Oooh…I’m the opposite. I actively seek out my chatty checkers. As long as they’re good at chatting and checking simultaneously, it’s the high point of an otherwise shitty chore.
Took a look at the executive summary of the study. http://www.ihlservices.com/ihl/public_downloads/pdf4.pdf
It looks like they didn’t actually do any measurements of time. Instead, as you say, they presume that cashiers are faster head-to-head against customers.
I agree that this is not a safe assumption. It probably depends a lot on what the demographic of the store is, for example. The place across the street tends to have a lot of older people who can’t really cope with the self-check, and yet are willing to try. If we took the mean checkout time for all customers, the results wouldn’t be reflective of the younger crowd’s performance. OTOH, if we are discarding outliers or subgrouping classes, one could argue that the same should be done for the cashier group.
You could, for example, separate both cashiers and customers by:
- Age
- Checking experience
- IQ
- Scores on tests of dexterity
I’m not sure any of these would make a difference.
You’d also have to account for this. Some cashiers probably could be faster, but are required to attend to other customer concerns. You’d have to control for that. Ditto self-check users with children and cell phones.
Ooooh. See, I have this all worked out. When I use my debit card they hand me a reciept which I stuff in my pocket. At the end of the day, I empty all the wadded up receipts from my pocket to an old shoe box. Then, at the end of the month, I throw out the shoe box.
Your equation is incomplete. One side his how much they need their jobs, but the other side is getting home sooner and helping to hold prices down. Choose which way you want, but for me, I want to hold prices down. I clean my own table at the fast-food restaurant for the same reason. (Well, I don’t wash it off, but I do throw out my trash, instead of leaving it for the staff.)
This is the OP here, thanking all for their comments. I’d write more, but I have no time today. Sorry!
I see you graduated from the Kalhoun & Co. School of Economics!
I have to stand at the checkout with a gun to my own head to force myself to write everything down.
Here in my part of the world, the grocery market is cornered by the H.E. Butt company. These folks have serious concerns about efficiency. You can just see it on the faces of the poor checkers. They seem to be under tremendous pressure to move things along as quickly as possible. They only speak to deliver the lines that were provided to them on the script. If you try to chat with them they will try to smile and make responsive noises but you can tell they would really rather you shut up and swipe your card and take your stuff.
I used to be the opposite. I would gleefully account for every penny I spent. I would track all of my accounts in Quicken down to the penny. I would calculate my gas mileage everytime I bought gas with Excel spreadsheets.
I don’t remember what the catalyst was, but one day I figured I had better things to do than worry about that crap. I haven’t balanced my checkbook in years now. I am going to let my 401K balance be a surprise on the day I retire. I don’t have a clue what my gas mileage is.
This post has given me an epiphany! Just realized what that catalyst was. It was first time I had to use one of the self-check machines. There was no room in my life for the kind of frustration that it generated in me so something else had to go. That something else was any semblence of fiscal responsibilty.
My chatty checker is the fastest one in the store. She’s always smiling, pleasant chit-chat, and I’m through the process in no time. I wish they’d clone her.
The one that gets me is when I try to use my own bags. This ALWAYS messes up the transaction.
More than once I’ve just given up, and thrown my purchases back in the cart and wheeled them over to a regular checkout line.
Drum God, I would say at a certain point no business wants, or should want, to force you to remain on the premises. By the time you’re checking out you’ve made the major purchasing decisions already. And a tedious wait for checkout only makes customers avoid that store in the future.
What’s this “weigh station” you guys are talking about? Where I shop, you scan the barcode on, say, a 5 pound bag of flour, put it in the bag on the other side (which sits on a scale) and the computer expects a five pound weight to register. If it doesn’t, it alerts the attendant. This way you can’t scan a can of tuna and try to put two pounds of coffee in your bag.
It’s the idiots who have their kid sit on the scale while they’re trying to scan thier groceries that hold up the system. I can be in and out in 30 seconds every time and not have to be asked inane questions by the cashier. I really don’t need to be asked if I “need help out to your car?” when my bag consists of two lightbulbs and a bag of marshmallows.
Self scan rocks.
At least they are good for that, though. In California, until sometime around 1980, the grocery stores had separate liquor departments with their own cashiers, and it was always a snap to go through that line if you just had a couple of things–in fact, there usually was no line there, no matter how long the other checkout lines were. For picking up a couple of small things that pose no threat to the machine’s ability to comprehend, the self checkout lines are a good replacement.
There’s no noticable waiting for the weight of item to register. It’s just scan - plonk - scan - plonk - etc. Pretty quick, except for loose items like vegetables, where you have to pick from an on-screen list. If you want to use your own bags, or no bags, just put the bags or items directly on to the platform instead of using the bag dispensers above it. The platform has space for two bags - if you need more than that, you should be using the conveyor belt checkout rather than the express line.
Heh, it seems that self-scan checkouts throughout the English-speaking world use exactly the same script!
I was sceptical about these things when they first came out, but I prefer them now and only go to a checker if there’s a gun to my head… First off, the lines are shorter and in many cases nonexistent. Secondly, I used to be a checker and I can still swipe barcodes with the best of 'em–or so I like to tell myself, anyway. I like to bag my own groceries, since I don’t have to worry about finding seven large cans of dog food stacked on top of the eggs and the drippy raw chicken on top of the veggies. Fred Meyer has a carousel arrangement with six bag holders in a circle next to the checkout scanner, so bagging lots of groceries at once is a breeze, and most of the systems understand “skip bagging” for items that are too big or heavy to go on the scale. I can scan coupons, scan my discount card, zoom through the debit transaction and out the door while Granny’s waiting for a price check and the McMoronsons are trying to figure out how the scanner works. I also tend to shop either before or after work and I’m not communicative enough to deal with a chirpy cashier in either case, so that’s a bonus. Also, when I use the self serve I don’t have to listen to the poor checkers mangle and mispronounce my name, nor do I have to watch them get all shirty and miffed when I decline to correct their pronunciation and instead tell them I prefer NOT to be thanked by name. I usually say “I’ll take the intention for the deed, thanks” but some of the cashiers still act pissy that I won’t play along.
Any time I have to go to Wal@Mart I’m more than happy to use the self check, because by the time I’m ready to pay I’m also probably ready to deck someone and this way I don’t get arrested as often…
I use the self-checkout at the grocery only when I have a small number of items. And that’s almost always one of two scenarios:
-
I’ve checked out with my weekly groceries, then realize I’ve forgotten something.
-
I want something they have a limit on, so I first get only the limit of that item and go through self-checkout, take them to my car, then get another set of the limited item with the rest of my groceries.
You’d think that, since like everybody else here I use a personal computer, it’d be a snap to use the self-checkout. Not so. It was disorienting at first. Bringing my own paper bags caused a bit of trouble, too. I wonder if having a practice terminal with dummy groceries would help.
Since supermarkets and grocers don’t sell alcohol in PA I’ve never had occasion to use self-check with booze. How do stores that out allowed to sell alcohol deal with self-checkouts? Do they just have you go to a regular lane? 
No, most of them simply flag the self-checkout supervisor by lighting their little lights, and they come over and check your id and enter their code. I usually wave them down before I get to the booze, so by the time they’re over to me, I’m ready and it doesn’t make me wait.
Some places just have the attendant come over and ask for ID, but other places just don’t let you take liquor through self checkout line at all. That happened to me once at a CVS pharmacy.
There are two big players in the self-checkout market. NCR with their SCOTs and Fujitsu with the U-Scan.
I’m willing to bet that most of you with self-checkouts have used one of these. My company started with the SCOTs and has transitioned to the U-Scan1s.
In any instance, I hate the things. I like talking with my cashier, mostly because I can empathize with her job – having done it for many years now. On top of that, I’m used to being on her side and I find the self-serve interface limiting and annoying. I’m better with the produce than most of the other customers, though. I can rattle off most of the PLUs on the produce without even thinking.
So is the conveyor belt checkout a self- or non-?
AdoptaTeens and I figured out last night that we can whiz through the self checkout line very quickly if we work as a team. AdoptaSon unloaded the carts/buggys (2 full of groceries no less!) and placed the stuff on the conveyor belt, I scanned, and AdoptaDaughter bagged and reloaded the cart/buggy. I was the slowest member of the team as I wasn’t quite sure where all of the bar codes were but they were quick to point them out when I faltered.
$300 poorer and we still forgot the dishwasher detergent and the cat food :eek: The cat got a can of tuna and we just skipped washing dishes last night.