
The unpopular rise of self-checkouts - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170509-the-unpopular-rise-of-self-checkouts-and-how-to-fix-them
======
microtherion
I use self checkouts regularly in both the US and Switzerland. The contrast in
UI design is staggering. The US self checkout machines (e.g. at Safeway) are
enormous, employ voices constantly hectoring me about bags, items placed in
the wrong location etc, and do everything to disrupt my rhythm:
[https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8382/8539442967_7917df5cde_b.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8382/8539442967_7917df5cde_b.jpg)

Swiss self checkout machines are small, silent except for beeps, and fast:
[https://subito.migros.ch/dam/jcr:afca29de-d490-4621-8844-868...](https://subito.migros.ch/dam/jcr:afca29de-d490-4621-8844-868515a4df47/2160x1215-Self-
Checkout-DE.jpg)

The latest option is that you can grab a scanner before shopping, scan items
as you place them in your cart, and just walk up to a station to pay.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That implies a level of honesty and trust that doesn't exist in the US. In
Switzerland, a store can trust customers to scan everything they place in
their carts. In the US, they can't.

The result is a worse society, because in the US, stores have to take measures
to not be ripped off. Those measures get in everyone's way, including the
people who would not steal from the store.

~~~
microtherion
> In Switzerland, a store can trust customers to scan everything they place in
> their carts.

You flatter us, but I'm not convinced the Swiss are particularly honest. And
I'm not convinced that anything the US register does is particularly helpful
to catch cheating.

~~~
narrowrail
I can take you to stores where the self-checkout is as good or better in the
US as you describe. How many different corporate entities and how many
different communities did you visit in the US?

~~~
microtherion
I am by no means trying to claim to have a comprehensive perspective on the
stores on both countries, but the two machines I describe were both located in
middle class grocery stores (Migros and Safeway, respectively) located in
prosperous areas of the respective countries.

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jccc
> Retailers tell us that self-checkouts are all about providing more choice,
> convenience and speed

Oh yes, of course. It's certainly _not_ just about the cost of an employee at
a cash register, which is why retailers give you a little discount when you
self-checkout. They do, right?

Sincerely: Does anyone believe there is any reason at all for pushing these
other than squeezing labor cost, to the retailer's exclusive benefit?

~~~
vec
I think these exist entirely to squeeze labor costs, but I'm not sure that's a
bad thing.

First, allowing grocery stores to operate with smaller staffs means we get
more grocery stores. The small, cramped grocery store that recently opened
within walking distance of my apartment probably wouldn't be able to operate
if it had to provide not just pay, but parking and work space for another
dozen full-time employees. That's a food desert in a dense urban core that
doesn't exist anymore and a smaller, but still substantial, group of available
jobs that otherwise wouldn't be there.

Second, if I were to approach you and tell you I had two plans for a machine.
Both are about evenly efficient, but one requires two people to stand at the
machine doing boring, repetitive, mindless drudge work for hours on end. I,
for one, definitely prefer the one that doesn't require human suffering to
operate. Automated checkouts eliminate jobs, but specifically they eliminate
shitty jobs that we should probably feel bad about asking anyone to do in the
first place.

~~~
smacktoward
_> I, for one, definitely prefer the one that doesn't require human suffering
to operate_

In the US, grocery worker jobs are some of the only blue-collar jobs left that
still provide a middle-class income with benefits. There are _lots_ of people
for whom getting one of these jobs is something to _aspire_ towards, not some
terrible fate to dread.

This has a lot to do with the fact that grocery workers are better unionized
that most -- 19% of workers in the retail grocery industry are union members,
compared to less than 7% in the private sector overall (source:
[https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-
Center/P...](https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-
Center/PDF/Communications/1509_Union_Density2015_RGB.pdf)). Which is one of
the reasons for the push towards self-checkout; it pushes those numbers down,
which reduces the bargaining power the union can wield on behalf of those
workers who the machines don't replace.

~~~
vec
If some mad gazillionaire decided to start paying people to hit their own
thumbs with hammers, I'm sure she could find a price point where a lot of
people decided they wanted to do that. If she kept doing it for long enough,
self-hammer-mangler might even become an honorable profession to which a lot
of people aspired. That doesn't imply that we, as a society, want people to be
spending their time and energy hitting themselves with hammers.

As a society, we spent the last few centuries having the problem of providing
a comfortable standard of living to ourselves and our peers and the problem of
getting shitty drudgework done be two problems that largely solved each other.
We are well on our way to actually solving the shitty drudgework problem. That
means we badly need to find a new solution to the comfortable standard of
living problem, but deciding not to fix the other, fixable problem doesn't
sound like a viable long-term strategy.

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nthcolumn
I have never used one. Even when there is a queue and a person monitoring
offers to scan for me I still queue. I'm never in that much of a hurry and I
enjoy being as nice as possible to the assistant. I completely avoid stores
that have self-checkout only. The time saved is often negligible or sometimes
it is even much faster depending on whether the person I am casually racing
has tried to check out some disallowed item eg. booze. or the machine has a
fit which seems to happen a lot. I also get to people watch when I queue. I
don't care when it is slower since I have been waited on - which is also nice.
Why on earth people would want to do it themselves is beyond me even though I
am very much a type A, am quite impatient and really dislike queues in
general.

~~~
kleiba
Ah, how nice: a like-minded person! I'm just like you in that respect, 100%.

I think another way to save costs (if that is what the stores are after) is to
make the cashiers they do employ more efficient. For instance, while living in
Melbourne, Australia, I sometimes went to a local Aldi store and the cashiers
there weren't exactly slow, but not the fastest either. In comparison, while
living in Germany, if you go to a Aldi there, they check your items out faster
than you can chuck them into your cart! (Yeah, that's right, they don't pack
stuff up in bags for you over there.)

It's really amazing how fast they can be... and they have to because it's
sometimes unbelievable how much stuff people in front of me can fit into a
single cart. Because of that, however, you still get waiting lines -- it's the
sheer mass of items people put on the conveyer belt. But the speed at which
Aldi cashiers operate could certainly be a lesson to other stores as well if
they want to maximize throughput per cashier.

~~~
mattkevan
It's changed now, but Aldi didn't use to use barcodes - the cashier had to
memorise all the product codes.

This meant they could go really fast.

------
makecheck
For me the only possible benefit was to save time, and on that self-checkout
machines have failed miserably. Generally there is at _least_ one problem but
often two problems that these machines refuse to clear for me without waiting
for help from an employee, and that almost obliterates any time savings all by
itself.

A lot, if not all, of the problems are self-inflicted poor design choices!

There is NO REASON TO CARE ABOUT BAGGING; I’m sure this is some ill-conceived
notion of anti-theft or whatever but when you aggravate 200 paying customers
for every banana theft that you prevented, you’ve still lost. A human cashier
can scan dozens of items and toss them aside in seconds!! You cannot come even
_close_ to that rate of speed when Every Single Item has to be scanned (and
often re-scanned), then moved all the way over somewhere else (and then
removed and added again before the computer is happy). And if you have the
audacity to buy a vegetable, whose codes cashiers mostly know by heart, you
will again be much slower yourself. Not to mention that the entire idea of
bagging breaks down with the recent craze to bring your own bags or simply
choose not to use a bag, because the computer _freaks the hell out_ when you
just want to scan your two items and pay and get out without leaving the
required sacrifices on the Altar of the Bagging Lord.

And there’s always at least one employee doing almost nothing except resetting
computers. You know what that person could do? Accept cards in advance to
start running them through the system while you’re screwing with your
groceries, then press a button so that when you’re ready to pay you basically
just have to tap a button and sign. Yet of course they don’t do that, they’d
rather create the slowest and most unhelpful self-payment system in history,
while people are waiting, which of course you can’t even _reach_ until you
satisfy the Bagging Lord in the previous step.

~~~
wapz
I've used self checkout about 10 times. The first time took forever because I
didn't know they were weighing my goods. Maybe the 4th or 5th time was slow
because I bought produce and it took a long time to find the goods. After that
when I had produce I just waited in lines for a clerk and when I went to the
self-checkout it was very quick (just because the no lines, not because I'm
quick at checking out). If there's no line or a short line for a clerk I just
wait in line.

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djmobley
Surprised to see so much hatred for self-checkouts.

I find it a pretty frictionless experience most of the time.

It's usually quicker than using a cashier, and if I'm getting my goods cheaper
through reduced payroll costs, who am I to complain?

~~~
instaheat
Agreed. It's usually the older generation I see having trouble with them.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I see _everyone_ having trouble with the bad ones, because the bad ones are
fundamentally broken. One big local store wasted a month getting the weight
checking to work reliably. Much frustration was caused.

The good ones are relatively friction free. Although my ideal would still be
to avoid the checkout altogether and have some kind of smart-scan zero
friction pay-as-you-leave system that only required a thumbprint or some other
simple auth on exit.

------
maxxxxx
If the self checkout could recognize vegetables I would be OK with it. But in
general I don't see an advantage other than the company saving salaries for
cashiers.

It would make more sense if everything had an RFID and you could just load
your shopping cart and the checkout would scan everything at once without
having to put things on a scanner. This would be really useful. You could put
your items straight into a shopping bag while shopping.

~~~
narrowrail
If you can't type in the code for a given piece of produce or at least use the
'type by name' I'm not sure I can help you. It sounds like we fundamentally
disagree about what the experience should be like. I've probably already
memorized the codes for ~40 veggies.

~~~
maxxxxx
To me it's easier letting the cashier figure out the codes. Obviously, I could
do it myself but at that point the self checkout has no advantage for me. It
only saves money for the company.

------
tabeth
Are people really that against interacting with someone, even if it is forced,
for a few minutes? Money saving aside, it's hardly conclusive to whether or
not self-checkout is superior. Such reasoning such as reluctance to make
conversation says more about the person making the claim than standard
checkout as a whole.

~~~
Finnucane
> Are people really that against interacting with someone

This is HN, what do you think the answer to that is?

That said, I hate self-checkout machines. Usually there's someone in line
ahead of you with a 'problem' of some sort, and that's even assuming the
machine itself is functioning properly. Our local supermarket actually removed
theirs because they sucked so bad.

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narrowrail
I have been using them for 10 years at kroger, and they work perfectly for me.
I go to the grocery every other day at ~630am. I am OCD about my veggies being
fresh (I also hate wasting food), and the store is on my morning jog anyway. I
find that self-checkouts in poorer neighborhoods are more strict about
discrepancies, so they may be a factor.

~~~
kurtisc
I doubt you have OCD.

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u801e
The best self-checkout system I've encountered are the ones they have at Sams
Club (and presumably at similar warehouse clubs like Costco and BJs). There
you swipe or insert your membership card. Once it has processed that, you can
take the hand-held scanner and scan all the items in your cart (when putting
things in the cart, I'll make sure the UPC codes are exposed).

Once you're done scanning, you place the scanner back into its holder, choose
your payment option, and make your payment. The only other thing you need to
do is have someone check your receipt before you exit the store.

It would be nice if those types of machines were in more stores as opposed to
the ones that require you to take items out of the cart and either scan or
weigh/enter code and then bag them.

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jobigoud
I'm still not sure why drive-through grocery stores aren't more common. Pick
your items and pay from the website, grab your stuff at your convenience in 5
mins tops. We have them everywhere in France.

~~~
graysonk
Walmart is starting that now in affluent areas

~~~
mac01021
Why only affluent areas? Do the poor not care to shop in this way?

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chaosbutters314
Personally I love self checkout more than a cashier. My things are bagged
faster and correct things are bagged together. I dont have to make stupid
small talk. And I can do it quicker since I know what I have and to expect.
And old people that'd hold up the line using checks (it's 2017, checks should
be banned from grocery stores for several reasons) are too scared to use them
so I won't get stuck behind someone like that.

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norea-armozel
I'm not sure if I hate self-checkout or not. But I do think they're abused too
often by stores who don't have adequate staff. I know it's all about a cost
saving measure but I have to wonder how much are they saving when people are
avoiding them?

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imhelpingu
I find that those who use the self-checkout are lacking in compassion for
others.

~~~
ionised
What logic did you employ to reach that conclusion?

~~~
imhelpingu
I read the other comments and reasoned that it would be fun to mock them.

