"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

I shrug leave the cart there and start walking out the door.

No, wait: *The cashier goes and opens the closest register to the self checkouts

Honestly this would piss me off more. Oh so you just lied to me and expect me to forget about it that quickly. If that's how they treat customers I wouldn't ever return. There's too many options for me to put up with that bs.

I know not everyone has options, but exercise them if you do.

I kind of get it. It's one cashier monitoring four checkout stations. Staffing isn't her fault. And if someone comes up to the checkout stations while she is checking me out and has a problem she's now doing another person's job worth of work. She's got to run double duty, and that sucks for her.

What I presented her with was a no win situation. If somebody doesn't check me out they're going to have to put away an entire cart full of groceries and probably waste a fair amount of perishables.

I was by no means happy with them at that point but my time is not worthless either and I had just spent the better part of an hour picking out a grocery order.

I pass the time ignoring the dangerous substance I'm handling untrained by thinking about how we stopped employing a specialists so that someone's quarterly profits could go up a bit more.

Thats great for you, and your area.

I don't hate self checkouts, I hate the people who use self-checkouts. The mom with a cart filled with food to feed 4 people for a week, holding a baby in one hand and trying to scan and bag with the other. The guy apparently shopping for his whole apartment complex, scanning 4 items, paying for them, then scanning 6 different items, slowly working his way through an overloaded cart. The Gen-Z narrating each item into their phone for some reason, also struggling to bag items single-handed.

One of them isn't bad, but two of them will strangle the entire kiosk farm, and make it seem like everyone is a self-absorbed idiot. Never go grocery shopping on a weekend morning.

Self checkout is the greatest thing ever and I will never understand why so many people seem to prefer waiting in line for a few minutes instead of just using the self checkout.

No human interaction, usually faster because I don't have to wait. What's not to love? Sure occassionally you might get selected for a random check and have to wait a bit, but that still beats the line.

They used to be awful here 10-15 years ago, with a scale for your scanned items that would complain over nothing all the time, but now everywhere I've been has done away with that in favor of random controls and the receipt for opening the gate. I think my highlight so far was the clothing store where you didn't even have to scan, you just put your items in a box and it told you what you have to pay.

Ever since I saw that the grocery store near the train station in my city (which is famously one of the worst in the country in terms of crime) had self checkout without even a gate to scan your receipt for a while (they added it now) and has the handheld scanners, I've been assuming that the added theft from either really can't be that bad, or is a result of poor security. Clearly it's worth it for the higher customer throughput for that store, so I kinda doubt it could be that bad especially in safer areas.

Back in the day, I shopped at the one grocery store in a bit of a food desert. They'd have all...I don't remember 10? 12?...checkout lines open all day, and you're still guaranteed to spend half an hour in line. If they could have replaced 2 checkout lines with 6 self-check kiosks, or 4 & 12, it would have helped a lot, but they hadn't been invented yet.

Now, I shop in a better neighborhood where they have 6 kiosks, one staffed checkout, and 8 lanes closed. Start with a technical solution to a real problem, and some MBA is going to come in and figure out how to turn it back into a problem.

Maybe if all the cashier lanes are staffed. But if I have a cart full of groceries, the grocery store is full, and there's only two cashiers working (also, gotta bag your own groceries) then I'm considering switching stores at that point.

You people don't have self scanning? Pick a barcode scanner at the entrance, scan everything when you put it in your bags in the cart, and just pay at the exit and walk out (unless you get a semi-rare random check). One of the favorite features of the store I use is that I fill the shopping list at home in the app (that can be shared with other accounts) and then I see the list in my phone or the store scanner, sorted by the order of sections in the store, so eg. all fruit and vegetables will be next on the list when I get to that section. I also like that you see your total in real time and the scanner reminds you if there's a "3 for 2" or other offers.

I don’t use self check out because every one is a horrid user experience.

I always like to ask the fervently anti-self-checkout crowd around here whether or not they pump their own gas, and then why self pumping is okay, but self checkout is not okay. (Note, my community is hopelessly car dependent so most everyone around here drives).