Im surprised how many people here hate self checkout. I am much faster at scanning and bagging my own items than most cashiers. I almost never get errors, and if I do I know what to do to clear them typically. I always look at self check first, and then human lines second. Plus, none if that “how’s your day? Want to apply for a store credit card?” talk from a bored looking cashier.

Self Checkout hat serious drawbacks:

• the cashiers are not free to be transferred to more important work, they are fired. this is objectively bad.
• regardless if you are scanning the items when putting them into the cart, or you are scanning them at the checkout point - you are now doing the cashiers work, but you are not compensated for your work. the price you pay is the same. you are now an employee, but without being paid. this is objectively bad.
• when a scanning error happens, you are now responsible for it. the industry word for it is theft. you are a thief if your scan isn’t correct. the responsibility shifted away from a worker with (depending on locale, forget the US for a moment) insurance and workers rights, allowing for smaller mistakes. But the retailer isn’t picking up the responsibility, it just heaps it on the customer. As they did with the work. this is objectively bad.
• depending on the efficiency of this system, the retailer chains (not stores, the chains) are increasing profits. the workers and the customers don’t see a dime of that. this is objectively bad.

A store near me in germany has recently switched a number of rows to self checkout. Absolute chaos, nobody wants it, long rows on the few chashier points. I saw it exactly one time, told me what i think, they tried to sell me the convenience, i told them what i wrote here plus that they are located in a commercial area, not a mixed housing/commerce area. Nobody goes there to buy a handful of stuff. People came for “Hamsterkäufe” (german colloquial, hamstering essentially: buying large quantities for reserve), self checkout is not convenient. I will not visit there anymore, there are other stores who don’t do this crap.

I would be sad to lose my beloved self checkout :( I still want real people and full service lanes for bigger / more complicated purchases, but daily small purchases are much more relaxing self-serve.

Many likely believe self-checkout saves time compared to a cashier lane, but the opposite may be true.

Oh actual cashiers are faster no doubt, but they’re almost too fast. They’ll spin 15 items through in 3 seconds and I can’t check prices or bag fast enough. Once I’ve paid I still have a minute of bagging with next in line pushing me down and 2 minutes of reading the receipt prices left… in self check out I like being able to catch prices errors as they ring up and have less pressure bagging.

My main issue with self checkout is simple. They constantly incorrectly flag me for shoplifting and then proceed to show my shiny bald head from top down to everyone within 20 feet on the checkout screen. It is not a flattering angle.

I hate it and won’t miss it. The workflow is brittle and the anti-theft measures throw too many false positives. Every third time I use it, it requires staff intervention. I’ll always go to a checker if I have the choice of doing so.

In North Italy almost all groceries stores offer

Self checkout: where you do your groceries and at the end you scan the item one by one

Advanced self checkout (you are registered to the store): you get a PDA and you scan and bag all the groceries while you roam the store. Then you scan a qr, you get the total, pay and go. No Id checks for alcol or anything (sometimes you get a random partial re-reading where you get an sales person coming and scanning 3 items at random from your bag to check if you scanned them, or a total re-read)

Normal slow cashier point

Advanced self checkout is something I would never give back. Even if I buy a lot of things, the quick payment process is so quick that nothing compares.

I can enter and leave a store in under 10 minutes buying a lot of stuff (note that I go there walking multiple time per week)

What country is this? They seem to becoming more prevalent here. (Canada) My observation is that people generally look at the cashier lines. If there’s too long a wait, they head for the self-checkout. Or, if they only have a few items, they head to the self-checkout.

All self-checkouts I see around here are either completely empty, or full of workers who have to help the people using them, at least about 1 worker for every 4 self-checkout stations.

Fuck the fucking idiots who ruined this

I use self-checkout occasionally. On the one hand I don’t absolutely hate if I have a few items. Yea, I cannot scan nearly as quickly as the pros. Which is fine if I have three things. Luckily I have mever either been accused of theft myself or seen it happen to anyone else.

That said, I will absolutely not be sad to see these machines go. Nothing of value will be lost.

Hire more cashiers and pay them a living wage so they don’t have to immedeately sign up for food stamps right after being accepted into employment. Our government should not be subsidizing the billionaires, who are all mentally unwell from having long since surpassed mere riches.

So is this a US specific thing or not? The article doesn’t really make that clear.

Is it possible there are less businesses doing it because many companies have already done it? I know a lot of people aren’t in favour of self-checkouts, but decisions go to where the money and convenience are. We don’t go to tellers or the few gas stations that serve because of convenience. We troubleshot our computers and do our own renovations because hiring workers would be too expensive. If you don’t like self-checkouts, don’t use them. It’s as easy as that.

I hope they keep them at least in parallel. I’m so much faster usually when doing self-checkout, because I often only buy a few items and can just skip the line.

Hell yeah brother!

Self check-out should be for maximum 5-5 products, no more. They should be Fast lane only.