a little extra cost.
