Originally published at: Everyone hates self-checkouts, from customers to shareholders. They're disappearing in U.S. stores. | Boing Boing
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I don’t hate them. I prefer them.
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Fast, easy, little lines, no stupid cashiers, no idle chit chat.
What’s to hate?
Grocers in my neck of the woods have installed more not less lately. It’s a good thing.
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Dollar General
… is hardly a paragon among retail outlets.
And as others have said, if I’m picking up a dozen items or fewer, why not just go through the self checkouts? I don’t have to interact with anyone else in the store unless something goes wrong, I know how to slide a bar code over a laser scanner without much difficulty, and often there’s no line.
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I also prefer self checkout.
I do not like automated phone systems.
One is convenient and fast the other isn’t.
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When the scanner won’t read a bar code properly and an employee still has to come assist the sale, just for starters…
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Every store I’ve been in that has check out machines still needs to have someone basically tending them, to clear errors.
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Guess your local store is “better” than mine, then.
*shrugs
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I use the one at Lowes as it’s usually quicker. You can’t use them to purchase alcohol at the grocery store. At most it’s a annoyance when things go wrong, but the same happens with a cashier.
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In reference to automated phone systems: “But that’s the system we’re stuck with because a corporation decided that the inconvenience to the user is well worth the savings in labor costs.”
It isn’t all about labor. These systems are also configured so that unwanted expenditures such problem resolution are made as inaccessible and difficult as inhumanly possible, whereas sales and profit generating activities are top of the heap. 5th menu down rather than 1st or at worst 2nd.
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Count me among those who prefer self checkout. Among the so-far unmentioned benefits, you don’t have to convince someone that you don’t want to/don’t need to put extra bags around already bagged items and that the queue structure usually makes more sense. i.e. one line for many stations as opposed to one line per register. Getting stuck behind one slow or big purchase isn’t so much a problem that way.
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I found I am willing to wait longer in the self-checkout line just to avoid human contact and the dreaded “chit-chat” it inevitably demands.
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same, they appeal to the misanthrope in me.
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mixed bag. as long as the machine takes cash, I sometimes use them for smaller purchases, but I prefer otherwise a human being. and you wont get me to pay other than with cash, ever.
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They’re not my preference but I regularly use the self-checkout because there are so few cashiers they’re frequently overwhelmed.
If shareholders hate self-checkouts then one solution would be to share some of the profits to hire more people at decent wages.
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I kind of agree. I often don’t like interacting with people especially people stuck working in what is typically a thankless job that they most likely rather be doing something else.
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in that case, I just put it in my cart and keep on truckin’.
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I live in a small town of 3500 and we have a Dollar General, the only grocery type store for at least a 30 minute drive. When they added the self-checkout, it was a huge boon because they could never staff the store, ever, and would have irregular hours, closed in the middle of the day, etc. With self-checkout it went from standing in line for 20+ minutes (if they were open) to in and out. If they got rid of them, I’d actually stop going there completely.
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In the UK you can, the employee just needs to scan an id, and click ‘don’t challenge’ (some even have a centralized screen where they can clear those things), which is easy enough for me, with my grey beard.
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