Self-checkout

"Today, if you ask me to ring up my own groceries, I’ll tell you I’d rather have a Halloween-eve attic slumber party with 30,000 antique dolls."

Exactly.
Our local grocery has multiple self check lanes.
I'm a fairly intelligent human and I was a damned good grocery cashier when I was a teen.
But I can't get through a simple set of groceries at the self check without some issue cropping up. Never once have I made it through without needing the supervisor to come help or do some kind of reset.
The technology simply sucks.
F self-checkout.

 

I go with whatever I feel will get out of the store faster. Usually, that means go with the human.

 

I prefer the self checkout for say 15 items or less. I am usually as quick as they are for that. At both the King Soopers and Target they have six stations and have an employee monitoring them. So even when there has been an issue it has been resolved quickly. I have generally found it faster and since i always pay by card I am quick. The writer of the article makes some big jumps of logic and assumptions. Like stealing balances out the not paying of employees so it is not that bad. Some of us do not steal even when we can get away with it. One last thing. Does the writer also rail against ATMs at the bank as well?

 

I shop at Jewel/Osco, but due to several instances of theft they stopped the self-checkout lanes in favor of more express lanes. Even so, I like dealing with human cashiers. The employees at the store I frequent the most are women in their 60's and very experienced at their job. I like conversing with them, and they make me feel welcome. There's a store that's closer to me, but the cashiers are usually talking to one another and basically ignoring me, and I can get that treatment at home.

On the flip side, I will try to bag my own groceries whenever I can, as most baggers today are sullen teens with varying levels of incompetence. I used to bag groceries before they invented the internet, and was pretty damn good at it. Kids today have no idea how to build a base of hard items, a wall to protect soft items, and crushable items on top. It's like a puzzle, and every order was a minor challenge on how to make everything fit just right.

/end rant

 

I avoid self checkouts whenever possible, largely because I very rarely purchase a small number of items (and when I do go for a quick, small purchase, it is usually for something to take to a party that includes alcohol). The self checkouts at Meijer are terrible and take forever. Kroger isn't as bad, but it still yells at me consistently to place an item in the bagging area that was already placed there. I think the item weights aren't exactly precise.

Like MMG, I usually bag my own groceries regardless of checkout type. I take my own fabric bags and it pisses me the fuck off when people just throw things in willy-nilly, as my produce usually ends up all kinds of bruised by the time I get home. I also have a detached garage, so I want *everything* bagged in order to carry it more easily into the house. This often confuses baggers who are used to not bagging things like orange juice and gallons of distilled water.

 

Nerd alert: I don't just self bag, I go one further by placing the items on the check out belt in a certain order.
Heavy things first (milk jugs, melons) then lighter but sturdy stuff and then finally fruit and bread.
This way the big heavy things don't come down the chute and crush everything below them. Plus it makes bagging easy because the items you will be using for the base of your bags are coming down first.

 

+1 on all that. I group them the way I intend to bag them and heavy things alllllways go first. Go nerds!

 

Yes, I do the same thing- the idea is to idiot-proof it for the Cro-Magnons they have for baggers, but it's impossible to idiot-proof something.

 

I hate self check out.... I always get the one that's all fucked up or things wont scan or it tells me that an associate has been paged.... really.... I prefer a smiling face. now if they would open more registers that would make things better

 

If you're going to do a store employee's job for them, then they ought to throw you a bit of a discount. Of course everybody would be jamming the self-check lines so we could just zoom on through the manned line. Win-win I think.

 

Use this handy guide to differentiate between the two:


As you can see, sometimes they promote Neanderthals to management.