So true. I try to help out by placing my items on the belt in the order I want them bagged, but inevitably they will impose their own system, including putting meat in a plastic bag even if I specifically ask them not to.
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What is this “chit chat” people keep mentioning? I’m as misanthropic as anyone but I never get anything beyond purely businesslike stuff.
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Five or more and I’ll go to a cashier.
My grocery store had this for awhile but due to so many people not scanning everything they put in their cart, they abandoned it.
I wish there was an option to turn off the audio and just use text based messages. I don’t care for furniture that talks.
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Like most tech ‘advances’, self checkout is good when it works; and it’s a pain in the ass when it doesn’t.
Such is life.
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i have to admit i’m surprised. in most small town pharmacies i’ve ever seen, things like condoms are behind the counter because they’re so easy to steal ( and also, precisely to discourage easy access for teenagers 
)
oh sorry about that. you must have always been going through my line… 
talking to customers, huh. 
maybe this is why i was never very good at customer service. ( although i think quick, business like checkout is good customer service. but my reviews always said otherwise. )
I did not go through 88 replies, but I will say this: my local grocery (HEB) and non-local (Walmart) use hand-held scanners at the register. This notion of “it won’t scan my groceries” is bupkis.
Further, at select HEB stores I can scan my groceries with my phone and be out the door in a breeze.
However! I’m not a jerk. If I have many more items than what’s polite, I will use a cashier.
All that said: self checkout is glorious. Leave it alone.
I know all this, and thats not what I meant. thats human condition and accumulation of imaginary “wealth”, made possible by “money” and pushed to the extreme with todays possibilities, because you dont have to have to physically own “money”.
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I disagree with this analogy. “money” as a measurement for “wealth” is fictional, meters, kilograms, ecetera are “invented” measurements for the real, physical world (“wealth” is subjective, science is not).
and the idea of money is in my opinion inherent “evil”, precisely because what it was made for; accumulation of “wealth” = power.
e/ ohyeah, thats also why “socialist” and “communist” countries never were what they claimend to be. you cant have both.
e/ (and yes, I am most of the time still as brainwashed by the idea of “money” as everybody else, we had centuries for that.)
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Self-checkout seems to be pretty popular over here, but based on the horror stories above it seems that the equipment over here is way better than in the US. I almost never have a problem scanning stuff, and when I do I can either type in the barcode or pick it from a searchable menu. I don’t drink but if I’m getting alcohol for other people someone needs to come over and scan a tag they carry to approve it at some point before I pay, and if it’s spirits they have to take the bottle away and remove a security cover. And the systems are fine with you using your own bags - if you bag as you scan it gets annoying as the attendant needs to come over and approve it so most people just pack after they pay.
It’s not perfect, of course - the system grinds to a halt whenever someone who’s not familiar with how it works; it’s used as an excuse to reduce headcount in the shops; I prefer to pay with cash and machines will often be card-only or have run out of change; but it’s generally quicker and more convenient for me at least.
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We were in Berlin a couple of months ago and it got unexpectedly, viciously cold, so we had to go to Uniqlo to get some warm things. The self-checkout was even better: set your shopping basket on the platform and it instantly tallies everything in the basket (thanks to the unique RFID in every tag). It was basically indistinguishable from magic.
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I’m a Black woman in America; I wont be doing that.
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It is a certainty that here in BC we don’t have quite the moral panic or evangelical nonsense about birth control that happens in other places. Not that it doesn’t happen, we have our sweaty jesus people too, but they don’t have quite the traction as in other jurisdictions.
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My 14 year old’s grocery checkout career lasted 3 shifts until a grown ass man started yelling at him because a 35 cent coupon didn’t scan. Kid told him to fuck off and go talk to the manager. A short time later the kid called me and said ‘my employment has been terminated’.
Some of us are not meant for customer service/grovelling before morons.
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some aren’t meant to be customers, that’s for sure
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To be 14 and be able to do that because they have a roof over their head and a meal when they get under that roof.
A lot of people have to put up with that crap because they want to live indoors and eat.
That being said, the best day ever in my 30+ years owning a service business was when I was secure enough to start telling people to bite me, I don’t need that abuse. The look on their face is always priceless.
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I can’t use a self-checkout without critiquing their POS.
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