>I refuse to use them, as the only reason they exist, is to fire cashiers
They are a much faster, more convenient experience than standing in line waiting for a cashier lane, scanning items after picking. It's just great, as the customer.
I'm glad they still have 1-4 cashier lanes for refuseniks, pensioners and people without the loyalty card (etc) who don't want to deal with it. Everyone's happy.
They are a much faster, more convenient experience than standing in line waiting for a cashier lane, scanning items after picking.
I'll have to start shopping in your town.
At every supermarket in my city, there is a long line of people waiting to use the self checkouts. I keep an eye on the last person in that line, and I'm almost always done first by using a human cashier.
People just buy into the "tech=better" meme without even thinking.
I also noticed this. I think we just want to avoid human interaction, I also do this myself, but I have no illusions that the self-checkout is faster, or that I'm doing the right thing.
You only have to hear "place the item in the bagging area, and then scan the next item" 100x and sometimes extra aggressively random. Oh, and then something scans twice and you have to wait 5 minutes because they only have one human helping with 8 different scanning stations. Or the scan gun starts beeping really loudly and not scanning anymore for some reason, and you have to return it to the dock, take it out again and hope it starts working. Or you're left handed or standing in a way the system doesn't like and the camera thinks you're trying to steal something so you have wait, again for the one human to come over review the footage look puzzled and tell the computer that yeah everything is okay
I travel a lot for work(200+ days a year) and so I see the best and the worst.
In every country I've been, the self checkout is implemented differently.
Only in certain countries, low trust societies, do you have to wait for the scale to calculate the weight of the goods to prevent shop lifting
In Switzerland as an example, self checkout is a breeze. There is no such scale at all. Fast, highly efficient with good software.
Same in Sweden, though for some reason some grocery stores in Sweden insist on being a member before you can use the self checkout lanes. I think because they were early adopters of the technology and weren't sure they could trust their customers(hint: they could). Another annoying thing is that you have to scan your receipt to exit the store. This you usually don't have to do in Switzerland.
I've seen the same type of inefficient system you're accustomed to in the UK at pretty much all the stores over there and in Rimi in Riga.
Frankly it works a lot better in Latvia than the UK, though still annoying and disrupts the workflow.
That describes most of them around here (suburban NY, USA).
The [REDACTED DRUG STORE CHAIN] ones are the worst. They get confused at the drop of a hat, and have some employee, constantly intervening. I suspect they run “brogrammer” code.
They also don’t work well for large orders or things that aren’t bar coded. They’re mostly good for a small number of bar coded items. And some stores have probably excessively trimmed human cashiers.
I don't agree at all. I think they're a terrible customer experience. I stopped using them a while back and am much happier for that. I'm not alone -- some stores have already started staffing more checkout lanes and removing some self-checkout kiosks.
They’re maybe more convenient for the shop but the lines seem equally long where I am as people aren’t as fast as a cashier. I don’t notice any difference in efficiency other than I now need to scan and look everything up myself. So a net loss for me.
Why should we protect the existence of jobs that are both unnecessary and make the customer experience worse? Aren't we still in the situation that there are more positions for unskilled labor than applicants?
Because we still live in an economic and societal system that requires everyone to have a job and spend more of their money on useless shit.
If we want to truly want to automate away jobs, we should also change our economic system such that people don't have to work like they do today. Without that we'll just create more jobs for everyone to fill, automating away some while cresting others and all we really sis wash shake things up and stress out those involved.
They are a much faster, more convenient experience than standing in line waiting for a cashier lane, scanning items after picking. It's just great, as the customer.
I'm glad they still have 1-4 cashier lanes for refuseniks, pensioners and people without the loyalty card (etc) who don't want to deal with it. Everyone's happy.