A grocery chain is removing self-checkout after realizing executives hate it as much as customers do

Note that Booths is a high-end supermarket that only has 27 stores. So I doubt that other supermarkets with different clientele and a lot more stores will go the same way.

I didn't realize people used the self-checkouts to shoplift until I read about people here doing it. I've been using it since the moment it existed. I like the machines at my local chain supermarket much more than the ones at Whole Foods, which are a bit more work, and shop there 90% of the time. I mainly go to WFM for dairy products now.

Honestly, I do curbside pickup more than self checkout, but if I have to go in a store, I’m not waiting in a line with a cashier. If it didn’t cost so much more, I’d probably do all grocery delivery. My sister and I disagree about whether you get better produce from curbside pickup. She thinks it’s worse and wants to go in and personally select all her vegetables. I think they’re not pulling the produce from the front of the store and are pulling it from the back and the stock of what they’ll eventually put out front and it’s actually better than what you’ll find on display. Who knows though.

People were getting arrested when they didn’t shoplift, an attorney wrote an article about it. At least that’s what was happening in the USA. The stores were shaking people down essentially.

Booths profits before tax in 2022: £3m.

Tesco profits in 2022: £2.6 billion.

Even adjusting for number of locations, Tesco is making 5x profits per store than Booths, and that includes a lot of small Tesco Express stores.

Thanks, r1. I didn’t know anything about the store, but I guess I can understand if you’re at a high end grocery and were checking yourself out, it might be an annoyance.

Once at a Target in the self checkout, some lady was having problems with everything. She was scanning things twice, putting in the wrong produce codes, and constantly having to call the employee working the self checkout over for help. Finally she got so frustrated she snapped at him “I’m having to do YOUR job so you should be paying me!” and without hesitating, the target guy said “well, you’re doing a really bad job, so we’d probably have fired you by now”.

I had to stifle bursting out laughing. I’m guessing that Target employee posts here.

I can't steal. Accidentally walked out with toilet cleaner without paying as it was on a bottom rack of the cart. I went back inside, scanned and paid for it. Never hesitated. I never regret doing the right thing.

R6 My point was that their clientele is rural, older, with more money. The type to not be into self-checkouts, essentially. Also, it's possible they were finding the cost of the machines not worth it given that they are a small chain.

Self checkout is just another attempt by corporate America to eliminate jobs. Not using it is one of the statements you can send to them that you support the American worker.

R9 I'm all for efficiency and reducing the need for low paid work like that, so I think it's a good thing. Technological progress has made life better and cheaper for many more people.

[quote]Self checkout is just another attempt by corporate America to eliminate jobs. Not using it is one of the statements you can send to them that you support the American worker.

You know, fabric used to be made by hand on looms by workers and it took them forever but it was eventually replaced by machine looms that could make fabric hundred of times faster. Are we to assume you only wear clothes made of fabrics produced by little old ladies on hand looms? Or are you a hypocrite?

I hate self-checkout. It was started to boost profit for corporations not for consumers. They eliminated employees but didn't lower prices. Now they're pissed that people are shoplifting. Their concern is still with their bottom line not with the consumer. Prices will increase with the excuse that they now need to employ checkout clerks, the same prices they never decreased when they fired the clerks.

I love self checkout. It's only annoying when something doesn't ring up properly and you get the old "Please wait for assistance" message. But I have spent time in countries where self checkout takes 5 minutes vs. standing in line for 20 minutes or more (Argentina...). Give me self checkout any day.

Why not just make self check out only for whites?

R12, the truth is, they didn’t actually reduce the number of cashiers. They just added self checkout and made the lines shorter. Cashiers are still employed but they have two or tire people in line at anytime instead of 10 or 15 backed up halfway though the store.

If anything, not having self checkout probably caused people to give up waiting in long lines and abandon full carts and walk out the stores in frustration. Self checkout just made everything more efficient.

I remember grocery shopping in the 90s and it was a nightmare. They never had enough cashiers and you waited in long lines forever.

That is one of the reasons I like it - getting my stuff through is a lot quicker now. You don't typically have to wait long because there are a lot more check-out machines. All the stores here still have cashier lanes available anyway.

I used to live in the U.S. and disliked the self-checkout lines unless I had only a very few easily-scanned items. When the cashier lines were long, the self-checkouts had lines as well, so the idea that one was the clearly swifter route was often not true.

Where I live now there is no self-checkout in the grocery stores. Stores typically have everyone trained to operate the cash registers, and at the first hint of a backup reinforcements are called in and new checkout lanes opened. Customers typically walk to the supermarket and make multiple short shopping trips in a week, very rarely buying ore than one or two bags full of goods. If someone shows up with a large cart full of supplies for a party, another cashier lane is opened to avoid lines. Shopping would be an unpleasant task if it regularly involved lines and long waits to pay for purchases, except that it isn't unpleasant because they are very attentive to having enough cashiers available. There are no personal checks and no coupons, and very few people fumbling for exact change; the vast majority of purchases are by credit/bank card.

There are some stores that have self-checkout points such as sporting goods chain stores and some chain clothing shops. These work fine because people buy no more than a few items, there are no lines, and the process is made incredibly simple by the automatic scanning the item/s when you place them on the counter, all at once if you want.

Fuck You R10

Ann Reid's speech in Years & Years

But it still doesn’t alter the fact that it’s all your fault. Everything. All of you. The banks. The government. The recession. America. Every little thing that’s gone wrong, it’s your fault.

Because we are. Every single one of us. We can sit here all day blaming other people. We blame the economy. We blame Europe. The opposition. The weather. And then we blame these vast sweeping tides of history, you know, like we’re so out of control and we’re so helpless and small.

But it’s still our fault.

You know why? It’s the one pound t-shirt.

The t-shirt that costs one pound. We can’t resist it. Every single one of us. We see a t-shirt that costs one pound and we think “Oh, that’s a bargain, I love that” and we buy it… nice little t-shirt for the winter to go underneath that’ll do. And the shopkeeper gets five miserable pence for that t-shirt. And some little peasant in a field gets paid nought point nought one pence. And we think that’s fine. All of us. And we hand over our one quid. And we buy into that system for life.

I saw it all going wrong when it began. In the supermarkets. They replaced all the women on the till with those automated checkouts…

Twenty years ago when they first popped up did you walk out? Did you write letters of complaint? Did you shop elsewhere? No. You huffed and you puffed and you put up with it. And now all those women are gone. And we let it happen.

And I think those checkouts, we want them. Because it means we can scroll through pick up our shopping and we don’t have to look that woman in the eye. The woman who’s paid less than us. She’s gone. Got rid of her. Sacked.

Well done.

So yes, it’s our fault.

This is the world we built.

I hate to grocery shop. I do a large run rather than several smaller store runs. The last thing I want to do is self-check all my shit. I buy lots of produce and that's a self-checkout clusterfuckery. If I go in and get a handful of stuff, like 4-5 items, I will self-check. Here is the bottom line. Just admit you all fucked up and put the checkers back. I forgive you store owners, just bite the damn bullet and do it.

Certainly in the UK the big supermarkets changed their business model with the success of Aldi and Lidl where their staff are paid extra and do everything - shelf stacking, checkouts, cleaning etc, whereas Tesco and Asda etc the staff have designated roles. Asda is facing a huge lawsuit because women on the checkouts were paid less than the men in the store rooms using heavy machinery.

They realised that people are happy to have reduced service levels (longer queues) if the prices were reduced. And with a lot of the smaller stores people are buying less so it makes sense to have 1 person manning 8 tills where people are filling 1 or maybe 2 bags of shopping. The reduced staffing costs (pension contributions and annual leave) more than compensates for any shoplifting done via self service.

I have not experienced any lowering of prices. Not a chance. What I do see is the continuous changing of packaging so that companies can attempt to trick consumers into believing they are getting the same for less... or simply the same for the same price as last month or last year. Pay attention to the weight of the contents and tell me I'm imagining this. Go ahead, I'll wait.

What I wish is that supermarkets in the US would let you bag and tag your fruit and veg in the produce dept like they do in Europe. Maybe it does exist here but I’ve never seen it.

Also cashiers should be able to sit down at the till. High stools that swivel if they don’t want to lower the belts. Even 3rd world countries manage that small mercy.

I had a difficult cart load the other day (cat litters, etc.) and when I got to my car I realized I'd forgotten the12-pack of Mt. Dew on the bottom (Iwas surprised an alarm didn't go off at the exit). I decided not go back in because they were busy and I didn't want to go through all that. $8.99, big deal.

R24 it’s called stealing. It is a big deal.

[quote]Their concern is still with their bottom line not with the consumer.

Welcome to capitalism.

R15 It's still like that at my local grocery and there are 6 self-checkouts (they need about 6 more.) In addition, there are rarely more than 2 operative cashiers at anytime so people with 101 items go through the self-checkouts, and this holds everything up. As well, the machines are crap and if your bag is about to fall off the stand and you adjust it, the process stops and you have to wait for a clerk to come by to check the items in your bag to ensure you are not stealing.

The self checkout haters would freak out if transported to the 1970s and nothing was scanned and everything had to be punched in by hand and inevitably 2 items in every order had to have a price check because someone grabbed a can where the price tag was missing.

The Target near me now has signs that say 10 items or less. The line moves along very quickly and they have enough cashiers to handle the people with cartloads of stuff and I can get in line and out the store in under 5 minutes. When I was a kid, going to the store with my mom to buy a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a gallon of milk was an hour long endeavor.

I usually do self check out at my Publix and I honestly don't see how stores experience more theft because of it. We have an attendant there and she/he watches everything. Most of the time it's because you might make a mistake or want to delete something and they have to punch in a code or do a price check. But there are very few opportunities to steal anything at self check out. I did see a woman just walk out of the store with her shopping cart and the manager went out to "talk" to her. She claimed she just forgot. She seemed embarrassed.

[quote]The self checkout haters would freak out if transported to the 1970s and nothing was scanned and everything had to be punched in by hand and inevitably 2 items in every order had to have a price check because someone grabbed a can where the price tag was missing.

What was life like before barcodes?

R29, I ended up googling self check thefts and read about the “banana scam” where people peel the stickers off bananas and put them on the bottom of light but very expensive items and then scan them and then if they have to weigh them, they’re paying 49 cents for a $30 DVD or iPhone case or anything else they buy. The people monitoring self checkout can’t keep that close an eye on things and it’s easy for people to steal at self checkout. They also pass items over the scanner and miss the barcode and drop them in the bag unpaid for.

Some stores weigh what’s in the bag but Target doesn’t so it can’t tell if you stole an item by pretending to scan it. At CVS, I’m usually buying at least one thing that is so light like a small bottle of eye drops that when I drop it in the bag, it’s keeps telling me to put the item that is already in the bag in the bag. One time I got so frustrated by that I threw something small really hard into th

If I buy three items and get stuck behind a frau with a shitload of small fussy kids and a basketful of items, who then decides she has forgotten something, so has to go back with the kids and retrieve those popsicles, then takes out a checkbook to write a check... you'd better believe I want self-checkout. Fuck those who object.

Whole Foods now has the self checkout.

I'm NOT going to weight my own produce

I'm don't work in the store.

Well. That self posted before I was finished!

I threw something really small into the bag with enough force hoping it would register that it was in the bag. It told me to remove the in scanned item from the bag and scan it again.

Moments like those at self checkout are frustrating and CVS didn’t (don’t know if they do now) have an attendant watching self checkout, so it took ten minutes for the cashier to clear their line before they could come over and help.

fuck them, i pay enough for items. you gonna ring them up and bag them for me. You ain't gonna make me do your work for you.

the only time I would go to a self check out at a place like say target is I have a shit load of coins that I want to get rid of. I will pay the entire bill in coins.

R36, why not do that with a cashier? They get paid hourly so if they have to sit there counting your coins, you know you’re a good person supporting real employees over machines.

R12....EXACTLY !

I love self check out, I can scan and bag faster than the cashier. And I don't get stuck in line behind some dipshit frau with 500 items.

I loooooove self check-out! I have used the same supermarket for years so over time I’ve figured out every prompt and nuance about their machines. I’ll buy four bags of groceries and bing bang boom I’m out of there in minutes. Total control. No interaction with people. It’s so satisfying.

And I NEVER steal or cheat anything.

Around me I sometimes hear people freaking out and complaining and getting help from the attendant and complaining about technology. Been there! Not any more. If you use those machines enough you master them.

I was with a friend in the same supermarket recently who refused to use self check out and wanted to wait in line for a cashier. Fine. I hated it so much. The slow dead-eyed cashier was taking forever and kept making mistakes. People kept stopping what they were doing to have inane conversations while the line grew. Kids running into the line to pick out candy. Everything was filthy. It took what felt like an eternity and felt stupid. I was like, “How did I ever tolerate this before?”

R3 Sorry they take it off shelf in front, I know you want better, but you get what everyone else gets.

OMG @ the most recent Jennifer Aniston treatment.

Who here is "Mike Branson"?

I use self checkout but I refuse to show my receipt to the person checking receipts at the exit. They don't need to check my work. I don't work for them.

You don't have to show receipt UNLESS it's at Sam's Costco etc where you agreed to it.

I love the idea of self checkout. Especially now that I have to bring and pack my own bags anyway.

But the set up for bagging always seems inefficient. Frequently there are two surfaces and I can never tell which one is intended for bagging. Maybe because I’m left handed. CVS was the worst, the machine would start yelling at you to “please put your item in the bagging area.” I already scanned it, I’m not stealing so wtf do I have to put the item in the poorly unidentified bagging area?

It's annoying that the self-checkout registers film you as you scan. And they don't have enough space for you to put all your items on the loading part.

Ralphs FINALLY stopped making you set every single item on the scale/bagging area. Buying a couple six packs? There's not enough room. Now you can take the UPC scanner and scan them while leaving them in the cart. But Ralphs always has at least one employee standing there watching self-checkers like a hawk. They're officially there to ask you if you need to buy a bag, but they're watching intently.

And the idiots who try to buy alcohol at the self checkout... Jesus Fucking Christ. This seems to happen every time I try to use a self checkout. Ralphs doesn't help deter it either – somebody runs over to override/authorize the sale.

I wonder how much better it would be to wait behind a customer with 600 items and 200 coupons at a self check out.

We have to pay for each fucking bag. We have to check our own groceries while being treated like shoplifters. It’s like the store saying fuck you. As you walk through the store you see open shoplifting aka zero pay shopping. The stores can go fuck themselves.

I love self-checkout.

I hate it

I don't know what's going on in other countries but in Australia, Woolworths (largest Australian supermarket chain) found that they were losing a lot of money to stock shrinkage (customers not scanning all items and effectively stealing) so now we are filmed via a camera directly in your face from the scanning terminal. At no point is the shopper asked to opt in or out - the shopper has no choice.

It really pisses me off. You can see yourself on the terminal and it makes me very uncomfortable. I have seen a few other shoppers use things like Post It notes to cover the camera while they scan their items and then remove it when they are finished.

What do people from other countries think of this? Because it's coming to your supermarkets soon too.

I think that it's creepy as hell R52 and I'd find another place to shop that doesn't treat me like a criminal.

Agreed R53. Woolworths and Coles hold a supermarket duopoly in Australia so we have little choice. Motherfuckers. It's a gross invasion of privacy.

Coles has started filming us too. You can bet supermarket chains in other countries will be watching closely and planning to introduce it too.

This below is what the selfscan terminal screen looks like. Note the image of the customer in the top right hand corner.

R54 = R52.

[quote]so now we are filmed via a camera directly in your face from the scanning terminal.

This doesn't bother me at all.

I prefer self-checkout when I only have a handful of items. I'm much quicker than a tired clerk near the end of an 6 hour shift. I also am not stupid enough to put breakable items at the bottom of the bag. I'm also careful with the items and don't just toss them around. Finally, it's one less person whose hands have been god knows where touching my stuff.

R52, at Target in the US there’s a camera directly above every cashier manned checkout line filming you anyway, most people don’t notice it. I’m sure the whole store is filled with cameras and probably most grocery stores are, so we are already being surveilled. I don’t think there’s a room of 100 monitors and 20 surveillance analysts sitting there scrutinizing every camera. I think they are there in case someone gets robbed at gun point. So I’m not at all bothered by the camera at self checkout (that has a little screen where you can see yourself checking out your groceries. Sometimes I’ll smile for them and wink, or use it fix my hair).

Cameras have been surveilling us in stores for decades now. Who gives a fuck?

A lot of people give a fuck when it's directly in your face and you can see yourself on the screen R59.

Why r60? It's not a big deal.

I hate having to go to a cashier. They use so many unnecessary bags in the interest of providing “good service”, and it’s always nice to avoid forced human interaction b

I do see more and more signs limiting the number of items in the self-checkout. It’s understandable but many of us can process more than 20 items pretty quickly. A bulging cartload is another matter

R51. Yeah. I don’t like being reminded of how I look either, but it’s really a minor thing.

[quote] When I was a kid, going to the store with my mom to buy a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a gallon of milk was an hour long endeavor.

Are you so ancient that smaller convenience stores didn't exist?

[quote] it’s always nice to avoid forced human interaction

Dear, dear, you poor thing.

R65. Yeah, I know for friendless people, dealing with people who are paid to pretend that like you is vital. Fortunately, I’m not in that situation.

I REFUSE to use self-checkout.

We have a local store that has a variety of self-checkout options, no carts and 10 items or less, carts allowed but 20 items or less and carts allowed with over 20 items. They have at least 3 employees monitoring at all times. They have plenty of regular checkouts with cashiers and baggers and they almost always have lines with people that have huge cartloads. It's really a great system.

Surprisingly, the eldergays of DL are one of the last bastions of support for self-checkout, while everyone else is souring on it.

[quote] Are you so ancient that smaller convenience stores didn't exist?

Yes

Have you considered the alternative?

[quote] Surprisingly, the eldergays of DL are one of the last bastions of support for self-checkout, while everyone else is souring on it.

Because we remember how bad it was before. If they take them all away, the babygays will be whining for them to be returned.

[quote]the truth is, they didn’t actually reduce the number of cashiers. They just added self checkout and made the lines shorter.

You're wrong. They most certainly did reduce the number of cashiers. That's the reason stores started using self checkouts, so they could save money by having less employees

R73 is correct.

People-averse DLers will recoil in horror at the designated "slow" cashier tills in some grocery stores in France and Spain. The tills are meant to relieve the pressure on some older people to "hurry the fuck up, and have your payment ready, FFS." Also, they are meant to give lonely people a more relaxed opportunity for the exchange of a few pleasantries with the chattier sorts of cashiers.

I've seen few examples of them, but they do exist still. It wasn't a temporary COVID measure.

Self-checkout tills would be a disaster in Spain. But Spain, like much of Europe, puts customers to work bagging their own groceries so the process of cashier assisted checkout is often faster than self-checkout.

R23 Cashiers are not sitting down in the US?

Booths is a northern Waitrose, so I imagine their main shoppers skew towards the older end; many of whom will prefer traditional checkouts.

If I do a small shop I prefer taking my basket to a self-checkout rather than queue for ages at a standard checkout. If I do a full shop, I like to use a self-scan gun then just pay at the self-scan checkouts at the end.

I don't think the large supermarkets (Morrisons, Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda etc) will follow Booths in this regard.

Is Booths a grocery subdivision of Boots?

R78 Nah, Boots is a national chain of chemists. If you're in the US, I think the equivalent would be CVS?

Booths is a supermarket chain that only operates in the north of England. I believe it's still run by the Booth family.

I hate stores that don't have them now. I'm introverted and hate small talk and have personal space issues. I'm also picky about the bagging, it bugs me when they pack what can easily fit into 2 bags into 5 or 6 and they always do.

r76 Correct. Typically, cashiers do not sit down in the US.

Self-checkouts probably do result in shrinkage, but it probably has to teach a pretty high level before it erases the advantages of eliminating mating cashiers. Even though cashiers are not highly paid, the retailer is saving several hundred dollars or more an hour when you take into account the hiring, administrative, and management costs associated with employing cashiers.

Are they going to bring back pump attendants at gas stations too?

At both of my local supermarkets they have got rid of all the cashiers except for those who work the "12 Items or Less" lane, who never enforce that rule and consequently get long lines. Since cash registers can count, the supermarkets could obviously configure them to scan anything past 12 items at double price and that would soon get customers behaving, but they choose to inconvenience us so we will go to the self-serve even for small orders. I assume the people who have to come help you when the machine goes berserk for no obvious reason are also remnant cashiers, but there aren't nearly as many of them as the store used to have.

I never offered to work for my local supermarkets. I think we should all find out the hourly rate of the cashiers on the Express lanes, divide it by the amount of time we spend ringing up and bagging our own stuff and paying for it, and we should all steal the equivalent of that amount each time. We could probably get the unions to promise to back us in court if we could show the amount stolen corresponded to that calculation. I don't recall ever signing a Terms & Conditions with the supermarket. What they've done is outsource all the checkout work onto customers without giving us pay, much less leave, OHS and other entitlements. If you're a weirdo who enjoys doing that work, then you of all people should know you are standing in the way of people who get paid to do it. You can become one of them if you love it so much, but they can't do anything about being replaced by amateurs.

My favourite thing is when the self-serve machines break down, which they do constantly, and they put up a sign that says, "Let us serve you elsewhere." Great! Where? You're not serving us ANYWHERE, bitches.

R80, you can always tell the cashier you will bag your own stuff as they ring it up. None of them will fight you for that privilege.

R84. It is difficult to get them to bag it as you wish.

Do you also steal gasoline because no one is there to pump it for you?

Grocers used to pull items off the shelves for customers too. Maybe we should steal some to make up for that.

Sane for shoe stores where it is increasingly rare to deal with a saiesperson.

R81 That's fucked up

R85, I said R80 could take the bagging away from the cashier and do it himself if he's so keen to do it. They're still ringing it up, so they're not going to fight him about bagging it.

Supermarkets never pulled items off the shelves for customers. Small grocers still do. They will probably also revert to weighing sugar and cookies into brown paper bags for you, when the environmental crackdown on plastic packaging gets serious. So that's not a thing.

Sadly, the fight over gas pumping has been lost for decades, but there is still hope of turning the supermarket thing around, as OP's story suggests.

Society simply cannot be made to understand that all these people getting put out of low-paid jobs by technology form a greater cost than their crummy wages. If they get another job doing something else, it costs the government and/or the new company money to retrain them, and if they don't they become a drain on the welfare and support systems, and they or their children often a drain on the justice system, all of which you pay for in your taxes. Plus they get angrier and angrier and start voting for autocrats.

How does one shoplift at a self checkout? I’m mostly asking for a friend, but at my local market, if you even breathe on the bagging area it registers a weight change and locks the register until someone comes and unlocks it. I’ve thought it’d be easy enough to enter the wrong codes for produce, but knowing me, I’d put in a code that was more expensive.

R87. As you admit, grocers used to pull articles for customers. They were put out ouf business by supermarkets, which don’t. Essentially, you want progress to stop around 1970 or so, no earlier, no later. The grocer who used to be able to take things off the shelves for you can’t make a living because of supermarkets. And, of course, before the grocer, the farmer would have sold to you at a market, avoiding the grocer middleman. But you don’t resent that because it had already disappeared before you were born, along with the candlemakers, etc.

It’s fine to have nostalgia for your childhood. Just don’t turn it into a social or economic philosophy.

I dont think super stores like Walmart or Target will ever get rid of self-check now, there is no way they'd have enough cashiers working to keep lines down. 30 self check out stations in those mega stores was the only way they could eliminate those huge lines.

[quote] You know, fabric used to be made by hand on looms by workers and it took them forever but it was eventually replaced by machine looms that could make fabric hundred of times faster.

Yes and the process ended up putting more people to work, not less. So much for your analogy.

Thank you, R91, I was just about to post that point. Also, the higher volume of fabric produced meant that more people could buy more clothes, including the workers. There's no analogy with self-checkout.

R82 Haha I think you are the only two who knew that was the way the validity of the analogy was supposed to be evaluated. Most of us haven’t been trained in Luddite logic.

To sum up, we can never change a cultural practice or technology unless eliminating it results in more employment? And you seriously believe you live your life without violating this principle a thousand times every day?

Ahd you’ve researched the data on your claims about the effects of modern fabric technology on employment. I’m deeply sceptical that what you’re saying isn’t total nonsense.

Oh lord. The Amish have arrived at DL and are telling us we need to go back to milking our cows by hand and manually looming our fabrics because it creates jobs. 🙄

Just a footnote: It used to be that the cashier and the checker at a grocery store were fulfilling two different functions (in my experience, this changed by about the mid-1960s). The cashier had a little window (like a bank teller) or a booth in the place, and someone paying by check would, upon entering the store, go to the cashier's counter and cash the check, thereafter doing the actual shopping and then going to the checker at the cash register to get rung up (and pay with cash).

You would have applied to the cashier for a check cashing card when you first intended to start patronizing the store; and the cashier, before potentially issuing the card, would take a week to contact your bank and a few references to see if you were a risk or not. The cashier would also be the one to issue money orders and other such financial matters (I think they sold stamps sometimes too). I guess that at some point, just like now management is trying to phase out checkers, someone in the industry back then had the bright idea of fobbing off the cashier's job on the checkers, and so getting rid of one salary to pay . . . while meantime bestowing on customers in line the opportunity to enjoy people ahead of them writing and cashing checks at the register.

Do any grocery stores still have separate cashiers and checkers, as above?

I always use self-checkout. I’m not interested in standing behind memaw taking forever to put her groceries on the belt.

I do my food shopping at Waitrose and Sainsburys in the UK. I use the hand held scanner on each product I'm going to buy as I walk around and bag my groceries as I go. When I get to the end I scan the QR code at the till, pay, and I'm out of the shop in 30 seconds. Brilliant. Maybe I'm doing someone's job, but man, the efficiency of it is great to me and I don't really want to talk to a cashier at the end anyway.

I love self checkout. I am not at the store to get a warm fuzzy feeling by socializing - I am there to get my groceries and get out. And because I am retired, I go shopping when all the other "old people" are there, most of whom are terrified of self-checkout. I never have to wait for a station, and there is usually an attendant there if something weird happens. And, if I use the regular checkout, I always have to bag my own groceries anyway since they never have anyone bagging. Fine if you don't like self checkout, but don't take it away from everyone.

I shop at Lidl and there are no self checkouts there, but waiting in line is never that long. As soon as they see that there's a line forming they open up a new line. Everything has a code on it so there's no need for weighting your fruit or vegetables, cashiers are very quick, all connected to each other via headphones, everything runs very smoothly and fast.

The only thing is, cashiers here don't put your items in bags. You do that yourself. That must be an American thing. Maybe some other European countries have it, but I never heard of it. People that buy a lot of products aren't putting them in bags but back in the carts and then take them to their cars and put them in bags there, which makes the whole proces of waiting in line a lot quicker

I'm sorry R23 but that makes too much sense, and on top of that it would be doing something nice for cashiers and NO, I can't get on board with that either! Let's be mean. Let's be Trumpian! Fuggem!

Price tags. I know we’ll never go back to individual price stickers on items but ffs, trying to find the price of a bag of shredded Parmesan or a container of crumbled feta! There are the plastic price tags that slot into the shelves above? below? who cares. Most are missing or in the wrong place. You have to bend over to read the tiny print (and make sure you note the correct size in ounces!). I feel bad for the recent immigrants to my city who have to figure this out and their budget is limited.

You guys who have scanners? How does that work? Can you scan for a price and then decide not to buy it?

hand held scanner on each product

You actually get a scanner and walk around with it? In America you wouldn't have any scanners left, or someone would throw it around and break it.

r101 most stores have apps you can download to scan item's barcode and look up the exact price

Yes, Target is now limiting self-checkout to ~ 10 items or less. Not sure why. I was disappointed by that.

[quote]To sum up, we can never change a cultural practice or technology unless eliminating it results in more employment?

This particular change results in employing the customer, but for free. That's what's so egregious about it. They are putting people who need the job out of work, while forcing the customer to do what used to be paid work for nothing. And raking in huge profits from doing so.

For the person who asked, one of the shoplifting ruses is to put avocados on the scale and identify them as onions to the computer.

R100. As stated above, you used to have your groceries handed to you. When a supermarket requires you to pick out the items yourself, are you working for free? When you go to a buffet, are you working as a waiter for free? When you pump your own gas , are you working for free?

Your idea that a business not providing a service you would prefer to have is forcing you to work for free is bizarre and highly selective

If you're paying less for a meal at a buffet than you would at a restaurant, or saving time as for groceries at a supermarket and gas by pumping it yourself, then it's worth your while. If you're paying the same amount and the self-checkout lines are taking as long as the regular lines (as often happens at my supermarkets), or make you wait for assistance because the scanner read something wrong, then yes, you're doing unpaid work for the store. You're really out of your economic depth here; read some of the literature on why companies are scaling back self-checkout or changing their use of it.

Which one of you bitches has the drag name Coco Khan’t?

r43 and the law, in the US, is on your side. Only place where you can be compelled to show your receipt may be a Sam's or Costco since they are membership clubs. But even then, you legally own what's in your cart so you don't have to show them shit.

My policy, if they ask me nicely and don't appear to be racially profiling (based on my review) I will show my receipt. But cop an attitude or only call out my black ass, and I will be walking right by them as if they are wallpaper. Call the cops hoe! Then, we will march back into the store and return my items.

There's just something about self-checkout that makes me anxious. They are always malfunctioning and you have to be so careful to not scan the same thing twice accidentally. Plus they're set up so awkwardly.

r110 you need a therapist.

Why do supermarkets sell raw ingredients? I haven’t signed a contract to cook for them!

Of course they’re going to keep them, self check out machines don’t call in sick and they don’t demand raises or benefits.

R97 we have that here in Westchester County, NY. I adore it . So efficient and quick.

My neighbor brags that she steals often; she'll get an expensive item, like a wheel of cheese etc, and not scan it but put it in the bag or cart. Before getting to checkout, if you tap the "finish shopping" button on the scanner, it will right away either show you the QR code to scan at the register and pay, or a message to have the attendant scan a few random items in your cart and make sure there you didn't miss anything. If she gets the QR code, she "wins" and walks out with the cheese; if she gets the audit message she puts the cheese back.

She's a wealthy woman but does it for the thrill. I tell her it's going to catch up with her, but she just laughs in my face with a mouthful of imported Brie.

R102, yes, most grocery stores in the UK have the scanners. You have to scan your membership rewards card and then you go. Every once in a while I get randomly checked where they put everything through regular checkout to make sure I've scanned everything. Only once in many years did they find something I didn't scan, a small box of raspberries that I forgot. R114, it's only a matter of time for your friend, but I hope she enjoys her cheese. :)

[quote]Every once in a while I get randomly checked where they put everything through regular checkout to make sure I've scanned everything.

Fucking hell, they do this?

I would walk away away say, "Your problem now. Enjoy reshelving."

If they push you to do the work of checkout yourself BUT want to perform random tests on the accuracy of your work because of they can't control losses, fuck them.

If they detect that someone is stealing, fine. If they can't detect it, it's their problem. I don't care to be randomized and treated like a school boy suspected of cheating on an exam, to have the "teacher" look over my work in case I've cheated.

A free insult and cloud of suspicion with every purchase.