Well, I think the “work” I do is so light and trivial that my “expected” compensation is more than made up for by the time I save.
That’s absurd. If you think that, in any store (like the one I go to) with eight self-checkout stations, that without them there would have been eight additional checkout lanes open and staffed, that’s frankly ridiculous. For the third time, see Chanteuse’s post for further confirmation.
Plus (not that this would make much of a difference to you), self-checkouts DO have to employ people. They can’t just leave the things completely unattended, for obvious reasons.
I work in The Belly of the Beast, Wally. I use them every time I can.
And for everyone that says “I don’t want to do away with an entry level postion” Look at what you just posted. Entry level. The first job people have. They leave it. Trust me, I’ve worked there for 20 years almost. Even with selfchecks? They can’t hire cashiers fast enough.
I like self checkouts a lot…
But only for certain things. Ten items or less, perfect.
These create problems:
Alcohol? I’m obviously old enough to buy beer or wine (it’s Texas, so hard liquor not sold in non-liquor stores). But the cashier watching has to come over and okay it, even though I know most of them. So I try to remember to go thru a regular register.
Produce, I’m usually only buying the most common items–limes, onions, etc so it’s a quick look up.
And a buggy full of stuff? Pleaaaaase don’t try to do this yourself, thinking it’s faster. Ya’ll, as said here, self checks use a person and weights to watch for theiving. Time delays are built in>
Tomorrow, I will be applying for a license to open a grocery store. Is there an endorsement on that license for the money printing thing, or do I need a separate document for that?
Has anyone posted the most useful thing about self-checkouts?
The anonymity?
I don’t really mind self checkouts. In general I prefer a person doing someone else doing the checking, but I don’t care too much either way.
But they are a GODSEND when you need to buy certain…personal items.
It seems like 90% of the cashiers at my local grocery stores are about 15 years old.
No, I’d prefer not to have a 15-year-old girl ringing up condoms and lube. It’s just…creepy. Would have been fine when I was 15 myself, but that was over a decade ago.
Well, for a start, you’re in the wrong country. Secondly, if you re-read what I said, there are only two major supermarkets here (Woolworths and Coles) that pretty much have the market sewn up (along with a Special Guest Appearance by Aldi). Thirdly, I said supermarket, not grocery store. Different things.
Leaper, I can see we’re never going to agree on this. Suffice it to say we’re in different countries with different business practices and different market forces at work, and you’re speaking from an American experience and I’m speaking from an Australian one.
What I love even more are technophobes and conspiracy theorists who won’t use them. Shorter lines for me.
What I hate are clueless idiots attempting to use them. Replace the cud-chewing ditz overseer with Robocop and you have the makings for a smooth, efficient checkout process.
Do you live in one of those states where you’re not allowed to pump your own gas? In most places I’ve been, they’ve done away with full-serve gas stations/pumps and gas stations are still always hiring. Seems like that’s a good example of how technology took over a “job that people are traditionally paid for” and it ended up just fine. No one is being pushed out of a job.
Also…
I think the people that are weighing in on this thread should state what kind of self checkouts they hate. Have they only ever encountered the stupid useless scanner-to-bag types, or have they met the glory that is the scanner-to-belt-to-bag type? I used to hate them too until I found out about the latter. The two types are completely different experiences.
Are you kidding? You’re missing out on all the fun. Whenever I stop by the store for a six pack, THAT is when I grab the condoms and lube. And Preparation H.
There are, to the best of my knowledge, almost no “full-serve” petrol stations left in this state (I’m in Australia), nor have their been for quite some time, with the exception of small rural petrol stations where the staff often do have nothing better to do anyway.
Oddly, doing away with forecourt service doesn’t seem to have affected staff numbers at petrol stations here- they’re just working inside instead of outside pumping petrol, checking oil and water, and cleaning windscreens. They typically only have two staff on anyway, even the really big ones.
I love them - it’s faster, I can bag things how I want, and like Lillith Fair said I too actually enjoy scanning things for some bizarre reason.
They used to be kind of clunky but they’ve upgraded the ones here several times and now they work almost perfectly.
My only complaint is, as others have pointed out, the people who just don’t get it and end up cocking everything up because they can’t follow simple directions.
The whole losing jobs things is a big meh imo, should we also have fretted about all the poor buggy whip factory workers?
Work of the devil. The local Lucky’s has had them for years, and they are one reason I seldom shop there. 9 times out of 10 they screw up somehow. The Safeway just got them. When I went today, no one was using them, which is excellent. The checkers there are competent and friendly, and my 13 items got through the express lane much faster than they would the self checkout lane. Maybe if no one uses them, they’ll be taken out.
This is in response to Martini Enfield’s posts. Grocery stores aren’t the money printing machines you make them out to be, at least in the US. There is immense (and I mean IMMENSE) competition between grocery store chains for your business. Most profit margins are around 3% (Disclosure: I worked at a grocery store main office for 5 years, so I don’t have any cites. I worked on their helpdesk and supported all the stores’ equipment and computers)
A cashier still has to stay and watch the island as an anti theft measure, and to hand scan items that won’t go over the regular scanner. Typically it’s one cashier for every bank of four self checkouts. During the busy times of the week, some stores have two people running the self checkout. Cashiers hate it because it’s having to watch four registers at once, essentially.
There’s also the grocery workers union to consider. If they feel their jobs are threatened there will be strong language, words, then strikes and protests.
There will always be human cashiers. Always. Those kids that could be running the cash registers are instead bagging, emptying the bottle return machines, collecting carts, facing and setting up product, cleaning carts, fetching heavy product for customers, clean up on aisle 4, mopping the bathrooms, and a billion other dirty jobs that need to be done in a grocery store. And in the US there’s no difference between a supermarket and a grocery store.
The cost saved in not hiring someone to run one of the self checkers is then eaten by the machines themselves. Each one has a robot to make all the pieces run as one unit (scanner, touch screen, pinpad, change machine, bag scale, coupon machine and reciept printer) not to mention these machines also run on their own network separate from the stores. All that needs to be maintained. Plus filling the change machine and other basic maintenance, like when the $5 dispensers get clogged again.
That said, I love using them, I just don’t when I have a full cart.
That’s fine. But as I’ve said numerous times, I’m talking from an Australian perspective, which is very, very different to the US one. There are only two major supermarket chains here: Woolworths and Coles. Woolworths supermarket gross sales last year were something like AUD$40 Billion, and I believe Coles was something smaller but still in the tens of billions. So we’re talking about billions of dollars in income. Even working on a 5% margin (which is again, about standard) that’s about AUD$2 billion a year in profit for Woolworths alone of the chains. And even at a 3% margin that’s still over a billion dollars per annum in profit- in a country with a population of 22 million.
So supermarkets here in Australia are indeed making money hand over fist- because there are only 2 major chains (and two smaller ones). There’s no competition.
The ratios here seem to be 1:6 or 1:8. They were just starting to come in when I left the industry, and the staff hated them because all the casual staff (most of them) lost an average of 1 shift a week.
Understandable. There aren’t any grocery baggers here anymore (and I haven’t seen any in the decade I’ve been living here), whilst shopping trolley collection is contracted out to a separate company. Stock filling and cleaning up spills etc is handled by a different department to the cashiers. The point I’m making is that here, the prevalence of self-checkouts will lead to job losses and increased profits for companies who make a fortune anyway.
Fair enough. There is here. A “Grocery Store” is one of those small Mini-mart type places that are open really late but charge a fortune for stuff you should have brought from the supermarket when it was open earlier.
I use the self checkout at Home Depot once in a while, but if I’m buying loose screws, fittings and miscellaneous hardware I’d much rather go through the regular checkout lanes (assuming I can find one open).
Yesterday the wife and I tried out the self checkout at WalMart for the first, and last, time. One item had a damaged barcode, so the attendant had to come over and enter a complex series of numbers and then manually enter the price. Then there was a tube of epoxy and a bottle of vino, both of which required assistance. It took twice as long as the regular checkout would have.
One of our Walmarts had them, and they were very rarely used, and 9 times out of 10 they’d be closed (they closed at 7 p.m. which was still the post-work rush, and this is a 24 hour store) and even if it was the hours they were open, only 2 of the 4 would be open. Still, there was never a wait for one, they were just not used.
But for some reason, they made them into 10 item or less express only lines, which reduced the scant amount of use they were getting even further. Then they took them out. It was frustrating because the store is chronically understaffed, of 20+ checkout lanes they never have more than 6 or 8 open, and the wait is never less than 15 minutes, express lane or otherwise.
I long for scan as I shop. Doing my own bagging in my own bags easily, knowing what I’m spending as I go along, the briefest of checkout times? All of that is my fondest wish.
I’m planning a grocery trip again later today (there were a few things we needed yesterday that couldn’t wait, hence my first attempt at the scan-as-you-go tool). And I may try it again today. help me… help me…
What’s the etiquette of SAYG re express lanes, self-checkout etc.? Yesterday, I went to a self-check as there was zero line and nobody waiting behind me (at least, not at first, grrr). And the aisle happened to be the 12-or-less one. Is that a dickish thing to do when one has more than the number of items specified in the sign? My thinking was, it made zero difference whether I had 3 or 300 at that point.
If I’m in a hurry and don’t have fruits or vegetables, and if the machines aren’t 100% occupied by octogenarians, then I’ll use a self-checkout. Otherwise, in my own experience, it’s faster to use a human checkout.
