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.
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
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.
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.
Yeah, self-chekout in the 'burbs is fantastic, we have like 4-8 machines and most of the time, at least half are available.
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.
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.”
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?
if the bus doesn’t take cash how in the world would tourists be able to use it?
Why would tourists be more inclined to use cash?
Because sometimes the dam credit card companies freeze your account when you travel and having the affordable transit option rely on having a functional credit card screw you over when you want to go to the bank to fix the issue. Also minors don’t typically have cards nor asylum seekers. not to mention that cards rely on connection to cellular networks that fail an unreasonable amount
Because sometimes the dam credit card companies freeze your account when you travel
Not really. Just buy something at the airport.
Also minors don’t typically have cards
Not true, not in the UK anyway. And minors young enough to not have cards don’t travel alone.
nor asylum seekers.
Firstly, not true. Secondly, you said “tourists”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I avoid self checkout for different reasons.
-
I’m not getting a discount while I have to do more work and the supermarket less.
-
I take extra responsibility, if I forget to scan one item I could get in actual trouble during a random check.
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 🎶
🙄
About the second point, this is copy pasted from a Dutch magazine that looked it up (auto translated)
Forgot to pay for something? That can have serious consequences.
Forgetting to pay for something doesn’t automatically constitute theft. The shopkeeper will have to prove that you intentionally left something unpaid. However, if the shopkeeper believes it was a case of theft, they can call the police. Is this your first time? Then you’ll receive a reprimand, a kind of warning. However, you will have to admit to the theft. This won’t result in a criminal record, but it will be registered in the police system.
Another possibility is that theft will be reported to the police. In that case, you may even have to appear in court. The police will then have to prove that it was intentional – and therefore theft. The shopkeeper can also handle the matter themselves. In these cases, offenders must pay €181 in damages. In some cases, a ban from the shop will also follow. Last year, tens of thousands of shoplifting cases were handled this way.
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.
I’m with you. Too many opinions all up in here.
-
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 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
Fortunately, I’m the sort who goes, “Who the FUCK are you looking at?”, when I catch people staring.
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.
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.
where are you at that you can’t use cash and have to use an app??? everywhere I’ve worked and shopped, at least some of the self checkouts take cash
I just tap my card
Well then they know your name at the very least and can use and sell your shopping data.
But that’s not at all specific to self checkouts
1 Self checkout rarely allow you to pay with cash. 2) Self checkout can be made easier faster by scanning with a phone app
That leads to different complications and outcomes. See OP complaining about slow self checkout. The more self checkout, the less cash transactions and the less privacy.
A fully cashless society would make people more vulnerable. Not just privacy, but maybe some bureaucratic snafu that doesn’t allow you a residence, maybe your ID card expired, and no banking account. If you’re not in the system, you can’t even buy food. Or if your account is in the red and blocked.
Ideally we should have have fully anonymous cash cards. But regulation is being pushed in some countries to limit them, or make you give ID. Or they take 5% “tax” on the revenue. And a phone app is easier to use.
Yeah, but all you need to do is wear a small tinfoil hat, that protects you from this.
HOW THE FUCK IS BEING CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR EVERY MOVEMENT BEING TRACKED CONTROVERSIAL NOW??!?
fucking shop and all their 111 marketing partners know my email and where I live.
What?
What the fuck? Do people not understand the concept of privacy? Have you ever read one of those cookie agreements? This is exactly the same!
If you pay via card or app or account they have your name and identity. We KNOW they use or sell that information from countless examples. That information is bought and aggregated by other companies, and the NSA owns or backdoors those companies, or the cops or ICE can buy that information without a warrant.
If you pay via card or app or account they have your name and identity.
App/account - yes. Card - no.
That information is bought and aggregated by other companies, and the NSA owns or backdoors those companies, or the cops or ICE can buy that information without a warrant.
I realise USA is quickly descending into totalitarianism but what you are presenting is a tinfoil hat level of madness.
In what reality do you live in lol? This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is literally the business model of “data collection companies”. European privacy laws and the cookie disclaimer BS just showed us what is already happening.
If you don’t think all this data isn’t being collated and used then you don’t understand the nature of neoliberal capitalism and politics. Mock me all you want, but it seems they’ve already won when basic privacy is now a fringe idea.
I’m also really lazy and don’t want to do it.
There are an unusual number of people in this world who gawk at the self-checkout as if they found themselves at the controls of an alien spaceship.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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 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.
Good idea would be to keep them on top in anticipation of the same prompt you receive every time when you are there.
I mean of course, but there’s nowhere to put them while I shop other than in the cart, which means either I have to pick them up every time I put something in the cart, or else I put stuff on top of them. If they had a little pocket for your bags, that would be cool.
My husband was that guy, but I trained him. Eventually.
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.
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.
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.
That’s normal in duch. Everything they say sounds like a drunken Brit trying to poke fun of the German language. It’s just impossible not to love it.
They also love to work with sounds a lot:
Fiets=Bike Bromfiets=Motorbike
Schuim=Foam Piepschuim=Styrofoam
That’s actually crazy, but in that case there’s still normal checkout.
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.
Even the legally blind know how to operate a checkout register. But for some reason most machines are radical redesigns that actively work against a lifetime of expectations. ‘Juggle these dozen items between three locations while comprehensively reading arbitrary instructions’ is absolutely asking a lot of people, especially if you want it done correctly and quickly.
That’s before including hesitance where people have been betrayed. Even ‘Pay now?’ is reason to think, As opposed to what?, and take a second to look around the interface, because Oops, go back one step might summon an employee and lock you out.
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.
I remember self checkout arriving in 2008 when I was living in the arse-end of Ireland. Took quite a few years for it to arrive anywhere in France, I guess because we could clearly see it was gonna kill more jobs… anyway, they didn’t take over but for little old me who is used to it, it’s a godsend when I’m faced with families doing their weekly shopping or, worse, pensioners…
And yet, somehow, after all these years, I regularly meet people who indeed seem to have never faced one. No hate on them, I just find it amazing! And I always wonder what suddenly pushed them over, made them decide “today is the day I face my fear and confront the Beast!”
If every self checkout was similar to others, but each of them want to make things different.
Different and worse. How do designers keep seeing other checkout system and think: “You know, I think I see a way that we could make this process slower and more complicated…”
I don’t understand why the card reader and the screen are separate units, just combine them like those Square kiosk things that counter order places have.
Security is a big reason to never combine payment processing and user (the store) defined ui.
Could you clarify? Because I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing.
stripe recommends it for card reader to smartphone at least, and it looks like home depot is an example of why it should be done between the card reader and the pos.
https://stripe.com/ie/resources/more/how-do-card-readers-work
I get the phone thing, because phones are relatively insecure devices, but they could have functionally separate systems in one box.
The main problem I’m trying to solve is the weird UX where I need to select a payment method even after paying on the payment device. If it was designed as a complete set instead of separate units, I think they’d fix that.
This is doubly true for the card payment terminals. The on screen options are all in different places, orders, and with random questions thrown in. What’s your phone number? Do you want to round up to donate a car to starving kittens? What’s your zip code? Debit or credit?
Also, because this system is apparently developed by a maniac: where I live (might be national and not state level, not sure) EBT cards have to be used on some terminals by swiping, not the chip that comes on the card. But to swipe, first you have to use the chip and let that fail. So if you see someone using an EBT card that looks like they have no fucking clue how to use a card, it’s probably that they’re actually using it the only way they can.
Absolutely insane design choice, especially for people who may already be facing delays like separating items into two separate transactions for non-covered items, having to remove items that seem like they should be covered but aren’t, etc.
why would a store need a zip code?
Sales metrics, I guess. Ikea always asks for it when you check out, and I remember having to ask people when I worked at a retail clothes store untold ages ago.
wow, I guess it has been about a decade since I was at an IKEA l
No matter what line I pick at the supermarket, that’s the line that will have a technical issue, a grandma with 200 coupons, a guy who wants to scan 50 lottery tickets, and a price check that takes 10 minutes.
Also no matter what spot I pick in line, that’s the spot where people decide to pass through
That the saving grace of self-checkout lines; it tends to be one line for a dozen checkouts. So the dense fucker clasping their block of cheese to their chest - in the manner of fleeing refugee carrying a child - while the machine repeatedly begs them to “please place the item in the bagging area” only slows down the line a little bit, but the Hutt going supernova at the cashier because they can’t use a different supermarket’s app’s discount code for 15% off Kleenex on a 3L bottle of Pepsi and demanding to see the manager grinds everything to a halt until they’re adequately soothed.
My local grocer doesn’t have self checkout but they do have 12 item express and 20 item express with dual/quad lanes.
So you end up with one line and 4 registers blasting through express people.
I often make 2 grocery runs a week. A big one on weekends and a mid week one for fresh protein and whatever Im missing until the next trip.
🤣🤣🤣
