Then offer a discount for self checkout.
I used to love using the self-checkout. But then it became a trend among the corporate overlords here to get all paranoid about people stealing food, so now they have the weight system calibrated too strict. Now if you breath on the items in the bag it locks you out and someone has to come unlock the system to continue scanning. So it’s not really worth the hassle, and seems kinda pointless since an employee has to unlock the system after every few items.
Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don’t even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?
That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “boomer” on the opposite side of the word “sucker”.
Refuse to do free work for a company—insist that the grocery store employees go and gather the items on your list from the shelves for you! Never set foot on the sales floor, do pickup orders online only!
Background: It used to be that the proprietor of a store brought items you requested to the counter for you. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly pioneered a new grocery store model, requiring/allowing the customers to pick items off of the shelves themselves. Not only did they not give you a discount for doing their work for them, they raked in more money from impulse purchases. The increased sales more than offset the increase in shoplifting losses. A cynical, corporate ploy to bleed customers dry, and we just think it’s normal now!
That is to say, the purpose of a grocery store is to provide food in exchange for currency. There’s no law of nature that I know of that says that having an underpaid teenager drag your food across the scanner is the only proper way to do check-out, just like there isn’t one that says only a store employee can pick items from the shelf.
In other words, race to the bottom is race to the bottom.
Those jobs were not cruel and demeaning as you seem to imply. In fact plenty of industries still operate that way (auto parts etc.) and they served a valuable purpose, to give work experience to that underpaid teenager.
In fact if you go to a butcher shop, fishmonger, farm market etc. you will have your food handed to you by a human as well. And most people highly rate both the service and quality at such shops, with the employees usually being paid significantly more than at supermarkets, and having proper work hours and job security.
So yes, I suppose Piggly Wiggly made food margins a little thinner. But considering I get better meat prices at my butcher than at a supermarket, who do you think benefited from that move the most? Most likely the same ones benefiting from the move towards a fully automated store like Amazon tested.
Maybe you can go the warehouse and pick it up from the boxes, drive down to the farm to het the produce or, even better, grow your own food ALL THE WHILE STILL PAYING FULL VALUE TO THE SUPERMARKET.
“People used to have even more done for them and now they don’t and pay the same” is not the powerful argument for us having even less done for us that you think it is.
Exactly! Back in my day, people used to fill up my gas for me and carry my things up to my hotel room. Young people are getting lazy and entitled! Corporations need to make them work harder. Makes it hard to humiliate the poors if they make ME do the work.
Tbh back then the pay was more fairly in line with cost of living for some of the jobs. however, it has been a good 20 or so year since it was more fair. Nowadays, it is absolutely scary the cost of living. it’s down right criminal.
Okay boomer
- I don’t work here. Stop trying to get me to do the job for free, either pay a cashier to check me out or fuck off.
- There’s an epidemic of these machines not working and then the shopper getting charged with shoplifting over it, Wal-Mart is the worst at doing this.
I’d rather “work” than wait behind people with 100+ items. I can be out the door in 2 minutes.
even faster if u skip some items from being scanned
Based
Why bother going through the checkout at all, the fastest way out is straight through the door. Unrelated, the weather is changing so I’m thinking of buying a really big coat, and I’ll want pockets for my keys and other essentials.
Shoppin’ with Hoffman
I don’t know where you live but here theft is a crime and very antisocial and despicable.
Someone has to pay for the thieves and prices rise because they have to compensate for theft. Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices, which, in essence, is yet again against consumers.
I don’t know where YOU live but Walmart is one of the biggest thieves in the USA. People working there still have to collect government assistance because they pay too little to live on.
it gives retail a free card to jack prices
so blame the corpos for that. not your neighbour stealing some chicken.
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re being facetious.
I thought you were fully serious, but then I hit the line
Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices,
And assumed you were just poking fun and the poor widdle corporations and their giant profit margins, but then you continued with your paragrap, and now I’m not sure again…
But maybe you can explain where all the downvotes come from, because I don’t understand.
Is thievery good? Only when thieving from companies? Is is socially acceptable to take what is not yours from others? Only from companies? Or from a stranger who has more than you? From a friend? What’s this all about?
Fuck the corpos, choom.
The answer is… It depends. Stealing food or diapers because you or your child are starving is based. Stealing someone’s car… Not so much.
exactly. ofc nothing is black or white. many fail to realize!
Yeah, it’s completely ethical to steal from big corporations. They steal from you every single day. Their entire existence is based on the amoral exploitation of other humans. Other people, small businesses, a very very very few medium-large corporations, it’s not ethical to steal from, they’re not a disgusting blight rotting away the foundations of society. Nor a friend, or stranger, or small business, etc. for the same reason.
I feel like this isn’t a particularly hard concept.
Whoosh that’s were the DV came from.
appeal to ignorance.
No, I’m serious in all statements. Corpos will jack prices on any occassion that offers itself, so keep the number of those low.
Don’t worry, even if we don’t give them the theft excuse they’ll just lie about it anyway and do whatever they wanted to do, regardless of our input or reality. If a retail corporation wants to raise prices, they will raise prices. There is nothing you or me or anyone else can do about it.
The only winning move is not to play the game.
Bro relax. It was a joke
eh, only partially…
I’m on Team Boomer on this one.
I am and I’m not. If it’s like 2 items, give me a self checkout. If it’s over 15. Bring on a cashier.
I always prefer self checkout because too many people suck at bagging.
Don’t put a leaking pack of meat with my deli you dumb shit. All while I see people pushing full carts that have meat touching produce…
The only place I trust to bag for me is Trader Joe’s. Tetris masters over there.
You buy meat pack that’s leaking?
Not leaking but clearly a pack of meat that has moisture on it.
To add to that, you don’t wash your produce before eating it?
Yeah I do and I also don’t buy any food from a store that is leaking.
They still do bagging in the US? Greeters, too?
I only know of greeters at places like Walmart and bulk shops like Costco and BJs
I refuse to use them as a union worker, when I’m told to use the self checkout as I’m in line for the only cashier I just refuse. I’m doing it for you kids
This is broken window fallacy, akin to throwing garbage on the floor so some custodian keeps his job. These workers still have other shit to do. I get to waste less time waiting. So it’s win-win-win situation.
I see it as every employee walmart has to hire and pay to solve this problem is a local and the money will be saved and spent locally, not automatically going to be another drop in some CEO’s bucket.
The best choice is to shop local in the first place but some places don’t have that luxury. And who knows if enough local money builds up people might open their own businesses
Saying this is win-win-win is rather short-sighted. Unless we talk about something nationalized.
Management can fuck right the hell off. Self checkout is taking jobs away from people and getting us to work for free.
I once asked a cashier in Germany if she thought self-checkouts would take away her job. She said she liked them because there’s enough to do anyway and they take away the boring task of cashier-ing.
Though there is always a person standing next to the self-checkouts helping people if something is not working or they need to approve alcohol. They always seem pretty bored just standing around.
Do you feel the same about self serve gas?
Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.
If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.
In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I’m smarter now and wouldn’t use self checkout even if they gave a discount.
With self checkout I can literally get in and out the grocery store in like 10-30 minutes where 98% of the time is me choosing products instead of waiting 5-15 minutes in the cashier lane waiting for old people to put their shit on the rolling thing
I like them because it makes my bagging more efficient. At the lanes, if I’m getting a decent amount of groceries, I usually end up bagging for a while after I’ve paid and feel like a dick because I’m in the way of the people getting rung up behind me.
At self checkouts, I take it out of the cart, scan, then stick it right in the bag. Even better if they don’t have the stupid weighing thing that assumes I’m trying to steal shit if they don’t micromanage every item going into my bag.
Also, in this case, management is telling workers to not make fun of people who don’t want to use self checkouts.
Don’t feel like a dick for that! That again is management’s fault!
Remember that bagging your groceries used to be part of the service and part of the price, they eliminated that job to increase their profit margins!
At least around here Walmart still bags them for me, except they now have the cashier doing it instead of a dedicated employee for bagging.
I’n Italy we use barcode scanners during the shopping and you scan everything. After that you only pay.
Super useful as well because you can price check all the groceries while you pick them up and scan
That’s an option at some stores in the US. I believe Walmart has that option for Walmart+ members, and I know Sam’s Club has the option available in their app for all members.
That would be nice, though I’ve got some questions.
- Do you bag as you shop, then?
- Do you need to involve staff if you change your mind about an item?
- Do they have a bag/receipt checker doing random searches in many stores?
- Are all stores like that?
1 yes 2 no, you click “delete item” and re-scan what you want to delete 3 yes 4 more and more, if they don’t usually I wont shop there
I was once mistaken for an employee somewhere and my sleep deprivated response was to say “I am wearing pants so clearly I dont work here.” I have no fucken clue what that means but I think it was a threat.
We’re you at a strip club?
Pretty sure I was at an Ace hardware or some shit. Like I said I was severely sleep deprived and was looking for something, pretty sure it was duck tape for reinforcing an air conditioner.
Frankly speaking once I got to my car and realized what I said I started laughing my ass off since it was such a non sequitur.
I actually prefer self checkout. Idk. I get it though.
I mean, both are right. Clients shouldn’t have to do the cashier job.
But clients should stop going there to send a message instead of harassing the minimum salary employee.
Never understood that argument. I want to be in and out as quickly as possible. Self checkout makes that happen.
I’ll be honest, going with the people that get paid to do it is way faster for bigger buys
I’ve found that I scan quicker than most of the people who are paid to do the job.
So you have never tried to out-scan an ALDI cashier.
I’d back myself over most of them.
Sometimes… I’ve had lots of bad experiences with super slow checkout people. I would say most of the time, they were boomers themselves and spent half the time trying to make chit-chat.
That being said, I will still line up for a staffed checkout if I have a cart full because it is easier since I can bag and put in the cart as they’re scanning. But also, many of the self checkouts here have a limit of like 10-20 items posted.
Some people are too entitled and think everyone else exists to serve and fawn over them
I have to scan an item, then wait 10 seconds for the weight sensor to register that I actually put it in the bag. If I have a cart full of shit it’s going to take me 5 minutes just to scan everything. A cashier can blow through that in a minute or two. I wouldn’t be opposed to self checkouts if they didn’t suck ass.
That is fair, it’s what cashiers are there for.
I was referring to people who retort with rudeness to a simple offer of self-checkout.I usually go for the self-scanning guns with larger buys - I get to bag my stuff as I go and skip the queues and self-checkout bothers, so for me that’s a win win.
I love self checkout. From my decades of cash register experience I can tell you, your soul begins to leave your body standing still for hours doing the same repetitive mindless task. It is not a job most want nor honestly should do. I really can’t fathom the folks who prefer waiting in line for one bored af human to do a task they could easily do themselves. A good company would find other things for their employees to do or (this would never happen) pay them more per hour to work fewer hours totaling the same weekly check. I feel only the elderly, overburdened, and incapable should use a cashier. If you got 2 available, working hands and can twist at the waist - get to scanning!!
It works fine until someone tries to buy an age restricted item (ye gods help you if you have more than one!) or inevitably every available kiosk is being hogged by a octogenarian who can’t figure out the machine at they all take half an hour each to check out.
For your convenience, half of the machines are broken, and the employee assigned to unjam the remaining working ones when they get their electronic knickers in a twist is on lunch.
This situation has gotten so bad that my local Home Depot has started assigning an employee to “assist,” i.e. work the machine from start to finish, every customer at the self checkout. So for those of you keeping score at home, that means what we’ve done is reinvented the standard checkout lane, except worse, and both people are standing on the same side of the counter for some reason.
Real US/Europe split here
No cashier packs your bag for you in Europe. Sometimes it’s a fun game trying to be faster packing than them scanning.
I hate self checkout. I work all day to then check out my shit and bag my own groceries? And pay 2x for the same food and less service than 5 years ago?
Corporate gaslighting be like:
