Pretty funny coincidence here
I was astounded the other day when I visited a town that had a nice busy grocery store. It was like what I imagine the 70’s were like. They had 20 lanes OPEN with cashiers quickly and efficiently ringing up items, much faster than I could, with baggers neatly and efficiently filling the bags. There were no waiting lines because everyone found a cashier lane to walk right up to as the last person was finishing up.
It was ten times faster than a self checkout.
I rarely see that anymore. Its usually one lone cashier and a bunch of people waiting for a self checkout machine.
This feels surreal, self checkout is insanely normal here and theres no scales and or other sensors besides normal cctv. Switzerland, for context.
This probably has a wide latitude of success depending on whether it’s a high trust or low trust society.
The article talks about time savings but it was always about labor costs and I have a hard time believing it didn’t deliver on that front.
I’m mixed.
I dislike peopling in person, and I hate lines with a passion, but I also hate putting cashiers out of business, running the register myself, and waiting for one person in charge of 17 registers to come over and figure out WTF just went wrong with the checkout process, which is also peopleing and lines.
Most of those who have one don’t plan to have an other one? Ok, but is that supposed to be weird?
In 2016 I used self checkout if I wanted to get through quickly.
In 2026 I look for a cashier.
I don’t like self checkout. Every time I feel I’m doing their cashier job for free.
It certainly always saves me time. Especially when I cut out doing the part where I pay.
Good. Just pay people, society is for people. All of these cost saving schemes from capitalists in service of infinite greed end up failing and wasting even more money than they would have made or saved simply by paying people for their labour. Also, wealth tax immediately, I mean now.
Now if they could just get people to put refrigerated/frozen food back where they found it instead of leaving it wherever they happen to be standing. I love finding some meat sitting on the cereal shelf. Lazy f’ers.
Is it? Not where I live.
The thing I hate the most about supermarket self-checkout is they put the bag dispensers right against the scale where you need to put your bagged stuff. This leaves so little room the bag will fall over, etc so I have to put it on the floor. Then the register complains that I have removed it without paying, etc. FFS.
You still need employees to help hapless customers and flag tech problems, the security cameras from above to dissuade theft, and someone to man the monitors of said cameras. They were banking on full human replacement. Can’t wait for our AI future with a store devoid of employees where they drop a net from the ceiling and pepper spray me because I forgot my eggplant was the organic price.
