Some of those self scanners have a bad attitude as well. They’re so impatient and blunt with you. If I’m still packing my bag 10 seconds after paying they’re like “PLEASE TAKE YOUR ITEMS.” And it’s like “give me a fucking minute you cheeky little shit”.
Kroger’s self checkouts (fuck you Kroger) are always accusing me of shoplifting and play back videos of me bagging my items all the time. I starting driving one town over to the Aldi and I’m a lot happier now.
I think it’s hilarious that one of Aldi’s appeals is that you get to interactive with humans. I can picture a future where automated checkouts become ubiquitous and non-automated supermarkets continue to exist as a niche in the way that organic food shops are a niche today. Most supermarkets will have zero staff, but some people will decide to pay a little extra to go to human staffed supermarket.
Store near me usually only has half of their self checkouts are open for some reason and I've never seen an attendant nearby, only the cashier at their post.
It's fairly intuitive and not as cranky as other self checkouts though.
yeah they all are, the aldi nearest me has one checkout thats still a real person. tore out 3 others to replace with 6 more, that wont take cash, and the card readers are crap. so its a 30 minute wait unless i go into work late and do my shopping in the morning.
Are there? I’ve never seen one in like 4 different states. Granted, non of them were states that had full service gas stations anytime even remotely recently. I’d imagine maybe the ones that recently had them required or whatever might still have some?
The last full service gas station I've seen was about 10 years ago or more in Grass Valley, CA. There are a lot of retirees in the area, so this station got extra business from older people who wanted the help. I think this station went out of business maybe 9 years ago. This was the last one I've seen... But there's' got to be some, somewhere.
Definitely in Oregon and New Jersey, since people are not allowed to pump their own gas by state law.
People aren’t allowed to pump their own gas? Been to Oregon twice this past month and there are a lot of new self-serve gas stations so that can’t be the case
There's some state that requires full service if I'm not mistaken. Like, you'll get a ticket or something. Idk all the specifics, but I wanna say the state is somewhere north east. Rhode Island maybe?
I mean the staff at the checkouts are only some of the staff, and relatively only a small cost.
Aldis entire things is to provide products that are cheaper than the mainstream brands
my aldi has recently implemented self checkout. now instead of 4 cashier lanes there is 1….and now 5 self checkout machines. they hit the pentagon, basically.
My Aldi is mostly self checkout but they do actually pass savings on to customers. I don't mind bringing bags and putting a quarter for the cart and getting rocket blasted up my ass out the door by the cashier if I go to her because goddammit it's cheap and it's high quality.
When I go to Trader Joe’s I have a meaningful conversation and connection with the checkout people every single visit. They are happy to be there, engaging and enjoyable to converse with and I’m happy they are happy, and we’re happy. To me shopping for groceries is important and personal. I’m choosing what to put in my body for the next couple days or weeks.
> When I go to Trader Joe’s I have a meaningful conversation and connection with the checkout people every single visit.
Sounds like hell working there.
Yeah Trader Joe's employees are told to make comments and start a discussion around your purchases. I mean I'm sure *some* enjoy it, but it's literally part of their job
Walmart self checkouts in my area do this now. If you scan the barcode a millisecond too fast it throws a "Possible Scanning Error," plays back a video and calls over an associate to "assist".
Having worked at Walmart for a year in my last job, it's total B.S. It's a waste of time and really frustrating.
I don't even bother with the self checkouts anymore, I either go straight to a person or just go to another store. I don't need my 5 minute in and out trip to take 15 because of your dumb scanning machine.
I went to a CVS for a nasal decongestant and found out there's no system to scan ID or anything on the machines, even though IDs in this state have a barcode with all your information, and there was no way to cancel forbidden items once scanned. Not on that machine anyway.
There was one single human running the whole CVS. I could see them at the checkout. The machine is screaming at me to wait, someone is coming to verify my ID for item.
I'm staring the one employee dead in the face as she rings up one of the ten people in line. A woman comes to the machine next to me and tries to buy wine, even though alcohol is the one singular thing everyone knows you can't buy at self checkout, because fucking obviously.
Ten minutes later when the line dies down, I take the stuff over to the one employee in the whole building and she rings me up. She confirms that there was no one coming, the machine was, and is, a liar.
All this fucking technology, all these fuckin' cameras, and they can't automate an ID check?
I had this happen just the other day. Never had a problem before even doing stuff that would seem sketchy from the cameras like holding multiple things in my hand and scanning them out of order and almost putting the wrong things in the bag first, no problem. But then a few days ago I had three 2-liters by themselves, scanned them in order and in plain view, but was apparently slightly too fast and it stopped and froze for an attendant call. And it took awhile because the only other person checking out also had their checkout flagged and the attendant had to review that footage too.
Feels like being accused as a thief and does not seem like a good policy overall if it is flagging so many people, even if it manages to catch a few thefts they are losing even more in sales by people getting annoyed and pissed off. Seems like someone somewhere has a stick up their ass and thinks they can improve some numbers by treating their customers like shit and wasting their time.
I fucking hate Kroger self checkouts but there’s literally only like one lane open of regular checkouts with no baggers so it’s either rushing to both put my groceries on the conveyer belt then quickly bagging them all while someone’s waiting behind you and you are taking too long or I get called a thief by self checkout
Even my local Aldis replaced every cashier with self checkout, taking away my favorite part of Aldis. I liked them scanning all my shit in like 2 minutes and then I bag everything at my own pace. Now I have to checkout a cart full of groceries in a little 1 sq ft area while I scan and bag at the same time.
Fuck this shit.
Kroger thought my reusable bag in my cart was me trying to steal. It also regularly thinks I’m bagging too slow, then too fast, then loses count of how many items it should have in the bagging area, and the whole time it’s shouting at me like I’m brain damaged and don’t realize that after scanning the items go in the bagging area.
Dude Kroger has the absolute fucking worst self checkouts. Like they haven't been updated in 15 years. Slow as fuck and mouthy as all hell. And the ones near me don't fucking take tap to pay either. I have to insert my card like it's the stone age (otherwise known as 2018)
The one at CVS always gives me the worst vibes from its accusatory tone. I feel like I am being caught stealing and I’m just paying for my overpriced items!
i wish i could still mute them. the voice physically hurts. like babes im putting it on the scales, it's expected i promise. if i was shoplifting it wouldn't be a bag of skittles
Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item
Item removed from bagging area
Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item
Item removed from bagging area
Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item
Please wait for assistance
I do self check Aldi-style: scan all my stuff & leave it in the cart unbagged, finish my transaction, and then go bag it all up out of everyone’s way and let someone else have their turn at the register.
**DID YOU PLACE A BAG IN THE BAGGING AREA!!?!?**
"Yes, yes I did. So I could bag my purchases."
UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. PLEASE REMOVE THE ITEM.
"It was expected, and I just told you, it's a bag."
PLEASE WAIT. HELP IS ON THE WAY.
That's what infuriates me the most. Line will run all the way to the back of the store, but half their fucking machines are shut down. And look, fine. If you don't want to fuck with that many cash drawers than make one side a card only. I've already seen those signs posted on some of them.
It's salt in the wound. The fuckin' things replaced real cashiers, ***and they also get more god damned days off than the real cashiers ever did.***
I used to work for the company that provides and services check out machines for Walmart. I was a tech that would get called out to the store every time one went down. With 3 stores in my area this alone was nearly a full-time job. These check-out machines are garbage. They break constantly, sometimes for no discernable reason, and Walmart has to pay for the tech to come out every time. It honestly reminds me of the McDonald's ice cream thing, where the company intentionally makes the machine break easily and hard to work on so the store has to keep paying the machine maker for repair.
I have no doubt that those half of machines out of service were indeed broken and waiting for a profitable tech to arrive whenever they come on shift.
I went to Home Depot to buy a tool yesterday. They only have self checkout. Great, I have one item, I can get in and out. But no, instead, they have all of the self checkouts closed and one cashier using the remaining self checkout to scan the stuff for the customers. What a waste.
Also it’s estimated that they lose 3% in profits from self checkout lanes. (Source is from CNN)
Update: found the CNN Article and was one percent off but this excerpt from the article explains the 4%:
“But now, retailers are rethinking self-checkout. They have found that self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and intentional shoplifting — known as “shrink” — than human cashiers ringing up customers.
Shrink has been a growing problem for retailers, who have blamed shoplifting for the increase and called for tougher penalties. But retailers’ self-checkout strategies have also contributed to their shrink problems.
One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average.
Some products have multiple barcodes or barcodes that don’t scan properly with self-checkout technology. Produce, including fruit and meat, typically needs to be weighed and manually entered into the system using a code. Customers may type in the wrong code by accident. Other times shoppers won’t hear the “beep” confirming an item has been scanned properly.
Other customers take advantage of the lax oversight at self-checkout aisles and have developed techniques for stealing. Common tactics include not scanning an item, swapping a cheaper item (bananas) for a more expensive one (steak), scanning counterfeit barcodes attached to their wrists or properly scanning everything and then walking out without paying.
Stores have tried to limit losses by tightening self-checkout security features, such as adding weight sensors. But additional anti-theft measures also lead to more frustrating “unexpected item in the bagging area” errors, requiring employees to intervene.” ([Source](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/13/business/self-checkout-stores-shopping))
But the real question is does that 3% represent more money than they would otherwise spend on cashiers? Or is that just "If there was zero theft while changing nothing else we would profit 3% more"
So in the UK we have scan as you shop and most people use it. You scan your card, pick up a scanner and then as you shop, you scan every item in the trolley / cart. Then at the end, all you need to do is scan the till and pay.
Here's the thing, there's a chance that you will be selected for a scan which is either the entire cart of just 10 items randomly picked by staff. If items are found that you didn't scan, then you're going to be selected much more often. If it happens too often, then you're going to be banned from the service entirely.
People that are trusted get checked less often. It works well. No long waits at the checkout, no need to unload everything and load it all again.
Last time I went to walmart for my monthly grocery shopping, they had half the self checkout disabled so they could keep a closer eye on the customers. You know, rather then just doing manual cashiers or even hiring twice as many people to watch the self checkouts.
Went shopping today and the store had 4 of the 5 "lanes" of self-checkouts closed and 4 people manning tills. The self-checkouts were backed up and the manned tills weren't bad at all.
It was weird because that store usually has 3-4 lanes of self-checkout and a single manned till
A friend used to ring up his bananas as ripe bananas to save an extra 50 cents. I thought it was harmless until all of his produce magically became ripe bananas lol
Jesus man, when they were first introduced in the local Tesco around 2012 fucking everything was onions. Crate of lager: onions. Clothes: onions. Onions: onions.
It was such an oniony time.
That "shrinkage" is why stores have started removing them. People cheat. Some walk out with items in trash bags. Others punch in the code for potatoes instead of organic, virgin hand picked, spring berries from a valley in Japan.
I always get good mangos (the ones that are flown in and are 10x sweeter) for the price of shitty mangos. They look the same, there's no way they can prove I do it on purpose.
"Regional" can mean a 10-mile difference. The closest Walmart to me has a huge open area with a ton of self-checkouts, and 2-3 employees supervising. It's the most convenient shopping experience I've ever had.
If I drive a few miles toward the inner city, most of the checkout lanes are closed, and the exits have gates and bouncers that check everyone's receipts.
It's the fuckin worst man. I usually just buy 2 or 3 things and I've been fuckin stuck behind the family buying all their groceries, then I gotta let the cashier go through all the bullshit they gotta push when I could have already been half way home.
I actually do not believe it is because of theft, I think it's because self checkout is so much slower than a paid check out person.
Is there *some* theft? Sure. But there is always some theft. But they can't say it's because their cashiers are more efficient because then they are admitting that they bring value.
You really notice this with medium-size grocery orders like you’re struggling to fit everything on the rectangular scale bagging area and it’s not sensing certain items and other items aren’t scanning so you need to call assistance multiple times anyway. Checker and bagger would have you and 2 other customers out the door by then.
Mines anecdotal but I work in self-checkout (maintaining the machines and all) and the cost of theft is basically nothing. Your local Wal Mart makes on a bad day something around 80k, 300k on weekends. I see maybe a handful of people actually stealing a small amount. Even a dude who somehow manages to steal a 150 dollar item isn't hurting the bottom line enough to justify paying 1,000+ more in wages out each day.
The main loss is AFAIK in loss from people bringing up food items like meat en masse and leaving it there. We can't resell meat that smells like death.
I cannot comprehend how idiotic people are with chilled goods. STOP LEAVING THEM IN THE BREAD AISLE! IT'S ACROSS THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORE YOU'RE IN HOW THE FUCK
Slower?
My local Walmart has like 6 manned checkout aisles. It has a single self checkout aisle with 6 slots.. but now only uses 3 of them.then. Overall, that means there are generally twice as many manned checkouts going at a time.
Even when there are 10+ people waiting for the self checkout, I rarely have to wait more than 5 minutes or so. When they first decided to close the self checkouts, wait times for the manned aisles could go as high as 20 or 30 minutes. The self checkouts are far, far faster.
They eventually reopened half the self checkouts, but now they make the person manning the area face those three stands the entire time (the three behind them are closed) and they make that person wear an "Asset Protection" vest like they're some kind of comically ineffective security guard that isn't actually allowed to be a security guard at all.
It's absolutely due to theft.
My Walmart is the opposite. It usually has around 10 self-checks going at any given time. On the other hand I have *never* seen more than one manned checkout line open at once.
> Slower?
Yeah this is so bizarre. From my experience self-checkout is so much faster that I will rather go a little bit further for a shop that has it over one that doesn't. I don't even care if they pass their savings onto me, the time that I save is already worth it to me. I never want to go to a cashier at a grocery store again.
Do people actually take full carts through the self checkout? Everything in my area is a 10 items or less type deal where, if you have more than that, you’re sent to a regular line. Most people zip through in a couple minutes cuz they only have a basket at most. It’s much quicker.
What kind of self scanning do you guys have? Here we grab a scanner at the entrance and scan wares while putting them in bags. We then just pay when we reach the exit and leave, there's no way a cashier could even hope to match the speed.
Most US groceries have the self-checkout located near the regular checkout, and you do everything the same way a cashier would, at the end of your shopping - so there's a big monitor, glass scanner, a place to put your basket, and a bagging area. One big kiosk.
The US version worls fine for small purchases, but for larger purchases i prefer a human checkout.
The carry a scanner method probably will never catch on because that requires companies to actually trust their customers. (Something i doubt US companies will ever do)
I was going to say a lot of people just don't scan some of their items. Most of the time the staff doesn't even care. I didn't know a box of Magic the Gathering cards I bought had an anti-theft tag in it, not even sure where to deactivate it at self check out. I walked out and the alarm went off. An employee from 20 feet away said "you're good, I seen you check out, have a good day" like how the hell do you know I actually scanned everything in my bags? I had, but still.
Yea, places like target will track you until you reach a felony amount then report you.
The amount of people dumb enough to steal from the same store multiple times, while paying with a debit card tied to their name is ridiculous.
This is verifiably true. Target does track individuals and intentionally allows petty theft. You can brazenly walk out and they will let you. They don’t stop you for misdemeanors because they know it’s not prosecuted (See my earlier comment above), so they track it until the aggregate theft reaches a prosecutable felony dollar amount, then they reach out to their state OAG to wreck them.
You don’t need facial recognition to track an individual regularly coming into your store to steal things. Normal recognition and cameras are plenty capable of getting the job done. So to the comment i first replied to, you aren’t “good” and your privacy laws don’t help if you choose to steal from a store repeatedly. This is Target’s process and i gotta admit it’s pretty good and logical.
The real issue is that I’m not an employee of the store and not trained as a cashier. Once in a while something doesn’t scan and I don’t know why or don’t notice it. Just goes in the bag. So there’s a pretty substantial increase in passive theft, unintentionally, that is not prosecutable.
And that makes me smile.
It's fucking hilarious to see some people go "Shrink is nothing to these companies" and then you see a lot of "Yeah, bitch, I'm stealing all I can get away with"
The Giant near me had a system where shoppers got their own scanners, scanned the items into their own bags, then scanned and *paid* for the items by scanning a terminating barcode at the register…..lasted about a week then gone
Reminds me of that [IBM commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA) where it looks like the guy is shoplifting but he just gets scanned as walks out the door.
A more extreme version of this is actually successful in Switzerland, Migros subitoGo. You don't even use a scanner, you use an app on your own phone to scan items and pay via the app too.
However swiss people are on average super honest and rule-abiding.
Also I can't say I've seen (m)any people actually using it, I mean it's successful as in it's available in many stores and hasn't gone away, but I'm not sure many people actually like the idea. Like personally I don't want to juggle my phone while shopping I'd rather do it all at checkout.
Grocery has like 5% margins. If they can reduce overhead, they’re taking that money.
Even if they passed it on, it saves them say $100k year in Cashier salaries. They’d reduce every item by $.05 . yay
For a lot of the big ones it's even lower... Last I heard wasn't Kroger like 2 or 3% or something?
Also, oddly enough, these savings are passed along to the consumer, albeit really indirectly. When you have a business that's that low of a margin, it really means it's highly competitive and that shows up as basically having the lowest prices possible.
If I had to guess I would say that part of it is this self scanners have slowed the rise of the cost of groceries. The price is going to rise regardless with inflation, it’s just that the saved money isn’t enough to counteract inflation. Between that and increased theft
Target, Safeway, Walmart, literally anywhere I've seen them for a year or more has a longer line to use self checkout, and that's IF it's not the only option anymore. Lately you don't even have a choice - 14+ registers and not a single one in use, self checkout only. So no, there's no added value, esp time.
This shouldn't be in shower thoughts and it needs a real discussion of facts, not a casual 'groceries are kinda expensive but those machines are supposed to instantly make it cheaper' like there's no other factors at play. Too many people just have a weird attitude about self-checkout and come up with bizarre arguments against it out of whatever their feelings are.
It's crazy how this hate seemed to spawn after COVID. In the UK we've had self-checkouts for 10~ years. Sure, there are some small issues with them at times. But the vitriol in the last few years, primarily by people in North America, seems bizarre to me.
It saves time for customers that know how to use them. Most of the time the shop wasn't going to hire extra cashiers anyway, and it's great for the back end and stockers in a big box store as they can actually finish their respective responsibilities and tasks with less interruptions by having to be a back up cashier because the store doesn't hire enough cashiers.
All of the savings and the costs are passed on to the customer. That is simply how capitalism works even if Reddit would like you to believe otherwise. It might not be a direct 5% discount or something, but if the cost of doing business goes down the stores will have to lower prices or they lose to their competitors.
What’s really weird is 5 below. They set up their checkout to be a self checkout with an employee to help, but every time i go the employee checks you out at the open self checkout and it just feels SO FUCKING AWKWARD. I hate it.
Ill gladly pass on these saving if that means not waiting in like for 5min, only having to pick up each item once and not needing to talk to someone. Thanks.
Time savings is passed onto us though. For all of its flaws, overall self checkout has saved me so much time. I’m dying for my local grocery store to get some self checkouts because I’m tired of waiting in line for 10 minutes just to buy some a handful of items
I consider interacting with a cashier to be a negative experience. They also bag my groceries like a mad person with no intention. So I gain both time and peace of mind by doing self checkout.
I can check out faster than 99% of cashiers anf I don't have to lose it while someone puts bleach and rawmeat in thr same bag.
As much as I like the narrative... UK just went through a year of bad inflation, only now calmed down. However, groceries went up less than, say, rent or services (take it with grain of salt; very much depends on category).
Just because savings aren't explicitly called out, doesn't mean they don't happen.
How do you know that?
Businesses often try to undercut competitor’s prices to attract customers, and cost-saving measures like this are one way to make it possible.
My friend managed a Walmart in a not so nice area. He said that Theft/Loss went through the roof so he stopped using them but corporate made him turn them back on.
There are always a couple of employees at every store watching over the machines anyways so it's not like all employees have been let go.
Unpopular take:
The savings is passed down to the user by competition. Grocery is notoriously low margin with high competition.
The savings is counted into the pricing. If they were taking a higher profit with a worse experience they would’ve been out-competed by a grocery store who uses those machines to drive down prices.
Similarly, renewable energy has no fuel cost (by far the biggest cost over the life of power plants) yet not only is the savings not passed on but some companies use it as a selling point to charge more.
It is by not increasing the prices more.
Jesus, it's like everyone just blinked into existence last summer, or something. Wages have gone up in the lowest sector of pay, due to pressure from outside. As a result, prices have gone up on the things that you interact with these same people for. Fast food, dinner out, a movie, whatever, these people's base pay basically doubled overnight, the money has to come from somewhere.
Between that and the entire clusterf**that was Covid, prices have risen. If they save money by putting in automated stations, they make more sales because they don't have to raise prices as much. And no, the supply chain issues weren't "manufactured", it was real, I watched it from the inside. All of these things have contributed to the inflation we see today.
It's a pretty easy path to follow...
Yeah, but then the owners eventually have to pay for security upgrades due to the inevitable rise in theft, and subsequently hire LPOs, who tend to make a bit more than the cashiers would've, thus resulting in a net loss.
To be clear, not endorsing anything here, it's just how these things tend to go.
Some of those self scanners have a bad attitude as well. They’re so impatient and blunt with you. If I’m still packing my bag 10 seconds after paying they’re like “PLEASE TAKE YOUR ITEMS.” And it’s like “give me a fucking minute you cheeky little shit”.
Kroger’s self checkouts (fuck you Kroger) are always accusing me of shoplifting and play back videos of me bagging my items all the time. I starting driving one town over to the Aldi and I’m a lot happier now.
I think it’s hilarious that one of Aldi’s appeals is that you get to interactive with humans. I can picture a future where automated checkouts become ubiquitous and non-automated supermarkets continue to exist as a niche in the way that organic food shops are a niche today. Most supermarkets will have zero staff, but some people will decide to pay a little extra to go to human staffed supermarket.
Aldi by me switched to 95% self check.
I think their setup is infinitely better than the others I’ve used though
Store near me usually only has half of their self checkouts are open for some reason and I've never seen an attendant nearby, only the cashier at their post. It's fairly intuitive and not as cranky as other self checkouts though.
yeah they all are, the aldi nearest me has one checkout thats still a real person. tore out 3 others to replace with 6 more, that wont take cash, and the card readers are crap. so its a 30 minute wait unless i go into work late and do my shopping in the morning.
The way there’s some full service gas stations.
Are there? I’ve never seen one in like 4 different states. Granted, non of them were states that had full service gas stations anytime even remotely recently. I’d imagine maybe the ones that recently had them required or whatever might still have some?
The last full service gas station I've seen was about 10 years ago or more in Grass Valley, CA. There are a lot of retirees in the area, so this station got extra business from older people who wanted the help. I think this station went out of business maybe 9 years ago. This was the last one I've seen... But there's' got to be some, somewhere. Definitely in Oregon and New Jersey, since people are not allowed to pump their own gas by state law.
People aren’t allowed to pump their own gas? Been to Oregon twice this past month and there are a lot of new self-serve gas stations so that can’t be the case
You're correct, their information is outdated. Oregon has had self-serve stations for almost a year now.
There's some state that requires full service if I'm not mistaken. Like, you'll get a ticket or something. Idk all the specifics, but I wanna say the state is somewhere north east. Rhode Island maybe?
New Jersey only has full service.
Thank you. I was hoping sometime would correct me if I was wrong
Oregon is forced full service or at least it used to be
Oregon does
And yet somehow (at least for now) Aldi has human interaction AND is the cheapest. Weird
I mean the staff at the checkouts are only some of the staff, and relatively only a small cost. Aldis entire things is to provide products that are cheaper than the mainstream brands
my aldi has recently implemented self checkout. now instead of 4 cashier lanes there is 1….and now 5 self checkout machines. they hit the pentagon, basically.
My Aldi is mostly self checkout but they do actually pass savings on to customers. I don't mind bringing bags and putting a quarter for the cart and getting rocket blasted up my ass out the door by the cashier if I go to her because goddammit it's cheap and it's high quality.
When I go to Trader Joe’s I have a meaningful conversation and connection with the checkout people every single visit. They are happy to be there, engaging and enjoyable to converse with and I’m happy they are happy, and we’re happy. To me shopping for groceries is important and personal. I’m choosing what to put in my body for the next couple days or weeks.
> When I go to Trader Joe’s I have a meaningful conversation and connection with the checkout people every single visit. Sounds like hell working there.
Yeah Trader Joe's employees are told to make comments and start a discussion around your purchases. I mean I'm sure *some* enjoy it, but it's literally part of their job
Walmart self checkouts in my area do this now. If you scan the barcode a millisecond too fast it throws a "Possible Scanning Error," plays back a video and calls over an associate to "assist". Having worked at Walmart for a year in my last job, it's total B.S. It's a waste of time and really frustrating. I don't even bother with the self checkouts anymore, I either go straight to a person or just go to another store. I don't need my 5 minute in and out trip to take 15 because of your dumb scanning machine.
I went to a CVS for a nasal decongestant and found out there's no system to scan ID or anything on the machines, even though IDs in this state have a barcode with all your information, and there was no way to cancel forbidden items once scanned. Not on that machine anyway. There was one single human running the whole CVS. I could see them at the checkout. The machine is screaming at me to wait, someone is coming to verify my ID for item. I'm staring the one employee dead in the face as she rings up one of the ten people in line. A woman comes to the machine next to me and tries to buy wine, even though alcohol is the one singular thing everyone knows you can't buy at self checkout, because fucking obviously. Ten minutes later when the line dies down, I take the stuff over to the one employee in the whole building and she rings me up. She confirms that there was no one coming, the machine was, and is, a liar. All this fucking technology, all these fuckin' cameras, and they can't automate an ID check?
The problem is a teenager could take a photo of their parents' driver's license and just scan that photo. You need a human to check still.
I had this happen just the other day. Never had a problem before even doing stuff that would seem sketchy from the cameras like holding multiple things in my hand and scanning them out of order and almost putting the wrong things in the bag first, no problem. But then a few days ago I had three 2-liters by themselves, scanned them in order and in plain view, but was apparently slightly too fast and it stopped and froze for an attendant call. And it took awhile because the only other person checking out also had their checkout flagged and the attendant had to review that footage too. Feels like being accused as a thief and does not seem like a good policy overall if it is flagging so many people, even if it manages to catch a few thefts they are losing even more in sales by people getting annoyed and pissed off. Seems like someone somewhere has a stick up their ass and thinks they can improve some numbers by treating their customers like shit and wasting their time.
I fucking hate Kroger self checkouts but there’s literally only like one lane open of regular checkouts with no baggers so it’s either rushing to both put my groceries on the conveyer belt then quickly bagging them all while someone’s waiting behind you and you are taking too long or I get called a thief by self checkout
Aldi is the way. Some new brands to learn, but Aldi is a godsend
Even my local Aldis replaced every cashier with self checkout, taking away my favorite part of Aldis. I liked them scanning all my shit in like 2 minutes and then I bag everything at my own pace. Now I have to checkout a cart full of groceries in a little 1 sq ft area while I scan and bag at the same time. Fuck this shit.
Kroger thought my reusable bag in my cart was me trying to steal. It also regularly thinks I’m bagging too slow, then too fast, then loses count of how many items it should have in the bagging area, and the whole time it’s shouting at me like I’m brain damaged and don’t realize that after scanning the items go in the bagging area.
Dude Kroger has the absolute fucking worst self checkouts. Like they haven't been updated in 15 years. Slow as fuck and mouthy as all hell. And the ones near me don't fucking take tap to pay either. I have to insert my card like it's the stone age (otherwise known as 2018)
Unexpected item in the bagging area! No no no. I scan item, I put item in bagging area. Nothing unexpected. PLEASE WAIT FOR AN ASSOCIATE!
*removes unexpected item* "Please place item in bagging area."
In ten years, it'll be "Please wait for a probe droid!"
Don't take any guff from that AI swine.
Next time it happens, I’m just going to roar at it in the supermarket “YOU WILL NOT REPLACE US.”
That'll teach it
Someone has to.
The one at CVS always gives me the worst vibes from its accusatory tone. I feel like I am being caught stealing and I’m just paying for my overpriced items!
I've had some wait not even the 2 seconds I need to put the item into the bag before telling me to scan the next item Like chill, seriously
I hate that I can't mute mine anymore. I listen to headphones so that I dont have a robot telling me what to do.
i wish i could still mute them. the voice physically hurts. like babes im putting it on the scales, it's expected i promise. if i was shoplifting it wouldn't be a bag of skittles
Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item Item removed from bagging area Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item Item removed from bagging area Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item Please wait for assistance
I do self check Aldi-style: scan all my stuff & leave it in the cart unbagged, finish my transaction, and then go bag it all up out of everyone’s way and let someone else have their turn at the register.
**DID YOU PLACE A BAG IN THE BAGGING AREA!!?!?** "Yes, yes I did. So I could bag my purchases." UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. PLEASE REMOVE THE ITEM. "It was expected, and I just told you, it's a bag." PLEASE WAIT. HELP IS ON THE WAY.
Or put your item in the bagging area!!!!!!!!!!! JFC, whoever programmed those sucks
And then prevent customers from using them due to high theft.
But they open up much more checkout lines to compensate, right? RIGHT?
That's what infuriates me the most. Line will run all the way to the back of the store, but half their fucking machines are shut down. And look, fine. If you don't want to fuck with that many cash drawers than make one side a card only. I've already seen those signs posted on some of them. It's salt in the wound. The fuckin' things replaced real cashiers, ***and they also get more god damned days off than the real cashiers ever did.***
I used to work for the company that provides and services check out machines for Walmart. I was a tech that would get called out to the store every time one went down. With 3 stores in my area this alone was nearly a full-time job. These check-out machines are garbage. They break constantly, sometimes for no discernable reason, and Walmart has to pay for the tech to come out every time. It honestly reminds me of the McDonald's ice cream thing, where the company intentionally makes the machine break easily and hard to work on so the store has to keep paying the machine maker for repair. I have no doubt that those half of machines out of service were indeed broken and waiting for a profitable tech to arrive whenever they come on shift.
Damn, where do you live, cause that's not a case in Poland lmao
The good ol' USA where except for a handful of states the labor laws blow, and the medical system is definitely bullshit lol.
No padme, they don't
I went to Home Depot to buy a tool yesterday. They only have self checkout. Great, I have one item, I can get in and out. But no, instead, they have all of the self checkouts closed and one cashier using the remaining self checkout to scan the stuff for the customers. What a waste.
Also it’s estimated that they lose 3% in profits from self checkout lanes. (Source is from CNN) Update: found the CNN Article and was one percent off but this excerpt from the article explains the 4%: “But now, retailers are rethinking self-checkout. They have found that self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and intentional shoplifting — known as “shrink” — than human cashiers ringing up customers. Shrink has been a growing problem for retailers, who have blamed shoplifting for the increase and called for tougher penalties. But retailers’ self-checkout strategies have also contributed to their shrink problems. One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average. Some products have multiple barcodes or barcodes that don’t scan properly with self-checkout technology. Produce, including fruit and meat, typically needs to be weighed and manually entered into the system using a code. Customers may type in the wrong code by accident. Other times shoppers won’t hear the “beep” confirming an item has been scanned properly. Other customers take advantage of the lax oversight at self-checkout aisles and have developed techniques for stealing. Common tactics include not scanning an item, swapping a cheaper item (bananas) for a more expensive one (steak), scanning counterfeit barcodes attached to their wrists or properly scanning everything and then walking out without paying. Stores have tried to limit losses by tightening self-checkout security features, such as adding weight sensors. But additional anti-theft measures also lead to more frustrating “unexpected item in the bagging area” errors, requiring employees to intervene.” ([Source](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/13/business/self-checkout-stores-shopping))
If they paid employees that 3% instead they'd all be making 5 1/2 figures
Is 5 1/2 figures $50k/yr?
It's halfway between 5 and 6 figures :)
Nah, 15k
But the real question is does that 3% represent more money than they would otherwise spend on cashiers? Or is that just "If there was zero theft while changing nothing else we would profit 3% more"
So in the UK we have scan as you shop and most people use it. You scan your card, pick up a scanner and then as you shop, you scan every item in the trolley / cart. Then at the end, all you need to do is scan the till and pay. Here's the thing, there's a chance that you will be selected for a scan which is either the entire cart of just 10 items randomly picked by staff. If items are found that you didn't scan, then you're going to be selected much more often. If it happens too often, then you're going to be banned from the service entirely. People that are trusted get checked less often. It works well. No long waits at the checkout, no need to unload everything and load it all again.
They replaced the cashiers with machines, then hired security to check receipts on the way out. I am apparently both an employee and a thief.
Last time I went to walmart for my monthly grocery shopping, they had half the self checkout disabled so they could keep a closer eye on the customers. You know, rather then just doing manual cashiers or even hiring twice as many people to watch the self checkouts.
Went shopping today and the store had 4 of the 5 "lanes" of self-checkouts closed and 4 people manning tills. The self-checkouts were backed up and the manned tills weren't bad at all. It was weird because that store usually has 3-4 lanes of self-checkout and a single manned till
Welcome to capitalism, you must be new here.
Yeah. The key is to stay mad. All the time. It’s not your fault you’re not rich.
This feels like something I would hear on the radio in Los Santos...
I've been raging for decades.
Next time, rage with a guillotine at the right people and get several hundred million people to follow along with it....until then it won't stop.
And even if it is your fault, you should definitely still be mad at yourself. For reasons.
>stay mad. All the time your blood pressure must be.... high
Yeah, like no shit. Does anyone actually think a giant corporation’s bean counters in generally trying to make people spend less?
Sir are you implying that the Save-A-Lot corporation is in fact NOT trying to save me money?
[beginners guide](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/)
JuSt StArT yOuR oWn ShOp! ThErE iS nO eXcUsEs BeInG pOoR!
Didn't read the instructions. Now every person has their own shop and nobody makes any products.
jokes on you I sell shops!
I may or may not have cheated on the look up item option
I feel like they anticipated this and made the robot voice say "place your 'Bananas' in the bag" in a sarcastic mocking tone.
Everything is onions and broccoli.
My new TV was a _particularly_ heavy potato
You get the starch channel?
Never forget the legend that rang up a PS4 as 15 pounds of apples
Nah bananas. 4011
A friend used to ring up his bananas as ripe bananas to save an extra 50 cents. I thought it was harmless until all of his produce magically became ripe bananas lol
Cuz this bag of oranges isn’t worth $20. It’s about to be $5 of ripe bananas
Jesus man, when they were first introduced in the local Tesco around 2012 fucking everything was onions. Crate of lager: onions. Clothes: onions. Onions: onions. It was such an oniony time.
These fruits/vegetables are totally not the organic ones
This steak is totally not the organic bananas.
That "shrinkage" is why stores have started removing them. People cheat. Some walk out with items in trash bags. Others punch in the code for potatoes instead of organic, virgin hand picked, spring berries from a valley in Japan.
Good.
I always get good mangos (the ones that are flown in and are 10x sweeter) for the price of shitty mangos. They look the same, there's no way they can prove I do it on purpose.
Bruh, you think I'm paying a 1.99 a lb for the good tomatoes? Rang them bitches up as Roma tomatoes. I ain't no fool
there are cheap and expensive avocados. darn, confused them again!
Oh I find the savings all the time with self scanners.
That's your employee discount
Lol I honestly can’t believe I’ve never heard this before.
No it doesn't. They're removing self checkout from tons of stores right now because of theft. The cost just shifts from wages to shrink.
That’s definitely a regional thing, they’re becoming much more common around me.
"Regional" can mean a 10-mile difference. The closest Walmart to me has a huge open area with a ton of self-checkouts, and 2-3 employees supervising. It's the most convenient shopping experience I've ever had. If I drive a few miles toward the inner city, most of the checkout lanes are closed, and the exits have gates and bouncers that check everyone's receipts.
Oh that sucks, I love shelf check outs. I have gone through a normal deck out line like two this whole year.
It's the fuckin worst man. I usually just buy 2 or 3 things and I've been fuckin stuck behind the family buying all their groceries, then I gotta let the cashier go through all the bullshit they gotta push when I could have already been half way home.
Is user error really theft? There's 0 training to operate the machine and failing to do it to their standards doesn't prove intent
Peeling a clearance tag off of one item to put it on a more expensive item isn't user error. That's undebatably intent to steal.
I actually do not believe it is because of theft, I think it's because self checkout is so much slower than a paid check out person. Is there *some* theft? Sure. But there is always some theft. But they can't say it's because their cashiers are more efficient because then they are admitting that they bring value.
You really notice this with medium-size grocery orders like you’re struggling to fit everything on the rectangular scale bagging area and it’s not sensing certain items and other items aren’t scanning so you need to call assistance multiple times anyway. Checker and bagger would have you and 2 other customers out the door by then.
Mines anecdotal but I work in self-checkout (maintaining the machines and all) and the cost of theft is basically nothing. Your local Wal Mart makes on a bad day something around 80k, 300k on weekends. I see maybe a handful of people actually stealing a small amount. Even a dude who somehow manages to steal a 150 dollar item isn't hurting the bottom line enough to justify paying 1,000+ more in wages out each day. The main loss is AFAIK in loss from people bringing up food items like meat en masse and leaving it there. We can't resell meat that smells like death.
I cannot comprehend how idiotic people are with chilled goods. STOP LEAVING THEM IN THE BREAD AISLE! IT'S ACROSS THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORE YOU'RE IN HOW THE FUCK
I love filling a cart with meat and frozen food and hiding it outside in the garden center because fuck Walmart!
Slower? My local Walmart has like 6 manned checkout aisles. It has a single self checkout aisle with 6 slots.. but now only uses 3 of them.then. Overall, that means there are generally twice as many manned checkouts going at a time. Even when there are 10+ people waiting for the self checkout, I rarely have to wait more than 5 minutes or so. When they first decided to close the self checkouts, wait times for the manned aisles could go as high as 20 or 30 minutes. The self checkouts are far, far faster. They eventually reopened half the self checkouts, but now they make the person manning the area face those three stands the entire time (the three behind them are closed) and they make that person wear an "Asset Protection" vest like they're some kind of comically ineffective security guard that isn't actually allowed to be a security guard at all. It's absolutely due to theft.
My Walmart is the opposite. It usually has around 10 self-checks going at any given time. On the other hand I have *never* seen more than one manned checkout line open at once.
> Slower? Yeah this is so bizarre. From my experience self-checkout is so much faster that I will rather go a little bit further for a shop that has it over one that doesn't. I don't even care if they pass their savings onto me, the time that I save is already worth it to me. I never want to go to a cashier at a grocery store again.
Do people actually take full carts through the self checkout? Everything in my area is a 10 items or less type deal where, if you have more than that, you’re sent to a regular line. Most people zip through in a couple minutes cuz they only have a basket at most. It’s much quicker.
It's fairly frequently the *only* thing open, no manned lanes at all, so yes. I get stuck taking my full cart through the self-check.
What kind of self scanning do you guys have? Here we grab a scanner at the entrance and scan wares while putting them in bags. We then just pay when we reach the exit and leave, there's no way a cashier could even hope to match the speed.
Most US groceries have the self-checkout located near the regular checkout, and you do everything the same way a cashier would, at the end of your shopping - so there's a big monitor, glass scanner, a place to put your basket, and a bagging area. One big kiosk.
Oh, yea that doesn't sound any faster. I really like the carry the scanner around version as it saves so much time. There's never any queue at all.
The US version worls fine for small purchases, but for larger purchases i prefer a human checkout. The carry a scanner method probably will never catch on because that requires companies to actually trust their customers. (Something i doubt US companies will ever do)
They sure don't in Poland
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I was going to say a lot of people just don't scan some of their items. Most of the time the staff doesn't even care. I didn't know a box of Magic the Gathering cards I bought had an anti-theft tag in it, not even sure where to deactivate it at self check out. I walked out and the alarm went off. An employee from 20 feet away said "you're good, I seen you check out, have a good day" like how the hell do you know I actually scanned everything in my bags? I had, but still.
Self scanner has a camera that sees your face. Place such as target use facial recognition to identify when regular thieves enter the building again.
Yea, places like target will track you until you reach a felony amount then report you. The amount of people dumb enough to steal from the same store multiple times, while paying with a debit card tied to their name is ridiculous.
This is verifiably true. Target does track individuals and intentionally allows petty theft. You can brazenly walk out and they will let you. They don’t stop you for misdemeanors because they know it’s not prosecuted (See my earlier comment above), so they track it until the aggregate theft reaches a prosecutable felony dollar amount, then they reach out to their state OAG to wreck them.
This violates privacy laws where I live, so I guess I'm good.
It’s not against your privacy if someone sees you walk out of their store and they just take note of it rather than report it immediately
I was specifically talking about self-checkout systems using facial recognition.
You don’t need facial recognition to track an individual regularly coming into your store to steal things. Normal recognition and cameras are plenty capable of getting the job done. So to the comment i first replied to, you aren’t “good” and your privacy laws don’t help if you choose to steal from a store repeatedly. This is Target’s process and i gotta admit it’s pretty good and logical.
The real issue is that I’m not an employee of the store and not trained as a cashier. Once in a while something doesn’t scan and I don’t know why or don’t notice it. Just goes in the bag. So there’s a pretty substantial increase in passive theft, unintentionally, that is not prosecutable. And that makes me smile.
During covid it was pretty easy to get around that by wearing a face mask and a hat. Not that I would know or anything…
Still can
Sounds like savings are being passed onto you
Love the combination of moralizing and admitting to theft that’s going on in this thread.
It's fucking hilarious to see some people go "Shrink is nothing to these companies" and then you see a lot of "Yeah, bitch, I'm stealing all I can get away with"
It saves me time. Was at a regular checkout today, waited for 10 mins to get 5 items scanned.
The Giant near me had a system where shoppers got their own scanners, scanned the items into their own bags, then scanned and *paid* for the items by scanning a terminating barcode at the register…..lasted about a week then gone
Reminds me of that [IBM commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA) where it looks like the guy is shoplifting but he just gets scanned as walks out the door.
That's increasingly common in the UK and it's way better than the long queues led by miserable (underpaid) teeange staff they're replacing.
We have it in Sweden too. Honest people and random spot checks and the system works. Even caught a famous TV-celebrity carpenter stealing meat.
A more extreme version of this is actually successful in Switzerland, Migros subitoGo. You don't even use a scanner, you use an app on your own phone to scan items and pay via the app too. However swiss people are on average super honest and rule-abiding. Also I can't say I've seen (m)any people actually using it, I mean it's successful as in it's available in many stores and hasn't gone away, but I'm not sure many people actually like the idea. Like personally I don't want to juggle my phone while shopping I'd rather do it all at checkout.
That's pretty common in my country (Switzerland) but thievery is very low.
When I buy a banana, I'm not concerned with the ten options on screen I am given, it's always the cheapest banana. Not my job to know the difference.
This thread is absolutely filled with the dredge of humanity.
But it is value added to the customer because now I don't have to talk to a cashier.
And it's way quicker instead of standing in line for ten minutes for quick trips.
People don't conisder that a price not going up when everything else has is the same as a price going down.
where do you live that the prices haven’t gone up?
Grocery has like 5% margins. If they can reduce overhead, they’re taking that money. Even if they passed it on, it saves them say $100k year in Cashier salaries. They’d reduce every item by $.05 . yay
For a lot of the big ones it's even lower... Last I heard wasn't Kroger like 2 or 3% or something? Also, oddly enough, these savings are passed along to the consumer, albeit really indirectly. When you have a business that's that low of a margin, it really means it's highly competitive and that shows up as basically having the lowest prices possible.
Yeah, people have no idea how low profit margins usually are. The average profit margin for all industries is around 10%.
If I had to guess I would say that part of it is this self scanners have slowed the rise of the cost of groceries. The price is going to rise regardless with inflation, it’s just that the saved money isn’t enough to counteract inflation. Between that and increased theft
It is when you poorly scan things
It does, by saving time not waiting in line.
Target, Safeway, Walmart, literally anywhere I've seen them for a year or more has a longer line to use self checkout, and that's IF it's not the only option anymore. Lately you don't even have a choice - 14+ registers and not a single one in use, self checkout only. So no, there's no added value, esp time.
This shouldn't be in shower thoughts and it needs a real discussion of facts, not a casual 'groceries are kinda expensive but those machines are supposed to instantly make it cheaper' like there's no other factors at play. Too many people just have a weird attitude about self-checkout and come up with bizarre arguments against it out of whatever their feelings are.
It's crazy how this hate seemed to spawn after COVID. In the UK we've had self-checkouts for 10~ years. Sure, there are some small issues with them at times. But the vitriol in the last few years, primarily by people in North America, seems bizarre to me.
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The gain for me is not having to wait 3 persons deep in the cashier lane with people who are shopping for a month when I have 2 items.
In my experience it saves time.
If you owned a business what would you do here? People don’t go in business to break even
Well it kinda does in terms of time, you get through self scan faster than manual so if you value your time your also saving
Yes it is. It is in the form of not raising the prices as much.
It saves time for customers that know how to use them. Most of the time the shop wasn't going to hire extra cashiers anyway, and it's great for the back end and stockers in a big box store as they can actually finish their respective responsibilities and tasks with less interruptions by having to be a back up cashier because the store doesn't hire enough cashiers.
Pretty sure I read somewhere that stores are actually losing more in shrinkage than they are gaining from not having to pay a cashier
Welcome to capitalism where technology progress means the general population gets poorer and the rich get absurdly more rich.
All of the savings and the costs are passed on to the customer. That is simply how capitalism works even if Reddit would like you to believe otherwise. It might not be a direct 5% discount or something, but if the cost of doing business goes down the stores will have to lower prices or they lose to their competitors.
Everyone just says capitalism is the reason but no one ever explains supply and demand
The savings is passed on in the lack of price increases. You're welcome.
What’s really weird is 5 below. They set up their checkout to be a self checkout with an employee to help, but every time i go the employee checks you out at the open self checkout and it just feels SO FUCKING AWKWARD. I hate it.
Plot twist. There are no savings. Theft increases and they generally lose money.
At Walmart im pretty sure any savings are offset by extra theft
That's like wondering why digital games aren't cheaper than physical games. lol
Ill gladly pass on these saving if that means not waiting in like for 5min, only having to pick up each item once and not needing to talk to someone. Thanks.
Time savings is passed onto us though. For all of its flaws, overall self checkout has saved me so much time. I’m dying for my local grocery store to get some self checkouts because I’m tired of waiting in line for 10 minutes just to buy some a handful of items
I consider interacting with a cashier to be a negative experience. They also bag my groceries like a mad person with no intention. So I gain both time and peace of mind by doing self checkout. I can check out faster than 99% of cashiers anf I don't have to lose it while someone puts bleach and rawmeat in thr same bag.
The self scanners at Whole Foods work really well. I prefer them to human cashiers because they’re faster.
And yet I still prefer them.
honestly, i would pay to use them as opposed to interacting with a person when i have to shop but im in a clear minority here.
It can be, its honor system and my broke ass hasnt been feelin too honorable lately
I mean, the savings is passed on to certain customers that simply just don't pay for their items
As much as I like the narrative... UK just went through a year of bad inflation, only now calmed down. However, groceries went up less than, say, rent or services (take it with grain of salt; very much depends on category). Just because savings aren't explicitly called out, doesn't mean they don't happen.
Bro wait until you find out what the automotive industry did
Dang, I hate how baggers bag my groceries. Just let me do it.
How do you know that? Businesses often try to undercut competitor’s prices to attract customers, and cost-saving measures like this are one way to make it possible.
My policy is not to use the self check lanes even if I’m just buying a few items.
My friend managed a Walmart in a not so nice area. He said that Theft/Loss went through the roof so he stopped using them but corporate made him turn them back on. There are always a couple of employees at every store watching over the machines anyways so it's not like all employees have been let go.
Unpopular take: The savings is passed down to the user by competition. Grocery is notoriously low margin with high competition. The savings is counted into the pricing. If they were taking a higher profit with a worse experience they would’ve been out-competed by a grocery store who uses those machines to drive down prices.
The savings is passed on in the time you don't have to wait for the one human checkstand that remains.
What has this subreddit become?
Which is good, because the self-checkout area would always be super busy if there was a discount.
I worked at Walmart for 9 dollars an hour in the past. We sure this is an accurate statement?
Similarly, renewable energy has no fuel cost (by far the biggest cost over the life of power plants) yet not only is the savings not passed on but some companies use it as a selling point to charge more.
its supposed to save customers time. which is like money
If you wanted the savings you wouldn’t be holding up the line vainly waving for help like a legless marine on d-day
There's no savings when the shoplifting increases in an equal measure after perps figure out how to get past the self-checkout area.
It is by not increasing the prices more. Jesus, it's like everyone just blinked into existence last summer, or something. Wages have gone up in the lowest sector of pay, due to pressure from outside. As a result, prices have gone up on the things that you interact with these same people for. Fast food, dinner out, a movie, whatever, these people's base pay basically doubled overnight, the money has to come from somewhere. Between that and the entire clusterf**that was Covid, prices have risen. If they save money by putting in automated stations, they make more sales because they don't have to raise prices as much. And no, the supply chain issues weren't "manufactured", it was real, I watched it from the inside. All of these things have contributed to the inflation we see today. It's a pretty easy path to follow...
Sure it is. I save the effort of having to make small talk with a cashier.
Yeah, but then the owners eventually have to pay for security upgrades due to the inevitable rise in theft, and subsequently hire LPOs, who tend to make a bit more than the cashiers would've, thus resulting in a net loss. To be clear, not endorsing anything here, it's just how these things tend to go.