I've never understood the people who seem to not get that some people actually don't mind scanning their stuff and putting it in bags, and insist that that's the line between what the customer does and the employee. They also used to carry your groceries to the car for you, and you can also get them to pick everything up, bag it and bring it to your car or house. It's not like the checkout process is the special part that can't change.
Yeah, they want to save money by having fewer people get more customers checked out faster. I don't really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.
At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.
I don't mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you.. but they are not a replacement for cashiers.
Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I'll never do it again.
Recently had a support call with a woman who was complaining about our 2 factor authentication system because she could only access one web page at a time. When I asked her if she couldn't just open a new tab, she said she was too old to learn how computers work and couldn't do that. She went on to claim that there's a lot of people at her level of ineptitude, and that we shouldn't have implemented 2fa because "most people don't have multiple monitors."
It was so, so hard not to throw out an OK Boomer as they proudly lectured me on the depths of their ignorance.
They also don't schedule enough employees to keep the lines running quickly, they only have 2-3 lanes open most of the time when it's busy as having another line is 2x $13-15 an hour for a bagger and a cashier. This gets people to either go to self checkout or wait forever. Naturally most people go through self checkout, which they'll probably use as an excuse to make more self checkouts.
(talking about the store I work at specifically, which isn't a Walmart, but I assume Walmart does the same)
So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven't worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway ("Unexpected item in bag", etc), they've lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.
(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
I used to love using the self-checkout. But then it became a trend among the corporate overlords here to get all paranoid about people stealing food, so now they have the weight system calibrated too strict. Now if you breath on the items in the bag it locks you out and someone has to come unlock the system to continue scanning. So it's not really worth the hassle, and seems kinda pointless since an employee has to unlock the system after every few items.
I refuse to use them as a union worker, when I'm told to use the self checkout as I'm in line for the only cashier I just refuse. I'm doing it for you kids
I was once mistaken for an employee somewhere and my sleep deprivated response was to say "I am wearing pants so clearly I dont work here." I have no fucken clue what that means but I think it was a threat.
Reading the comments, do people not like self checkout? Is it another one of these American things, that baffle the rest of the world? Like grocery baggers. I'm European, living in Poland and Denmark and if given the choice, I will always pick the store with self checkout. It's simply faster. Only old people don't use self check out, not because of boomer ideology, but because they need the cashier's help.
This says much about respect and social competence in this society when the first instinct is to mock and abuse someone with different priorities than yours.
I enjoy turning this one around. "Oh, you're one of those socialists who wants everybody else to do your work for you, too lazy to lift your own groceries. Nobody wants to work anymore!"
Screw Walmart. During the storms here in NC, I went there to buy some relief supplies, and it was awesome to see the whole store getting picked apart by people buying supplies to donate. What was definitely not awesome was the only 3 checkout lanes open out of the total 12, because Walmart has a 3 per employee rule and they don't want to assign enough workers for the checkout lanes, even during times of crisis like this.
I personally prefer to use the self-checkout lane because I want my groceries bagged in a specific way (raw meat in one bag, cans/bottles in another, etc.). It's infuriating when I line up my groceries in order on the conveyor and the bagger just stuffs them in the bags randomly anyway.
I pay with Canadian money, because I'm a Canadian who buys from stores in Canada.
That was easy to do in Ontario Wal-Mart stores.
But then they put up self-check-outs that only accepted credit and debit cards—maybe because they're in cahoots with the banks and the NSA/wp:CSEC.
Then I had to use a cashier.
So I went to Wal-Mart fewer times as I didn't like to wait (as well as the increased prices during and after Covid-19).
Now they have a person at the self-checkout who will scan my stuff and accept my cash.
It seems that Wal-Mart adapted—somewhat—to people like me: people who pay with cash.
Still, I do more purchases at Food Basics and Dollarama because their self-check-outs accept cash, including pockets full of loose change that I purposely carry when I go there.
I get being mean to walmart because corporations are bad but being needlessly rude to random employees rubs me the wrong way. Most of us can't get a job anywhere better despite having a degree. We have to deal with the mental abuse of people constantly treating us like dog shit just because we exist. The job situation is so fucked right now. I should not be having to compete with people that have masters degrees and decades of experience for tech support jobs that pay $15 an hour. Fuck this broken society.
The self checkout is a perfectly viable option, so long as Walmart can find the strength inside themselves to open 3-6 manned tills on a Sunday for folks with large carts or children. Nothing is more demoralizing than getting up to the checkouts after a huge shop and finding there isn't a single till open whatsoever. Throw in a four-year-old who wants to help scan every item and you're ready to burn the store down by the time you leave.
When I bring my banana through the cashier lane they give me a dirty look. But when I ride one of the lawnmowers inside and try to mount a self check out, I get kicked out of the store. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
I hate self checkout. I work all day to then check out my shit and bag my own groceries? And pay 2x for the same food and less service than 5 years ago?
I've recently visited a grocery store in Hamburg, where you just put all your items on the self checkout counter, it detects all the prices and quantities in an instant (yes, including fruits and vegetables that require weighted!) you pay, you go. So great ! The only truly practical implementation of a self checkout, in my opinion. I've seen this in other types of store before (clothing) but never for groceries.
I wouldn't mind if either the cost savings by the grocery store would be transparently passed on to the customer and not greedily put in own pockets OR the checkout process is like " walk through a gate, everything is self scanned due to RFID tags and you can pay immediately at a machine"
The closest Walmart to me has about a dozen or so self checkout tills and there is usually a line of 20 people waiting to get to them. There's 3 cashiers that are there to badge the machines when they need to check ID for alcohol or override the machine if you double scan an item. I love self checkouts in other stores but Walmart has always been infuriating.