- cross-posted to:
- humor@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- humor@lemmy.world
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Guess all those highschool girls will just have to stay home and torture mom n dad
Just in case you’re wondering, they actually do man all those checkouts during superbowl weekend
My first job I worked at a grocery store that had I think 12 checkouts and only 4 cashiers on at most times. The exception was when they did a special “2 hour sale” during which time it was busy enough for all stations to be staffed, but also it was basically guaranteed that you’d get to go home early on those shifts because it would die down pretty quick and they’d cut the unnecessary staff for the day
And holidays.
Those registers are for Black Friday.
The reason to have several more checkouts is for holiday rushes. Under normal day to day operations they don’t use them all.
that’s true now but that isn’t how it used to be before the self checkouts came. It was not unusual to enter a grocery or big box or general goods store and see every single checkout lane staffed by humans during daylight hours. You could almost always go right to a waiting checker or get in the shortest line and be next in line. The grocery stores operated like this for many decades!
they could use them all. but they allow self checkout to have a line. it’s ok though, the self checkout discounts usually help offset.
the self checkout discounts
Thee what now? You must live in some magical non-Capitalist hellhole if you’re actually getting a discount for ringing yourself up!
theft. i’m speaking of theft.
Shit, I can’t believe I whooshed that!
(To be fair, my local supermarket has scales and cameras to prevent most shenanigans… so I have to sneakily pocket small but expensive items while still walking around the store!)
(To be fair, my local supermarket has scales and cameras to prevent most shenanigans… so I have to sneakily pocket small but expensive items while still walking around the store!)
Ah you’re the cunts who increase the cost for the rest of us, thanks
That’s some messed up thinking of you think THAT is where the increases come from.
Be careful with that. Some stores will let you walk out even if they notice, until they have enough evidence to nail you for more than just petty theft.
And you don’t have to stop for store employees.
They’re referring to what the legal system defines as “theft”
the discount for me is time saved not waiting in line to have someone else do a job I can do myself
Do you also want the restaurant to pull out a seat and push you in? do you want the petrol station to pump your own petrol for you? do you want to go to the bank so they can transfer money for you? I cannot for the life of me understand why some people are so hung up on self checkouts
This is the Target in Hixon, TN everytime i go there. I’ve stood in a 20 frustrated person long self-checkout line with at least a dozen regular checkouts collecting dust and not a soul with a red vest in sight. One poor lady helping 5 or so self cheout kiosks. The Starbucks at the entrance has more people behind the counter. And they still wonder why they’re failing spectacularly.
Target fucking depresses the living shit out of me. The only reason I ever go is that I’m a school bus driver and for some reason half of the tips I get at Christmas and the end of the school year (why the fuck do people tip school bus drivers? I have no idea) are Target gift cards. It always has Kmart-at-the-end vibes with half-empty shelves and employees that look like they want to kill you. And I don’t understand how they can maintain a grocery section at all - the selection is poor and everything costs twice as much as it does at normal grocery stores.
For some unknown reason, the stores all seem to have been inadequately constructed. The floor shakes at every multi-story Target I’ve ever been in.
I’ve actually found that Target groceries are cheaper overall than the major grocery store chains, even the shittiest ones. I live in a major U.S. city so ymmv. The only big chain that beats Target’s grocery prices is Walmart. But you have to psych yourself up to shop there because it’s always a hellscape and I’m usually too tired for all that.
Aldi’s/Lidl/Trader Joe’s are also always very economical but they have a limited selection of items.
why the fuck do people tip school bus drivers?
Because you provide a valuable service that anyone with a heart and half a brain know you’re not fairly compensated for. Without you we’d have to schlep our own children to school, taking up time from already busy schedules. What takes you two hours would take fifty cumulative hours between every parent.
“Obviously it’s the checkout supervisor’s fault, they’re too expensive. Minimum wage for 8 hours with 4 hours unpaid overtime?! How do you expect a corporation to lose that much money to their employees and still fulfill their responsibilities of producing record revenue for their shareholders. Obviously the answer is to let go of the checkout supervisor’s at our stores and contract out one checkout supervisor to five stores and have them rotate between them in their own vehicle. It’s not like they really do anything anyway, they’re just their to make the consumer feel better.”
Said a CEO to his board.
First time I’ve seen my little corner of the world mentioned here. The Hixson Target is still wayy better than the Gunbarrel one. I’m convinced that Target is single-handedly keeping the company afloat.
Howdy, neighbor!
Would’ve been icing on the cake if they were conjoined twins.
Even at the very height of Xmas Eve my Tesco has maybe half the tills open. I don’t know why they haven’t just got rid of the others, it’s free real estate. You could pop a Timpsons in there.
That would cost money. Possibly even more than hiring more cashiers.
Heh. Butt.
One line has 8 people waiting with a bunch of groceries each but the line is moving steadily
The other line has only two people … a little old lady at the cashier is holding up the line because she wants to process three out of date coupons, a return item with a label that said it was past its best before date, and a loaf of bread that ‘doesn’t look right’.
All of those are self checkout. Those 2 are also busy helping other people.
I’m just pissed my grocery store got rid of self checkout
When you see this, you should be thinking “look what they fucking took from us.”
Once upon a time, those lanes all ran. The CEO’s megayacht is the reason you have to stand in line or check out yourself.
This has been Target and Walmart for the last 30 or 40 years. They build them with 30 lanes with the idea of Xmas rush but then only have one or two lanes open no matter how many customers are waiting.
This was a problem long before self checkout or higher minimum wages or any of that.
They don’t even open the other lanes for xmas rush anymore…
TBF, I haven’t seen a Christmas rush requiring all the lanes open since maybe 2010 or so. Combination of ordering online and/or just buying less I think.
And all the sales start in October, instead of the December now.
Hell, 20 years ago when I worked at Walmart we usually had about half the registers open most days. More when we were expecting a crowd. There was a fair amount of downtime, but not an excessive amount.
Minimum wage did this. If they have to pay more than the natural rate for that labor they are going to hire as little as they can. Eventually things will slow and they will get through the queue but you will have to wait. But the company had no downtime for expensive labor.
The alternative was hiring a lot of people at an extremely low rate, meaning you end up with more labor than you need by a lot when things are slow, but at least you aren’t paying much for that excess labor and your customers never wait so they are likely to return. The consumer really wins there but someone will have to be paid a low wage.
Have you been to other countries where they actually pay people a living wage? Cashiers can even sit. Imagine that!
Somehow big chains in some European countries can pay their employees a living wage and still make a profit, yet, in the US, the employees should be eating dirt in order for businesses to be profitable?
And as someone buying things in general, I prefer to go to stores and businesses where employees are at the very least paid minimum wage, if not more. Even if this will cost more. I know those business will be better for the community.
You are eating the lies of corporations if you think they cannot afford to pay their employees even minimum wage.
Fucking lol, what a bootlicking moron.
iTs bEcAUsE TheY hAvE tO pAy bEloW poVErTy liNE WagEs
“natural rate” lol
You say that, but grocery stores keep posting record margins.
Yeah that’s because they have a few very well paid people who figure out ways to crowbar their overlords’ impossible goal of eternal growth into reality.
Whatever that means in practice, these filthy plebes will have to live with it.
or check out yourself
Thanks CEO’s megayacht. I’ll always pick self checkout over forced human interaction.
The CEO’s megayacht thanks you for doing the cashier’s work for free
My labour ain’t free.
This is why I always use the cashier lanes. I can goof around and check my phone while I wait. The store can pay somebody to check my items out
You think that’s bad, did you know some stores make you pick the stuff up from the shelves instead of the worker doing it for you!
Yeah, I’m not sure why I would be bothered by having to scan my own stuff, especially since I get through self-checkouts much faster. I value my time more than saving that physical action.
I beg to differ. I don’t have pay attention in the normal checkout - that time is fully mine.
In the self checkout that’s time I can’t use on anything else.
Its specifically because I value my time I avoid the self checkout unless I am only picking up a couple things.
Ah yes the valuable time you have to spend standing in line, especially since where I’m from it takes longer to use regular checkouts.
I’d rather do the scanning and be out there quicker.
I mostly use the spare time to post on lemmy. On avg I probably get one more post in than the avg lemmy self checkout enthusiast.
really depends. If you are a busy buiseness person, sure. but if you just stand there and wait for rhe people infront of you, you might as well do the self-checkout if its faster
You don’t to talk to the cashiers, no one is forcing you to do anything and they won’t even remember you, it’s fine. Why so mad about having the smallest interaction with another human being?
Because the cashier knows they are organic bananas. The self checkout has no idea.
Some of these people are fucking weird. Like the person you’re replying to? Yeah, I would not want to know someone that antisocial IRL.
Sometimes you want to just buy your shit in peace.
Maybe you’re weird for making such a statement. Have you ever heard of social anxiety? It can be crippling.
You don’t even have to speak to the checkout person. Yet lemmy treats anxiety as normal, memes abound! Yeah, that’s fucking weird and anyone that crippled is, well, crippled, needs serious help.
I have crippling anxiety - and i overwhelmingly prefer a manned checkout.
Manned checkout:
Hi, here are my bags, paying by card, thanks.Robot:
Unexpected item in bagging area Try and flag a worker down they are busy solving the above issue for 4 other people wait patiently for a minute or two the worker doesn't realise i need their help have to go ask them for help continue scanning my items above happens 2-5 more timesThe robot tends to have significantly more human interaction, it’s slower than having a professional do it, and the human interaction is SO much worse.
i dont think you win this discussion by talking down other peoples fears / inconvenoences. a lot of people generally just really dont like this kind of interaction, and while i agree with the whole megayacht thing, but people’s preferences should not be talked down upon
At my place a few remaining workers of normal checkout posts frequently run to self-checkout kiosks whenever they encounter random errors or booze (ID requirement), while the lines of customers form and grow on every side. They don’t get paid more for doing extra, their further empoyment is at risk, and their work day is full of complaints on how sloppy both they are and how wacky that tech is. Somehow, yet to surprise of no one, the idea that could get rid of unnecessary discomfort ended up salting the wound.
It’s almost like the driving force behind such innovations has rabies.
Ah old checkouts. I sometimes have to use those when I go back to Germany.
Look, no one in self checkout is in a hurry or can figure out how to use it, one item won’t scan, they put something on the scale and need assistance from the attendant who isn’t paying attention but isn’t doing anything otherwise. It’s a great system
Have you tried our self checkout. We make you work for us so we don’t have to hire more employees and you pay the exact same price.
I keep hearing this argument, but having to put all my stuff up for scanning fucking sucks. In my ideal world stuff gets scanned when I put it into my cart and at the end I simply pay. Everything else is dogshit. Sadly, there are too few supermarkets that offer this.
I’ve stopped using the self-check out all together. My grocery store has clearly been trying to do more with less. So I want the bean counter to see people using normal check outs so they’re more inclined to hire more people. It’s sold to customers as “a convenience” when really it’s just having 1 person watch 4-12 self-checkouts instead of hiring more people and having 3 or 4 lanes open.
Also, self check outs are prone to failure, and if multiple fail at a time there’s usually a single person having to manage all of them.
My personal belief, if you can’t carry the items in your hands, then you have too much stuff. I find it very inconsiderate people who roll up with full carts. I don’t care you’re reason, but especially if you’re like “I have social anxiety”, buddy everyone is glaring at you. You couldn’t have more eyes on you and more people pissed off at you. And then if there’s any error, even more people are looking at you and you’re still going to have to deal with someone.
A well trained person will get you through the check-out much faster. I’ve also had cashier’s double check items to ensure they’re good (like eggs), or apply coupons for you, or in rare instances I’ve had something fail to scan so they do an over-ride and set whatever it was to $1 because they just don’t care.
Meh, it’s more efficient to make less trips to the store and buy all you need in one go, than to go to the store often (less fuel/electricity/time). Some people have large families and multi-generational households as well.
Yes, and it’s more efficient to use a normal check out. Which is what people have been doing for hundreds of years. If you’re going through self-check out and you have enough food for multi-generation, you’re an asshole. We used to have the express lane, which was for 10 items or less (though it should have said fewer), which was meant to get people with only a few things, through quickly. Self checkout replaced the express lanes. And now people will waste 10-30 minutes scanning things because they have a full cart and can’t think about another person, they only consider themselves.
yes, but some of us got social anxiety and would much rather not have to interact with people when shopping.
And still, you can ignore the person, swipe card and you keep someone in a job.
Staff don’t always want to talk, but they still would like a job.
If we stay in our comfort zone, our comfort zone shrinks smaller.
I work retail too and I hate having to interact with people just the same. i ain’t opposed to having an employee ring me up cause some store don’t have self checkout. but I like having the option provided to me
also anxiety is wayyyy more than just comfort zones
I am someone that has had anxiety and sought professional help for it.
The way I didn’t improve it, was by avoiding it and staying in my comfort zone. I had to push myself into situations that made me anxious in order to de-arm it. So the bodies fight or flight reflex doesn’t kick in. So the body becomes aware it isn’t a threat that requires that physical reaction. Expanding my comfort zone if you will. Obviously some folk will have very valid reasons why that approach may be much more challenging, but avoiding supermarket checkout staff is an extreme level of avoidance. Professional help would be much better for that than self-service tills.
If we stay in our comfort zone, our comfort zone shrinks smaller.
nah
I don’t get social anxiety, but sometimes I dont want to talk. Just through in some “yeah, that’s right” and “Oh yeah?”. They can just talk while you think about the next loot drop you’ll get in your favorite game.
They won’t know the difference.
Alternatively, if you’re sick of people talking to you. Just break the convo and start trying to sell them stuff. People shut up real quick.
Just through in some “yeah, that’s right” and “Oh yeah?”
You’re already asking too much from someone with social anxiety.
Just break the convo and start trying to sell them stuff.
Again, what use is this advice to someone who will spend the rest of the week losing sleep over whether that “yeah, that’s right” was used appropriately or not?
If you can’t say 3 words to someone and blow off convos. How can you even survive in the workplace? Social anxiety, sure, but too much for an “Oh yeah?” Come on.
How will you interact with co-workers or customers?
I go through the “oh for real?” “Damn that’s crazy” “lol wow” “I get that”
People say I’m really good at listening and a great conversationalist 🤷♂️
Problem is being on autopilot and then someone asks you about it later or something specific and you gotta zone back in and play it off.
🤣 this is true!
Ours are now limited to 15 items or less in nearly every store.
Pisses me off I have to wait in line with everyone else and be behind the social butterflies who want to carry on a conversation. I’m just trying to get my shit and go home.
Yes, I did. It’s faster. It’s the only way I shop since it’s been introduced.
Do you feel the same way about getting the stuff off the shelves yourself?
It is the store who wants payment from you and is responsible for collecting it.
It is the customer who wants an item so he may be reponsible for picking it up.
Not how it uses to work.
Its wonderful how humans don’t have a problem with contradictions when they see one side as “normal”
There aren’t people who will lose the jobs they currently hold because customers get their own products from the store, but there are people who will lose their jobs if everyone switches to self checkout. It’s not a contradiction to view them differently, just like it’s not a contradiction to view the sewing machine and generative ai differently
But people did lose their jobs when shops switched to customers getting their own stuff off the shelves.
Yes, and had I been asked at the time, I would have opposed it, unless efforts were made to provide anyone laid off as a result with equal or better work. Given how businesses and governments treat people working as cashiers, that doesn’t seem likely to happen for people laid off as a result of self checkout kiosks.
The good ones are better because I can scan faster than your trained clerks. (I never had a job scanning so I’m not trained, and my wife does most of our shopping so I’m out of practice - despite that I’m still faster than most clerks)
I used to be a cashier, I’d scan things fast too…and then get yelled at for not being gentle with people’s food.
Meh, self-checkout is blessing. I don’t have to stand in a irritated line of idiots, don’t have to deal with overworked and really doing their best impression of not suffering clerk at the checkout and all that taking like what, three times as long as self-checkout?
Ya all really are masochists just so some tortured soul would smile at ya and pretend shit’s fine.
A good cashier/bagger is much faster than self-checkout. If I only have like 10 items or something, I use self-checkout, otherwise I go to the cashier. Granted, I rarely get a fast cashier/bagger anymore; makes think the company does that on purpose.
My local supermarkets have a portable barcode scanner that you use to scan products as you take them from the shelf. When you’re done you just use self-checkout to pay and you can leave immediately.
I haven’t had a good bagger since they started using the cheap plastic bags. The worst was before they started outlawing them and I had checkers put 2 or 3 items in one bag and then start a new one so you end up with 12 bags for 30 items.
Good baggers would plan out your heavy items for the bottom and bread and eggs on top and fill those paper bags well. They got rid of those employees first.
I sort of feel like this is the sort of challenge people should be faced with. Like the idea of exercising your feet to walk to the store.
I’m an introvert. I’ve left many parties early. But it’d never get so bad I’d hate interfacing briefly with a cashier for pleasantries. Having those skills, while certainly a challenge for some, is a worthwhile challenge to overcome. I’ve also had some great interactions with cashiers that cheered me up.
Introvert here too and I don’t believe it one bit. It’s wastr of both my and cashiers time. The cashier is there because they are getting paid to do it, not because they want to.
If I wanted to exercise small talk, maybe park? Dunno. Or some place tied to my hobby, where I know I have topics I can rely on.
To me it’s a little bit like the convention of praising things that are handmade. Yes, a perfectly efficient world would factory-produce every item with clear-cut lines, but that gives people fewer meaningful jobs, and exposes us to fewer interesting flaws.
One other very tangible negative related to having mostly self-checkouts is petty theft. Many of us heard about the large rings of criminals that would steal massive numbers of low-value items from stores, no one would stopping them because there’s hardly anyone staffing those stores, and those that are there are overworked.
Sounds like you’re just lucky enough to have self-checkouts that aren’t shit
You seem to be on point. And to think when I was a child USA was seen as a place of high technology…
I’m in Canada myself, but we have issues with self-checkouts too, and it very much depends on the store. Some suck, some don’t.
Self checkout is a blessing when you have, like, six items in your cart. Any more than that, and it’s a punishment. Have you ever tried to be fast with those torture kiosks? They’ve added cameras and shitty AI so that they complain if you’re holding the next item in hand while putting the first item in your bag. It forces you to pick something up, scan it, put it in the bag, wait for the scale to register it, and only then pick up the next item - and heaven help you if you have a second person helping you. Having worked at grocery stores in the distant past, it’s agony.
The actual checkers can scan an item with one hand while picking up the next item, passing each item to the bagger behind them in a steady stream without having to wait for anything. It’s not quite an order of magnitude faster, but it’s close. The only reason self-checkout is ‘faster’ is because one cashier can watch six kiosks at a time, and payment takes the same amount of time no matter how many items you have.
I’ve used self-checkouts in Canada and in The Netherlands. The ones here in Canada are just like the miserable experience you describe. Especially the weight sensor and the machine complaining. In The Netherlands I never had that issue (even with a second person helping me). I’m convinced companies have just turned the anti-theft settings up to aggravating false-positive levels over here.
Yep, that’s exactly it and why no-one understands each other on these threads.
North America is three months away from Boston Dynamic Replicants gruesomly executing and dismembering single mothers in public because a little bit of flour fell out of the bag at the counter and Peter Thiel’s AI decided it was Space Fentanyl.
I like self-checkout in general. I have already been a cashier and I don’t mind. I can keep my headphones on and just go about my day without a social interaction for a few items.
However there’s one thing that I started to not like about some of these, and it’s the giant camera pointed in your face. Sometimes with the image on the screen so that you can see yourself. It makes me wonder how many layers of software are analyzing that data. I’m under no illusions that they are also compiling data from the checkouts with employees, but it’s never so literally in your face.
I don’t have to stand in a irritated line of idiots,
You’re literally describing the self checkout line here.
I refuse to believe you’ve never been in line, absolutely seething while the poor grandma in front of you is trying lookup, scan and bag her groceries while multiple store employees stand by and watch… And then they needed to help anyway because she has a purse full of expired coupons!
I have but the beauty of self checkout is that there are six kiosks for one line, so when granny is taking forever there are five other stations that can finish up before her.
Yeah well, one is offline for no reason, another is broken, two people are buying alcohol and waiting for the attendant to notice the flashing lights, one has a person with an over packed shopping cart and the last one has someone yapping into their cell on speaker while one-handing the entire process.
All those people would go much faster in a full service line, leaving you free to self-check if you wanted to.
the walmart here must be experiencing a high rate self-checkout ‘discounts’. they’ve added more ‘watchers’ who are actually watching everything. enough extra bodies now that they could just staff the regular registers, and with less waiting in line for the customer.
They won’t staff them until they consistently have longer queues and see a risk.
Only way to get more checkouts is favour shops with staff and shorter queues that are staffed.
