Yeah I'm not actually talking about the "Please place the item in bagging area" part, I'm talking about the second or two after I place it before the system registers the weight and re-activates the scanner.

Sometimes I've seen this disabled, on certain tills at certain supermarkets, and I can scan breezily. Not sure if the weight check feature was disabled completely or what.

Amusing that you think the employees scanning shit aren't also the ones bagging it.

But to answer your question, I'm faster because I have an incentive to get shit scanned and bagged, vs just riding the till for 8 hours.

Until you get stuck between Ethel (who is trying to fill out a paper check and make small talk because she's lonely) and Bob (who has no sense of personal space and smells like he doesn't know how to wipe).

Non-self-checkout sucks.

here they don't talk, don't weigh, don't time out, and can be cleared remotely when you buy age-restricted stuff and don't look like a twink. my only gripe is that some of them won't allow you to delete duplicate scans without help.

following the airline model

? Are you talking about, like, baggage prices?

Iirc, airline margins are super thin, and their customers are extremely price sensitive. In order to stay competitive, airlines need to be able to sell their customers on the lowest possible flight price, while still not losing money on every single flight. The solution is to charge the customer more directly for the scarce resources they use on a flight. Extra weight on the plane means more fuel used to reach the destination. Charging for each checked bag rewards people for travelling light, while giving everyone a free bag punishes the light traveller with higher fares. Sure, the byzantine fee structure in the booking process is annoying - but at the end of the day, flights are now extremely cheap historically speaking, and a pay-for-what-you-use model makes sense.

Of course, the actual solution is to have a better system of busses and trains. And the airline industry is always lobbying against that. But I'm not sure what the comparable action in the grocery industry would be.

Oh gotcha

Same answer though, none of them by me do that anymore, I guess they all disabled the scale here. I can just rapid fire scan and out the door.

Because I care about leaving, so I do everything I can to be faster. In economics, this is known as the principle-agent problem. At my local walmart, it is known as "I'm not a septuagenarian who's been hitting a vape pen for the last 5 hours."

That's a lot of words to say while not breaking stride. I just hand them my reciept and thank them for taking my garbage.

I mean, it's security theatre what actually does save the store money. Hence why walmart had greeters all those years ago. They found people were less likely to shoplift if they just knew that someone was watching them.

ha fair point!

I never understand the press they get. As someone that doesn't want to have a chat with a stranger about everything I buy, self-checkouts are amazing. I don't consider it extra work. OP should look at the history of supermarkets. We didn't use to pick items off the shelves either.

"Don't you hate it when you walk into a grocer and they expect you to pick out the items yourself? I don't work here, I just want to say "1 pound of ham and 2 loafs of bread" at the clerk, pay and pick them up. I've been to this new Piggley Wiggly, can't find anything, spent like an hour to find beans. Imagine if I was paid for that time, I would have made 15¢!"

OP in 1925, probably.

I always just call the bluff. Offer them the receipt before they ask and they're totally ok with you walking off with half the items unbought.

So, your solution for a corporation underpayying their staff is to offer to do their job for free so corporate can just eliminate the position altogether?

Same with pumping gas. Self serve is the norm in so many places.

OK, so the reason is because in the situation with two people, you fail to make use of both to make it go faster, and instead just stand around.

So if speed were the priority, I have a suggestion for you.

I have maybe once checked out at an in-person check-out where the person scanning was twice as slow as me on my own at a self-service checkout.

Normally at an in-person checkout, I am in fact the bottleneck placing stuff in bags. I'm already motivated to do that as quickly as possible, and the person scanning is still faster than that. Are you like the other person and just standing around while the cashier bags your groceries? If you "really care about leaving" you could do something about that.

Nah, they should hire more people. It isn't my problem to solve. I don't work there.

I like how you've taken a self deprecating comment that tries to empathise with other people and turned it into a confrontational jab at making one of the many failings of neoliberalism my direct responsibility.

I actually use self checkouts because I don't want to have to engage the social parts of my brain for what is essentially a tedious chore. However this means that staff also don't have to deal with me under those circumstances, which is a nice bonus.

To counter your jab, your solution to the failings of neoliberalism is to create needless busywork under dehumanising conditions rather than address the systemic failings?

You don't have to answer that, I was just making a point about how I didn't come to this thread to fight anyone. Put the knife down.

My favorite is "Thanks, you too " and just keep walking