Oh, I remember the whole family being flabbergasted to see that when we were in the U.S.A.!
I had to physically restrain my wife, who is not so keen on letting strangers subvert her bagging algorithm.
Yes, self checkout at that store chain is great - no scanning, no fussing around, just put your stuff in the well and pay! Same in Italy and Sweden.
Mark me down for another “hates self-checkouts”.
Yes, they are fine if I only have a handful of items, but for a regular sized weekly trip; nope. They are: slow & noisy (announce to anyone near by exactly what I am buying, EG “Place your _ peas _ in the bagging area”), prone to scale errors / freak out if you try to rearrange anything, often have trouble when you bring your own bags and so on.
I’ve been in line behind other people too who were really struggling to get through the process and taking a looong time. I couldn’t be mad at them though, it shouldn’t be their job to learn how to operate the stores equipment efficiently.
Should “Self-checkouts” be added to this wiki? Things that will cause endless BB arguments - Wiki
This is the determining factor for me. My local grocery store self-checkout is loud and has a major attitude problem. So does calling in for voicemail- so pompous, makes me angry every time.
On the other hand, the phone-in bill pay of my former wireless carrier always left a smile on my face. And I always look forward to closing my transaction at Target: “Thanks, see you again soon!”
I also remember phone-filing my state taxes a couple times. The guy sounds like a real dork, but I still think I’d have a beer with him.
I love them in some places, hate them in others. Costco? Love it. I shop during the week in the earlier morning, and most of my fellow shoppers are older. There is nearly never a line for the self-checkout. Back when I lived in the UK, and would need to have my age verified for a wine purchase I could be waiting literally five minutes for someone to come ring me out.
They are great, especially as a substitute for the “5 items or less line.”
My local target has used it as “eliminate all cashers” option, which means there are 12 closed lanes where a human would help other humans and one lane with 4 self-checkouts and a 12-15 person queue, all of us getting increasingly annoyed.
It makes no business sense…the place is in a competitive area, their main reason for thriving over the past decade was superior customer service, which they’ve completely abandoned.
The problem seems to be lack of balance. Corporate people seem to think they are a replacement not a way to balance demands and staffing.
Their customers are not uniform in what they want or need. Some people are truly incompetent at using self checkout.
I prefer self checkout but if the human staff are not busy I tend to use people so that it adds to the numbers when they look at stats. Also it sounds like I have access to better self checkout than some.
The problem I have with self-checked, which I use anyway because they’re still more reliable than some minimum-wage checkout operators, is that I seem to get audited about every third/fourth time I use the handheld scanner while I’m shopping. Everything stops, the person assigned to the self-checkout area comes over and does a count and scans a few of the items, and then the checkout computer lets you finish. It’s infuriating, but apparently random, though far more likely to occur if you’re shopping at an odd hour.
Count me in the prefers self-checkouts for small quantities camp. Especially at Costco, where they are massively helpful. Although one of my local Costco’s does not trust people at all to do self-checkout. And they’ll have nearly one associate per self checkout kiosk, and close all the others they don’t have staffing for, and the associate will sign the self checkout receipt. This is separate from the receipt check at the door on the way out.
I find the quality of the self-checkout experience really varies depending on the design of the system. Some are super obnoxious (looking at you, Shoppers Drug Mart!). The ones at Home Depot (at least the one near me) are great. They’ve got the little wireless handheld scanner thing, you don’t need to futz around transferring things to a finicky scale one at a time, minimal extra buttons to press to get through the payment process. Fantastic, I don’t miss the cashiers there at all. I’d rather have them standing around in the aisles to answer my questions about screws or furnace filters or whatever. Which is of course not what management does with them 
.
It’s a volume thing. For just a few things it’s fine. The only thing worse than getting our big cart full of groceries scanned by ourselves is waiting behind three or four other heavy loaded carts that will often require cashier to come by at some point anyway to do so.
Bet they lead to plenty of shrink though just because when it’s busy there’s really often a mess at checkout.
The ones at Aldi are the least bad to use imo.
I like self checkout, as long as I don’t have to wait for incompetent people to finish ahead of me.
I’ve literally never had one be unable to read a barcode. The only issues I’ve had have involved coupons or the removal of security devices, but those only take a minute to get solved.
I hear you.
If I mess up my timing and get stuck in Austin traffic, that 30-minute drive is 45 minutes. Or 60.
With nearly 3 months of 100°F daytime temperatures, I shop with a cooler (a big ol’ 50-something quart Igloo cooler). In August, I bring my own ice packs too. I used to have a decent Igloo cooler on wheels but they broke, so now it’s just a regular hard-sided lift-it-myself cooler. Fits in the Costco shopping cart, no problem.
Lifting can be a bit of a challenge.
When I spend over $200 in groceries, that cooler is insurance. Investment protection. And I pack it myself, at Costco, either in the checkout line or repack it after I pay, but before I leave the store.
Pro tip: those mylar-and-bubble-wrap windshield sun deflectors will also deflect sun and heat from an Igloo cooler when wrapped around it properly.
NB to all the Yeti® cooler stans: I can barely lift one of those, empty, into my truck. No, I will not be using one of those. Unless I get a Tommy liftgate first.
Our local Kroger just added two self-checkouts that have the scanner attached to a longer belt with a larger space to pack up your groceries, so if you have more than a few things, you don’t have to worry about space…
Here they are… You still have issues sometimes, with being unable to read a barcode or the like, but much better for larger orders…
I hear ya! I have been known to put frozen food directly into a cooler while still shopping at Costco, and then explain to the cashier as I pull them out only to put them right back in again.
But sometimes I find myself at a store without having had the presence of mind to remember ice packs before I left. Or, having gone in for one or two non-refrigerated items, discover a very full cart has somehow occurred anyway! (My problem this last time!)
Until I had to take a toddler along with me to the grocery store I usually preferred the self check out.
combination of things; yes, I like the anonymity, no company needs to know what Im buying and I hate the middleman, who grabs a bite for shitty/useless service and/or surveilance of my finances aka most of my life (if I actually had something you could call “finances” in these days). I really dont understand people who use stuff like paypal or applepay on smartphones and in general.
and some more, which Im right now too lazy to explain in detail, sorry.
that, of course, is because they don’t pay employees enough. nor do they treat their workers well at all.
which could also be fixed by staffing the store, and not merely sucking up the profits to wall street.
omygwd, you still have baggers in the us? (I assume you are from the states)
Did someone post the John Oliver video upthread? Because he did a great job at just how awful they treat their employees.
It’s like… do you even neoliberal, bro!
