I started using grocery self-checkouts during COVID, but I’ve kept using them because there’s rarely a line (and I’m a misanthrope). I’d probably go back to using regular human checkouts if I had to dig through all my crap to prove what I bought.
Having said that, I’ve noticed myself making mistakes. I’ve accidentally failed to scan an item, and I’ve accidentally entered incorrect codes for produce. When I notice, I fix them, but I’ve probably missed a few.
I guess the easiest answer is for grocery chains to reinvest some of those windfall profits and hire more cashiers.
I will happily use self checkouts if it gets me out of the store faster/ lets me interact with the least amount of people possible.
I work retail, I need that energy for my job.
I feel the same way, but sometimes I show up and the lines for actual cashiers is so long and there’s no one at self checkout. I can wait for ten minutes or I can scan my twizzlers and gtfo.
At my grocery store, they added in a ton of self checkout, but they didn’t give you enough room to bag your groceries. So you have a cart of food, but a mini-shelf to store them on. And yes, they are no limit. They typically now only have two manned lanes open during peak shopping times. I’m sure some theft is part of it, I’m also convinced most of the “theft” is from the stupid setup and the scales on the mini-shelves. Only place I stop for a receipt check is at membership places like Costco. Everywhere else is a firm, “No thank you,” and I keep walking. Go ahead, call the cops. I have a receipt.
Costco also has actual cashiers working, and an extra person to bag your groceries on top of that typically. And they pay better than the typical grocery store.
Our interaction is done once I pay for my items. Don’t like it? Call the cops I guess I’m done dealing with the store for the day. Don’t trust me? Hire a cashier, not really my problem.
I’m still pissed all these self-checkouts haven’t lowered any prices. Seems like if you got rid of 30 cashiers the price of my bread should’ve gone down a little.
This 1000%. You can’t just be shaken down without probable cause in any random public place. If you want to do a check, make it a membership and put it in the contract. Otherwise, fuck you, I’m walking out the door with the stuff I paid for already.
My buddy was chased into the parking lot when he said No Thanks. It was an exciting experience where cops were called on a ginger kid for …
Well, that’s what the cop wanted to know.
BestBuy Stalin was given a quick lesson on when you don’t call the cops, and my buddy got to reassure the cop enthusiastically that he and his friends wouldn’t be seen in the store ever again because this was hitting social media So Fast.
Even Costco can’t “force” you. What they can do is ban you, which any store can do. It’s harder to enforce without someone at the door checking, but totally possible.
It’s actually in the membership agreement.
If you refuse to show, they can ban you. However, the fact you would have a Costco membership indicates that you signed an agreement that allows them to have you show the receipt.
In my experiences, it has always been something flagged by the receipt checker at Costco confirming that I got something I paid for and had to collect for the secure area, or provided to me at check out like movie tickets.
It’s all good. The moment they demand my papers we go talk about it at the return counter anyway. They can double-secret-ban me if it’ll make them happy, but they can’t fire me as a customer if I’ve already quit.
… docile workers that will work for little or no pay, which make them poor and more apt to want to steal in order to get cheap food
… honest customers that won’t steal, even if they become desperate because corporations refused to pay them a living wage to afford food
Economically speaking … it’s a no brainer … pay people a living wage and pay for more cashiers to work at the front … the company makes more money by securing purchases and keeping everyone honest and you maintain a workforce of highly paid people who go to spend their money with your stores anyway
Instead, we want to maintain a system where money and wealth continually keep getting shoved to ever smaller groups of people and we wonder why those of us at the bottom keep trying steal and rob the system just to get by.
‘If you give a man gun he can rob a bank; if you give man a bank he can rob the world.’
I get the whole living wage thing, but a cashier’s position was never a living wage, in the past it was a wage used to supplement a family’s income, or to pay for post secondary tuition. What changed? My local Wallyworld supercentre was the first in the region to go self serve, the manager said he couldn’t find staff, but in all honesty whether it was a living wage or not, I think he just didn’t want the staff.
A friend of mine, her father was a bagging clerk at a grocery store for literally his entire life. He was able to support two kids and a spouse on that salary, and retired maybe ten years ago.
The minimum wage was enacted to provide all citizens with a basic quality of life, including food and housing. Full stop. Everything after your incorrect statement is irrelevant as it is founded on an untrue principle.
My bad. I never knew a 16 year old working at a fast food outlet was supposed to support a family. I formally apologize as a white colonial male with priviledge
It’s not the job of corporations to treat people well, they’re an entity designed to maximize profit within the framework they operate in.
A democratic government is designed to represent the will of the citizens. If we aren’t happy with the way corporations treat us, then we should vote in a government that will regulate corporations to force them to treat us well.
The goal should be jobs that are boring to humans being automated completely AND not having theft because people don’t need to do it in order to have a good life.
When do you do when your choice in voting is carefully handpicked insiders from a group that has insulated themselves from outside forces over the past 50 odd years and the only choices with a real chance of winning are not going to work in their constituents best interest?
If your campaigning some ‘bootstraps’ idiocy, it’s easier than changing us into America and their Medical Bankruptcy if you just move there for a few years. Put the fear of the aristocracy in you.
Well let’s stick with the second-worst as long as it keeps the absolute worst out and their bootstraps bullshit and the dissolution of services that keep us from being Americans. They have even more work to do down south than we do, and I’d like those fools from Edmonton NOT to make us imitate that idiocy wholesale.
I won’t use them at all. I’m not seeing any cost benefit from doing their employees’ task for them as prices have never come down. Big box stores can DIAF for all I care.
Always making a big deal out of theft for pennies or dollars from individual customers … but seldom highlighting the theft of thousands and millions by corporate heads at the top
Ya anyone with an ounce of brain cells predicted that theft would be an issue with self-checkputs but stores were blindsided by the savings they saw with getting rid of cashiers.
Also sometimes the machines a super finicky. It hasn’t happened very recently for me, but the amount of times you need an employee to reset the machine or enter a code is too damn high.
How much is the loss really, in the grand scheme of things? Article says 23% of losses are self-checkout and theft, but what’s the percentage of losses overall?
Because I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of people scan their items correctly. My local stores don’t even bother enabling the scale on those machines.
IMO it’s got to still end up cheaper than switching back to rows of cashiers, and self checkout is so much nicer and faster. I check my groceries out in less than a minute usually.
Or, if it’s such a big problem, maybe they can license the tech Amazon uses for their physical stores. Literally grab what you want from the shelves and walk out and it knows what you took and bills you.
I was waiting to self checkout at a Walmart where there are 4 of around a dozen self-checkouts working. I asked about the ones that were not working and the employee told me that they can only open 4 units for every employee present. In order to have all 12 open they need 3 people there.
Because cashiers are a different cost-centre, and thusly a different budget on the company’s financial statements. The VP or senior director that controls the cashiers’ services would end up looking bad if they had to retrench on that decision, and “looking bad” is death at that level.
A lot of what happens inside a company makes more sense when you realize it’s a power struggle between a bunch of narcissists and their lackeys, and that VPs and CEOs aren’t really as powerful as you’d think. Companies can be as inefficient and cut-your-nose-off-to-spite-your-face as any non-profit or public sector employer is, but we often don’t see it because we’ve been trained to assume that “private sector == well-oiled machine” and “public sector == clusterfuck”.
Am I the only one that hands my stuff to the staff member standing there and asks them for help?
I really don’t mind saying I don’t understand how those things work, as I truly don’t care enough to pay even the slightest bit of attention to them… If there’s a staff member just standing there watching, why can’t they help me as a customer?
I’m always polite about it, except that one time at Dollarama where there was 4 people standing there acting like I was being rude for asking them to ring me thru a till rather than use a self checkout. That time, I just put my stuff down and walked out. If they don’t want to help me, I’m not giving them my money.
What I do is deliberately go to a cashier, even if the line is extremely long, and I see more and more people doing the same. This forces more lines to open. One time they asked if I could use the self-checkout to speed up the process. I replied that if the items were cheaper at the self-checkout, sure, otherwise I’d stay in line.
I do the same thing. Aside from a gas pump, I no longer will use self-checkout for any reason. I’m done working for Big Retail for no pay & no discount.
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I never use the self-checkouts. That’s bullshit. I don’t work there.
I don’t blame anyone that takes advantage of the system that corporations are building.
I will happily use self checkouts if it gets me out of the store faster/ lets me interact with the least amount of people possible. I work retail, I need that energy for my job.
I feel the same way, but sometimes I show up and the lines for actual cashiers is so long and there’s no one at self checkout. I can wait for ten minutes or I can scan my twizzlers and gtfo.
The payment is your time. I use whichever checkout will get me out of the store faster.
100%. Life is too short to spend it standing in line.
At my grocery store, they added in a ton of self checkout, but they didn’t give you enough room to bag your groceries. So you have a cart of food, but a mini-shelf to store them on. And yes, they are no limit. They typically now only have two manned lanes open during peak shopping times. I’m sure some theft is part of it, I’m also convinced most of the “theft” is from the stupid setup and the scales on the mini-shelves. Only place I stop for a receipt check is at membership places like Costco. Everywhere else is a firm, “No thank you,” and I keep walking. Go ahead, call the cops. I have a receipt.
Yep, Costco is fine we all knew the deal when we signed up. But the Walmart greeter stopping me? No way.
You wanna see if I’m stealing? Check the damn cameras.
Costco also has actual cashiers working, and an extra person to bag your groceries on top of that typically. And they pay better than the typical grocery store.
Yeah I just walk by and say “no thanks!”
Our interaction is done once I pay for my items. Don’t like it? Call the cops I guess I’m done dealing with the store for the day. Don’t trust me? Hire a cashier, not really my problem.
I’m still pissed all these self-checkouts haven’t lowered any prices. Seems like if you got rid of 30 cashiers the price of my bread should’ve gone down a little.
This 1000%. You can’t just be shaken down without probable cause in any random public place. If you want to do a check, make it a membership and put it in the contract. Otherwise, fuck you, I’m walking out the door with the stuff I paid for already.
My buddy was chased into the parking lot when he said No Thanks. It was an exciting experience where cops were called on a ginger kid for …
Well, that’s what the cop wanted to know.
BestBuy Stalin was given a quick lesson on when you don’t call the cops, and my buddy got to reassure the cop enthusiastically that he and his friends wouldn’t be seen in the store ever again because this was hitting social media So Fast.
Unless there’s a barrier to entry (like a membership at Costco), they can’t force you to show your receipt or check your items.
You’re kinda wrong.
Even Costco can’t “force” you. What they can do is ban you, which any store can do. It’s harder to enforce without someone at the door checking, but totally possible.
It’s actually in the membership agreement. If you refuse to show, they can ban you. However, the fact you would have a Costco membership indicates that you signed an agreement that allows them to have you show the receipt.
In my experiences, it has always been something flagged by the receipt checker at Costco confirming that I got something I paid for and had to collect for the secure area, or provided to me at check out like movie tickets.
Yes, but what I’m saying is that any store can ban you for any reason (that isn’t legally protected)
So it has nothing to do with Costco specifically
It’s all good. The moment they demand my papers we go talk about it at the return counter anyway. They can double-secret-ban me if it’ll make them happy, but they can’t fire me as a customer if I’ve already quit.
Corporations want it both ways …
… docile workers that will work for little or no pay, which make them poor and more apt to want to steal in order to get cheap food
… honest customers that won’t steal, even if they become desperate because corporations refused to pay them a living wage to afford food
Economically speaking … it’s a no brainer … pay people a living wage and pay for more cashiers to work at the front … the company makes more money by securing purchases and keeping everyone honest and you maintain a workforce of highly paid people who go to spend their money with your stores anyway
Instead, we want to maintain a system where money and wealth continually keep getting shoved to ever smaller groups of people and we wonder why those of us at the bottom keep trying steal and rob the system just to get by.
‘If you give a man gun he can rob a bank; if you give man a bank he can rob the world.’
I get the whole living wage thing, but a cashier’s position was never a living wage, in the past it was a wage used to supplement a family’s income, or to pay for post secondary tuition. What changed? My local Wallyworld supercentre was the first in the region to go self serve, the manager said he couldn’t find staff, but in all honesty whether it was a living wage or not, I think he just didn’t want the staff.
A friend of mine, her father was a bagging clerk at a grocery store for literally his entire life. He was able to support two kids and a spouse on that salary, and retired maybe ten years ago.
The minimum wage was enacted to provide all citizens with a basic quality of life, including food and housing. Full stop. Everything after your incorrect statement is irrelevant as it is founded on an untrue principle.
My bad. I never knew a 16 year old working at a fast food outlet was supposed to support a family. I formally apologize as a white colonial male with priviledge
sTuDeNts sHoUlD wOrK tHroUgh cOlLeGe tO cOmE oUt dEbT fReE
Also
sTuDeNts sHoUld mAkE sLavE wAgEs cAUse tHeyRe yOunG.
Did you know McDonald’s workers in Denmark make over 20 an hour AND the food is cheaper than in the states?
You say that as if the majority of minimum-wage earners aren’t, and haven’t always been, adults. Go read a book.
They don’t read. It hurts their brain to try
This is the same logic my old man has. I like to ask him if his breakfast is being made by a 16 year old on a school day.
It’s not the job of corporations to treat people well, they’re an entity designed to maximize profit within the framework they operate in.
A democratic government is designed to represent the will of the citizens. If we aren’t happy with the way corporations treat us, then we should vote in a government that will regulate corporations to force them to treat us well.
The goal should be jobs that are boring to humans being automated completely AND not having theft because people don’t need to do it in order to have a good life.
When do you do when your choice in voting is carefully handpicked insiders from a group that has insulated themselves from outside forces over the past 50 odd years and the only choices with a real chance of winning are not going to work in their constituents best interest?
The answer’s the same
And also
A. Fight for better voting so that minority candidates with good ideas get the nod they need.
Picking the last bad is why we are slipping AS A WHOLE in the wrong direction.
No we’re not. Go look at some numbers.
If your campaigning some ‘bootstraps’ idiocy, it’s easier than changing us into America and their Medical Bankruptcy if you just move there for a few years. Put the fear of the aristocracy in you.
Well let’s stick with the second-worst as long as it keeps the absolute worst out and their bootstraps bullshit and the dissolution of services that keep us from being Americans. They have even more work to do down south than we do, and I’d like those fools from Edmonton NOT to make us imitate that idiocy wholesale.
I won’t use them at all. I’m not seeing any cost benefit from doing their employees’ task for them as prices have never come down. Big box stores can DIAF for all I care.
Ha! Not that I steal, but I don’t care about supermarkets losing money from people stealing.
If they want their customers to know how to use the self-checkout machines better, they ought to pay them for training.
I steal, it’s very convenient. Great way to save no groceries.
Always making a big deal out of theft for pennies or dollars from individual customers … but seldom highlighting the theft of thousands and millions by corporate heads at the top
Ya anyone with an ounce of brain cells predicted that theft would be an issue with self-checkputs but stores were blindsided by the savings they saw with getting rid of cashiers.
Also sometimes the machines a super finicky. It hasn’t happened very recently for me, but the amount of times you need an employee to reset the machine or enter a code is too damn high.
Shift the cashier’s work to the customer and then bitch because the customer is bad at that job that they’re not trained for?
How could they be bigger assholes? Get fucked, corporate assholes!
Peach!
Edit: that was supposed to say “preach” but autocorrect ducked me. Leaving the way it is because that’s better.
Apple!
I thought we only buy bananas
4077
“I’m not stealing, I’m just poorly trained at this job you’re now expecting me to do without compensation.”
How much is the loss really, in the grand scheme of things? Article says 23% of losses are self-checkout and theft, but what’s the percentage of losses overall?
Because I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of people scan their items correctly. My local stores don’t even bother enabling the scale on those machines.
IMO it’s got to still end up cheaper than switching back to rows of cashiers, and self checkout is so much nicer and faster. I check my groceries out in less than a minute usually.
Or, if it’s such a big problem, maybe they can license the tech Amazon uses for their physical stores. Literally grab what you want from the shelves and walk out and it knows what you took and bills you.
Around 3% on average.
I was at Walmart the other day and there were four employees standing around the self checkout. They all said bye to me when I left. Weird shit.
At that point, why not just have them work the tills??
I was waiting to self checkout at a Walmart where there are 4 of around a dozen self-checkouts working. I asked about the ones that were not working and the employee told me that they can only open 4 units for every employee present. In order to have all 12 open they need 3 people there.
Because cashiers are a different cost-centre, and thusly a different budget on the company’s financial statements. The VP or senior director that controls the cashiers’ services would end up looking bad if they had to retrench on that decision, and “looking bad” is death at that level.
A lot of what happens inside a company makes more sense when you realize it’s a power struggle between a bunch of narcissists and their lackeys, and that VPs and CEOs aren’t really as powerful as you’d think. Companies can be as inefficient and cut-your-nose-off-to-spite-your-face as any non-profit or public sector employer is, but we often don’t see it because we’ve been trained to assume that “private sector == well-oiled machine” and “public sector == clusterfuck”.
I’ve never seen anyone stealing food and neither did you…
AND LET THE CASHIERS FUCKING SIT FOR FUCK SAKE!
Am I the only one that hands my stuff to the staff member standing there and asks them for help? I really don’t mind saying I don’t understand how those things work, as I truly don’t care enough to pay even the slightest bit of attention to them… If there’s a staff member just standing there watching, why can’t they help me as a customer?
I’m always polite about it, except that one time at Dollarama where there was 4 people standing there acting like I was being rude for asking them to ring me thru a till rather than use a self checkout. That time, I just put my stuff down and walked out. If they don’t want to help me, I’m not giving them my money.
What I do is deliberately go to a cashier, even if the line is extremely long, and I see more and more people doing the same. This forces more lines to open. One time they asked if I could use the self-checkout to speed up the process. I replied that if the items were cheaper at the self-checkout, sure, otherwise I’d stay in line.
I do the same thing. Aside from a gas pump, I no longer will use self-checkout for any reason. I’m done working for Big Retail for no pay & no discount.