"From the consumer side, the technology forces customers to do work that store employees usually do, Aside from people who don't like making small talk with a clerk, and folks who are in a rush, it's hard to see who benefits from self-checkout."
The store. If the consumer does the work, you save the wage of the worker plus benefits.
While it may sound lazy, in this economy, doing curbside pickup benefits the workers by giving them a job (that at least for now) a machine can't do, and the customer saves the effort of shopping and working for the company.
I think they grossly underestimate how much I don’t want to engage in small talk and how little patience I have when it comes to having my crap scanned and bagged.
I like paper bags because I use them for my recyclables, and whenever I ask for a paper bag at Kroger, the 14-year-old at the end’s eyes cross and they stare at me dumbfounded until I go down there and help them bag. Then, I get to bring out my inner Karen when I ask them to stop putting just 3 things in a paper bag.
I go to self-checkout, so that I can avoid the “how are you?” chatter, but mostly so that I don’t have to act like a total heifer just to get my crap bagged quickly and efficiently.
Definitely agree. I LOVE self checkout because I don’t have to interact with someone after spending all day force to do so at work. There’s a lot of introverts out there and we don’t have the energy to interact after our 40 hour+ work week. God, I love curbside/delivery too.
I like curbside in theory but I've been burned enough times with either items being out of stock or weird ass/ more expensive substitutions makes it feel not worth that hassle
Genuinely speaking, I'll gladly wait a significant amount of time longer just to do self check. The worst is at Publix (I think they are just in the south eastern US) where I have to avoid eye contact so they don't wave me into a normal checkout area
Employees are usually trained to pick older fruit for curbside pickup, you can't get unplanned discount items or sales, and you find yourself entrenched in their ads and promotions in their app. Curbside pickup is the worst way to shop for the customer.