Either that, or I have to wait for an employee myself for the stupidest reason, i.e. that I’ve brought a canvas bag that they have to verify I didn’t steal.
Your supposed to weigh the bag first, at least in some stores.
Huh, never really experienced that myself. Excluding self checkout at fast food though.
Yall live in retard land. Everyone here has everything checked out in their carts before they get to the registers unless they have like 5 items. Otherwise they are scooted to restarted land off to the side.
Fun fact: This is why a huge amount of people don’t use self-checkout despite it potentially saving a lot of time. They are afraid the person behind them is going to judge them like this while trying it for the first time.
Super fun fact, the people who aren’t idiots at the self checkout, are not notable and therefore are not noted. It’s the morons who stand out.
Just like with driving. The guy in front is always too slow, and the guy behind is always going too fast. Because you don’t notice when the inverse is true.
I avoid self checkout for different reasons.
-
I’m not getting a discount while I have to do more work and the supermarket less.
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I take extra responsibility, if I forget to scan one item I could get in actual trouble during a random check.
Further:
- Most self-checkouts are too small and unwieldy to hold two shoppings bags when you’re packaging a week worth of purchases.
- You still need an employee to come over and certify that you’re over 18 if you buy alcoholic drinks, and there’s usually just one for many tills who is usually busy with somebody else.
- I like to pack my weekly shopping in specific ways (cold items together, fragile stuff on top, weight balanced) and whilst in a normal checkout I can do packaging in parallel with somebody else doing the checkout plus already place things roughly ordered on the threading band to the cashier, in the self-checkout it’s just me and things are in whatever order it went into the trolley so it takes at least twice as long.
- They often have quirks, such as for example the one I used more recently would not let me start unless I put a bag in the output compartment first, so I needed to have or buy a bag even though I was buying just 1 item (mind you this might have just been trying to force people to buy a bag, since many forget to bring one - in other words, structuring the software to force people to spend money which is a form of enshittification).
- They’re non standard and each store has a different model, with different physical structure and different software with a different UI with buttons in different places and often different quirks, so anything you learn beyond the basics about how to use one effectively is often non-translatable to self-checkouts in different stores.
- They often don’t take cash. Cash is good, it means your buying habits are not in some database somewhere and used for things like having an AI estimate how much an airline company can wring out of you for a ticket for a flight or a Health Insurer assessing your risk profile and upping your price, it works always even during outages (of power, of your bank, of payment processors) and studies have shown people save money if they pay in cash because they tend to spend less (something about the physicality of parting ways with your notes and coins makes people be more wary of paying more than if it’s just a number on a screen).
whilst in a normal checkout I can do packaging in parallel with somebody else doing the checkout
The store I go to most often has those rotating plastic bag holders at the end of the belts which makes it effectively impossible to put stuff into your own bags. And they have the fucking gall to put up signs asking you to bring your own bags! I do self-checkout there no matter how much shit I have in the cart.
My number one reason for avoiding self checkout is that I want people to have jobs.
If fewer and fewer people use the manned cashier lines, there will be fewer manned cashier lines.
If it’s busy, and I’m just grabbing a few things, sure, I’ll divert to the self checkout, but if there’s nobody in line, or just a few people in line, I’ll avoid self checkout. I’m not going to be the reason someone lost shifts.
- It’s often very time saving to go through checkout. It is really that much hassle to scan your own items? If you’re using a card you typically handle that yourself anyway and many places already have you bag your own goods.
- you’re not going to get in any real trouble if you forget one item. If they happen to check and you did, simply go pay for it, or say “oops, missed that, here take it back I’ll get it next time” if it’s not needed.
number 2 works less well if you are off white
🎶 the land of the freeeeeeeee 🎶
🙄
I got a question, how much are you being paid for this?
No. seriously. What business is it of yours if someone chooses to not use a self check out?
What? I’m not OP, but I’m pretty sure they’re just stating why they don’t use it.
Why are you assigning their logic to what they think of others?
So to your question, I say: they never said it was their business.
Enjoy your down votes. I’ll give you and upvote just to try to equal the scales slightly. Good luck.
they’re defending the use of self-check out lanes, which were introduced as a cost saving feature for the benefit of retail stores- not their consumers.
They are more than welcome to use the checkout lanes for the reasons they gave, but others- myself included- chose not to. I don’t think any one cares about whether or not a retailer has to hire more employees. at least nobody reasonable.
You do whatever. I like them when I have just a few items because it saves time and social interaction.
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For me it’s mostly privacy concerns. Now the fucking shop and all their 111 marketing partners know my email and where I live.
Why? At least here the self checkout gets exactly the same info from me as the regular one
You mean you can pay with cash? The one I’ve seen is with making an account with email and online payment, or worse, an app that can extract all sorts of info.
Havent seen one where you can pay with cash, but I have never seen one where you need to make an account to use.
I just tap my card
Well then don’t be a fucking moron. Sorry for being a dick towards those kind of people, but the voice prompts walk you through the entire process. All you gotta do is listen to them. I didn’t have any issues when I first tried one 20 years ago. They’re self-explanatory.
I mean at this point they’ve been around long enough that everyone should know how to use them by now, unless you recently moved from a country that doesn’t have them. But again, the machines walk you through the process every time.
Mate, not the previous poster but I’m a senior software engineer with an EE degree and broad enough experience that I could design and implement myself a self-checkout from the ground up, both hardware and software, including UI and backend integration, and I still tend to avoid self-checkouts for those reasons and a lot more (many which I listed in another post here).
There are two very opposite ends of the curve for people who don’t like self-checkouts: those who can’t deal with the tech (who you deem “fucking morons”) and those who have evaluated self-checkouts as a process and found it to overall be inferior to the existing process for their own usual use conditions or who look at it in a broader context and find it to have indirect social damage.
That you can only spot the “being a moron” as a reason to avoid self-checkouts is a pretty good indicator of your own intellectual limitations.
Fortunately, I’m the sort who goes, “Who the FUCK are you looking at?”, when I catch people staring.
I don’t need them to be speedy Gonzalez but to just not be actually illiterate buffoons
Screen: scan items to begin
Them: staring at the machine, slack jawed until the employee comes over
I’m also really lazy and don’t want to do it.
And so you blame the person whose thrown into having to use a self checkout with little to no instruction having to figure it out instead of the corpo execs who wanted to siphon a few local jobs into their new yachts?
If that person can’t even read a screen or do a minimum of reasoning, yes.
Working with office and business types all day long in a highly technical field, I will say this: people don’t even bother reading when it’s literally their job to read, understand and act upon something.
I’m not even going to touch the minimum of reasoning thing.
In the Netherlands , 18% of the population can’t properly read (functioneel analfabeet).
Yeah I didn’t believe that either first time I read that.
Your translation of functionally illiterate is so adorable. I’m stealing it.
OMG this.
Person in front checking out:
BEEP
Lays item on the scale, but is leaning on the scale.
PLEASE REMOVE ITEM FROM THE SCALE
Picks item up
Please put item on the scale
puts item on the scale but has their hand on the scale still
PLEASE REMOVE ITEM FROM THE SCALE
HELP IS ON THE WAY
(help was not on the way)
Them: These things NEVER WORK!!!
30 seconds later the POS resets and lets them try again.
me: Stop touching the scale, just leave you item there and back off
it works
They scan the next item and place it on the scale and leave their hand on the scale.
PLEASE REMOVE ITEM FROM THE SCALE
Every single item, they never learned. I eventually went to stand in the single manned line that had 15 people in it.
I was doing self-checkout the other day and I kept getting the “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA” alert every time I put something in my bag. I was getting enraged until I realized that for some random reason I wasn’t scanning anything before putting it in the bag. I have no idea what happened to my brain there.
I learned after a software update my local store now glitched if you put down a bag before you start scanning, it won’t let you proceed past the first item bagging without override. So now I wait and put the bag down with the first item so it won’t notice the specific bag weight and won’t force the person to help.
My local store has the “OWN BAG” button but it gives you like two and a half seconds to get the bags down before it sounds an alert and the attendant has to come over. Since my bags are always buried under the shit I’ve put in the cart, it’s an impossible task.
My husband was that guy, but I trained him. Eventually.
that’s why one line for multiple checkouts is better
Is it not the standard? Every store with self-checkout I’ve been to has a single line for all machines. I’ve even seen some stores with a single line for regular checkout.
Some places it’s unclear, like Lowe’s home improvement stores. Most people there sort of gravitate to a one-line-for-all-kiosks arrangement but there’s often one douchebag who think everybody else is standing there for no reason and cuts in.
Not standard here, but it’s a mix. Same applies to other checkouts: so many people are doing the devil may know what, I’m terrible at picking the fastest queue.
Self check at Sam’s Club at other club stores works in a one line per checkout way, where I am at least
Yes but it’s 100x faster to use the “Scan-n-go” on your phone anyways.
Scan shit with your phone camera as you put it in the cart. When done click checkout, pay on phone. Then just walk out. Occasionally someone will ask to check yer cart.
seems weird to use an app for a physical store
Yes it does but avoiding the madhouse seems worth it. Lines at my Sam’s are always 20+ minutes long
Costco started doing that except it’s them doing it while you’re in line. Like Chik-fil-A. Big brain.
Lines were already speedy, considering.
well, not in Jordan’s hood
Where I live the grocery stores all have groups of 6+ self checkouts that are reliable enough that only one or two might be out at the same time but generally work, all of the ‘too many items’ issues have been sorted out, and they are in places where people just naturally form lines and take the next free one. It works great and is so much better than checkout lines ever were as one person going slow doesn’t hold up everyone else.
Went on a work trip to a larger city and holy hell I understand why people there would hate self checkout. Forced lines, machines that constantly required human assistance, etc. That would suck to interact with regularly.
I have the same experience as you and live in a big city, I guess it depends on what country and how up-to-date the hardware is, it used to be like you said but the past 5 years it’s been great and I always use it.
Yeah, self-chekout in the 'burbs is fantastic, we have like 4-8 machines and most of the time, at least half are available.
Not only the self checkout. I usually end up behind someone who’s new to the concept of exchanging goods for legal tender and needs an introduction to it.
This is of course after they have told the story about why they’re in the store, starting with the new testament and moving on from there…
I spend a lot of time thinking about how it’s not my place to judge these people, but I think very few of them would manage to sit the right way on the toilet without outside assistance.
People on their cell phone who act surprised and annoyed that the act of checking out requires a brief moment of their attention.
At every checkout you pay twice. Attention and money. If you’re doing it correctly.
“Can I go ahead of you in line? My kid is acting up. Great thanks. (To cashier) I’d like to buy this alcohol and cigarettes with these food stamps that I acquired totally legally. No? Let’s take several minutes to discuss if there’s any way around the law. Now that that’s over, I’ll pay with a check. Oh, also, can I get 20 scratch off tickets? I just want to scratch them off while you wait. Here, I have a giant roll of cash that I will use, but don’t worry, I wasn’t doing this to make things go faster. Now is my chance to try to do a cash-changing scam on you.”
I always notice people are super cocky about this kind of thing. Yet self-checkouts are so fucking terrible it basically everyone runs into problems at them eventually. So just tempting fate from everyone in this thread really.
I don’t know how you can go wrong. You scan the thing, set it down, repeat. Press pay, scan your card, done.
“Unexpected item in bagging area” was a common misery for everyone in London in 2012. Don’t know if it’s improved there since.
In NL they now do ‘random checks’ of 10 items, which is basically ‘you having to unpack all your shopping’ and pack again so they can check if you stole.
The concept of self checkout is ridiculous, making you an unpaid employee and then blaming you for mistakes. It tries to solve the owner’s stinginess for not hiring more staff. It’s not there to help you, it’s there to suppress employees.
I love self checkout. It allows me to avoid most of social interactions and physical proximity with strangers, making the experience just that much less uncomfortable.
You’re right that it’s being used against the employees, everything that possibly can will in this system, that doesn’t make it inherently bad.
It should be an option, together with a well paid, well treated (let them sit ffs) workforce.
I’m not the most social person myself, but I can still comfortably stand 2m away from a cashier, say “Hi”, “Card”, “Thanks, bye”. That’s all the interaction that is needed, and it’s still a lot more relaxed than having some poor dude ask me to unpack all my shopping to check if I accidentally forgot to scan a yoghurt. So no, thanks I’ll boycott self checkout as long as possible.
Where I shop, if you go too fast it confuses the machine and calls an attendant over to clear it while a video of what I was doing plays. Which is bs.
Unless you get booze, need to use cash, or it’s an item the machine wants to weigh. Or worse, expects the weight to be different than it is.
At least most places seem to have turned off the weight thing (or it got ‘smart’ enough to not care so much).
It’s not you that goes wrong, it’s the scanner
Oh here’s one now.
Eh, I love them. If there’s a line, I’ll go for the human, but if a self-checkout is available and I don’t have a ton of produce, I’ll take it every time.
Whoever designed these machines had never used checkouts, touchscreens, or money before.
Early Wal-Mart models were the touchiest, naggiest goddamn things, like whoever invented PRESS X TO NOT DIE got fired from Capcom and went straight into commercial UX. You will bend over two times for every item, you may not swipe the same item twice for duplicates, and that half-ounce blister-pack better register on the bag-side scale or else the idiot alarm will go off anyway. As it will if you spend more than two seconds figuring out a screen that just jabbed your ears with a shrill beep to demand instant responses to a modal choice for no discernible reason.
Recently CVS had one that’s ATM-shaped, with an itty-bitty platform for your stuff. The cash slot is at knee height. The lower half of the machine is angled toward the ground. You can’t fucking see it, while it’s still demanding immediate responses to modal options, like you’re playing a game and have no sane reason to look away from the screen. Hi! Press button to begin. Are you buying something today? Press button to buy. Do you speak English? Press button for English. Will you be scanning things? Press button to scan. Okay, begin scanning things. Press button to scan something else. Press button to not scan something else. Press button to check out. Press button to pay your bill. Press button for how you’ll be paying your bill. Press button to activate the cash siphon conveniently located upside-down and backwards two feet off the floor, for use with popular brands of shin-mounted wallets, because the cocaine-chewing lizard person who designed this object has never seen a goddamn vending machine.
It was fine ten years ago! For like a decade, you got a shelf with a scanner in the middle, like a goddamn checkout counter, and you did the thing you’ve watched register-jockeys do since you got to sit in the cart. They didn’t model human customers as idiot robots who’ll instinctively stare at a screen and blindly follow instructions as quickly as possible. They acted like you had expectations, and were perhaps engaged in some manual activity involving a cart, a scanner, and three dozen disparate objects.
Everyday driving to work is almost the same experience for me. Not too sure they are even sober.
To be fair it is so much better than it was when they came out.
Can you elaborate? This was before my time, so I’m curious what that early experience was like.
It was a nonstop barrage of “Unexpected item in the bagging area!” on repeat until you just give up and walk out the door leaving everything behind for the store to clear away for the next customer.
Unfortunately the more regional stores and co-ops still have the old units. Which like, good for them for maintaining their stuff, but also it’s kinda a pain lol
The store can configure them to have higher tolerances. One store near me turned the scale off entirely. They have way more throughput on the machines, and don’t need as many human cashiers now. The scales didn’t enough theft in the first place.
The big improvement has been image recognition on produce. It used to be you needed to either know the produce code, or navigate a terrible menu system. Nowadays, you can just put stuff on the scale, hit the camera icon, and have it show you a few possibilities, which is almost always correct.
There was also a long period where the anti theft system would trigger if you breath on the bagging area, and require a staff member to unlock it. They seem to have toned that down a lot. Even when it triggers, it just nags you without locking anything.
I put something on the scale, hit search, type the first 3 letters of the item, select the relevant item, select whether it is in any additional container (like the produce bags), and it’s done. Takes me 3 seconds to do.
I’ll have to look to see if my grocery store has image recognition. I have not noticed that feature, but I’d be interested in trying it.
Oh man! I’m a city bus driver, and the amount of people that struggle with getting fare in the box is too damn high! I don’t understand how you could make a bus full of people wait for you to dig through your pockets at a pace that would make glaciers impatient. You’re standing at the bus stop, you know you’re getting on the bus, know you’ll need fare, yet here we are.
I want to get a documentary crew to follow some of these people around for a while just to see what they do with their days. I genuinely wonder how some people function.
Does your area still use cash for bus fares? In 2025? Where I am it feels like we’re behind because only this year did they start letting you tap on with your debit card or phone. We’ve had transit cards since like 2007.
We’ve got transit cards, but some people still insist on cash. To be fair the same people that struggle finding coins are the same people who struggle finding a fare card. Or will try to sit in the entryway of the bus, fire up the app, and buy a ticket, then activate said ticket, then struggle to scan said ticket.
if the bus doesn’t take cash how in the world would tourists be able to use it?
I got an Octopus card when I went to Hong Kong. I got an Oyster card in London. I got an Opal card in Sydney. It’s really not hard to get the appropriate public transport card for the place that you’re at.
Plus, as I mentioned, many places are now moving towards being able to just use your normal debit card, phone, or smartwatch to tap on and off.
Yup, I rode the bus a lot for a few years, and the first time I went, I checked what the fare was and made sure I was ready, and even on the 100th time, I still kept my fare in hand before getting on. I honestly don’t understand why you wouldn’t, surely you want to get where you’re going instead of digging through your pockets in front of the driver…
some people just living life on hard mode.
here buses haven’t taken cash for like 15 years. card or pre-bought tickets only.
Must be nice. We’ve got cards, but a sizable population still uses cash
I was stoked when they introduced fare cards in my area because:
- discount on fare
- easier than cash
- they supported credit card tap at the same time
- easy to reload and freeze online
I bought three, one for me, my SO, and my oldest kid (wasn’t free anymore), and if I misplaced one, I’d just freeze it and move the balance to a different one until it turned up. I’d lend one to family so they could take transit to the airport after visiting us and then return it when they came back (I’d be fine if they lost it).
Fare cards rock, I honestly don’t understand why they weren’t very popular.
They since removed the discount, so the value of the pass is a bit less, but we still use it occasionally since it’s less bad to lose the card than a credit card.
Have you seen the couple that both get out of the car at the gas station and have to collaborate way too much to work the pumps?
How do these people function in society? The machine is extremely simple to use. Insert card, type code, remove card, pick gas type.
Tourists from New Jersey or Oregon.
Luckily us Oregonians can legally pump our own gas now
Yeah, I only do that when my kid wants to “help,” and that usually means messing with the squeegee/sponge thing.
