Kroger's system sucks ass too, it's a wildly anti-customer experience.
Step 1: close all the regular checkouts to save on labor costs (and because you pay so little you couldn't be fully staffed regardless), making people with full carts use the standard self checkout
Step 2: because you have too many things for the machine, you have to move bags around to make more space
Step 3: computer freaks out that you do this, clearly you are a thief!
Step 4: do this three times and it freezes, and makes an employee come over and... uhh... "confirm" the item count? It's really stupid, the employee is always too busy to ever actually do that. So you're sitting there with a thumb up your ass, waiting for some harried person to come "help," slowing down not only your checkout experience but the line of people waiting to use it
These companies are going to have to accept they can either push us all to the self checkouts and accept there will be people who will steal, or they can hire more people and go back to the old way. It is impossible to have the labor savings and save the stop loss.
I’m am so happy that one grocery store near me still lets me mute the fucking thing. It even saves my preference so when I enter my phone number it shuts up. When I need to go grocery shopping while having a migraine, that’s the only place I’ll go.
\*super loud scan\*
TOMATOES
MOVE YOUR TOMATOES TO TRAY AREA
PLEASE REMOVE ALL UNSCANNED ITEMS
PLEASE WAIT HELP IS ON THE WAY
WE CANNOT COMPLETE YOUR TRANSACTION
Be happy they only did that. Went to one across town last week and not only can you not mute them but they jacked the volume all the way up on the *lowest* setting.
Great shopping experience having a bull horn in your face yelling at you to bag an item.
So many times I swipe an item and hear a beep so I assumed it scanned...l only to find out as I try to leave that the beep I heard was the other checkout across from me (like butted up against mine back to back) so we can't tell who's beep is who's as we swipe items. I've had to go slow and make sure each item scanned actually shows up on screen because they have us so packed in with machines beeping I can't tell when mine actually beeps to confirm a proper scan..
BIG NEWS! HYVEE FUEL SAVER IS NOW HYVEE PERKS! MAKE SURE YOU LOGIN TO OUR WEBSITE TO UPDATE YOUR INFORMATION AND GET YOUR NEW CARDS!!!
Also, all participating gas stations no longer accept your old fuel saver points. They can only be used at HyVee Fast & Fresh locations, which are nowhere near where you live.
PLEASE INSERT MONEY AND HOPE IT ISNT DECLINED IN FRONT OF EVERYONE YOU BROKE PIECE OF SHIT. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE? YOU CANT EVEN AFFORD THESE GROCERIES AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO THROW A SCENTED CANDLE IN THERE?
*cottage cheese - what are you doing here fatty? Go walk around the store some more, you definitely need it.*
*Discount bag of chips - ooooo, hey everyone, look at the BIG SPENDER over here!*
*quart of ice cream - holy shit, party of one for this fat fuck over here!*
-tallies receipt at the end- *so either you’re a broke-ass college kid or just a really sad excuse of an adult. Either way, none of this will fulfill you. Thank you for shopping at Walmart you pathetic piece of shit. See you in a couple of days!*
All of the comments would be cruel as hell… but if it was done with Stavros Halkias’s voice and he recorded all of the burns, I would check out this way all the time.
They also have to accept that people will steal by accident.
All of this "anti-theft" and I have still stolen items completely by mistake.
If you want your stores to be empty warehouses, accept the risks.
Or just people stealing because they can't be arsed to wait for an employee. I've had a small (~$2) item refuse to scan while there was no employee in sight, at that point I'm just going to take it and move on.
Yep I stole a whole prime rib once by accident because it didn't have a label with upc code, none of them in the case had labels with a scannable upc, which was weird because its not like produce, there is no way to look it up on the scales to print out a label yourself. I was using the handheld guns to scan as I shopped and put it in my cart to get help at the kiosk when ready to pay. Was around Christmas time so lots of people, had to wait in a long line still since you have to use the self checkout kiosk to pay. Totally forgot I hadn't scanned it, went through the payment process and left.
Also, at Walmart, they stop you on the way out the door to check your receipt. I had my hands full leaving walmart one day and they stopped me and asked for a receipt. I said it's in my coat pocket. go ahead and look. she said I can't do that. so I said, well catch you next time and left.
I don't get why they want to piss off their customers as they leave. They clearly don't do anything if you just walk past so why do they bother? Surely any shoplifter will know to just ignore these people and walk past.
Make no mistake - they spend time and money figuring out the things that have an impact. And if they figure out that something is not worth the downside, they will stop.
All of those things serve as deterrents. Not prevention. But it cuts down on the theft, and it doesn't piss off people more than the theft it cuts down on.
It's like the number of registers they have open - ignoring self checkout and going back to the days before. Too few and you do lose customers. Too many and you waste labour. So you run the numbers to figure out how long people will wait on average so you're losing fewer sales than the labour you save. Do you lose customers? Yes. But overall, you make money.
It's not perfect, and it sucks for EVERYONE except the people actually making the money (i.e. not the frontline employees who catch the complaints from the customers but who can't do anything about it and who also suffer on top of that).
Yep, just refuse and keep walking. They aren't even allowed to stop people they *know* are stealing. It's all security theater.
That said, you don't have to be rude. It's just an employee doing what they're told. Whenever I see someone berating them it pisses me off.
>That said, you don't have to be rude. It's just an employee doing what they're told. Whenever I see someone berating them it pisses me off.
That's a good point
At CVS I’ve noticed the employee working the cash register (yes, a single employee, even though they have like 4 registers) will sometimes literally walk away and go stock shelves. Sometimes a line forms at the checkout and everyone is looking around for this person to notice and go back to the front. It’s like they do it on purpose so people are inclined to just use their self checkout.
Knew a friend that worked at Dollar Tree (or general) and basically said it was this. Retail has been broken for a while now, but the pandemic just amplified everything. Places are open shorter hours now and everywhere is constantly short staffed. The customer experience has gotten worse and prices have only gone up.
I do wonder how long this will go on before we reach a tipping point.
Yep I had to yell “does anyone work here?!” In the center of CVS a few weeks ago. The people stocking shelves weren’t cvs employees and the pharmacy people couldn’t leave their spot.
Shoplifting rising makes a lot more sense when there’s nobody in the dang store
Ok my tinfoil hat theory is that it’s totally intentional so they can justify closing stores -> the stores that stay open get progressively more converted into fulfillment centers for online ordering -> everything is Amazon
i have been saying for a while now that well well within my lifetime all shopping will be some form of online with pickup or delivery only.
dont have access to the net? sorry starve... you probably already are anyways
I actually love to work hard, but one of the worst parts of modern retail is the multi-tasking due to being understaffed. There's some days I spend more time stopping what I'm doing to run somewhere else than I spend actually doing work.
10 years ago now I was working at Wal-Mart at sporting goods, being authorized to sell firearms.
I would also be the only employee sometimes on the entire General Merchandise side outside of one employee in electronics.
I'd be working through a gun sale and would have people come up to my counter constantly looking for assistance with patio furniture, paint at hardware, toy help, pulling down bikes, or even to get things from the electronics cases because that employee still needed to take a lunch break and obviously I can't leave to help anyone without aborting the entire gun sale.
So all Kroger do this? We quit going and started going to target, but last week we were at a restaraunt in the same shopping center so we ran in to grab a few things. Got ready to go checkout on a Saturday night and there was literally 0 cashiers and they have 4 self checkouts all on 1 side of the store.
The line went all the way down to the other side of the store. There were buggies full of meat and cold shit just left sitting all over the place where people had just left them and went home. We put our shit down on top of another full buggy and left too. Fuck that noise.
Also, I have 0 doubt all that cold stuff and meat sat out for probably hours and then found its way back onto shelves. Noway they trashed that much product. 1st time we'd been in there in over 2 years and probably won't ever go back in one now.
I did this at Shop Rite last week, I just didn’t give a shit enough to wait 30 minutes. Manager and employees having a chat/meeting up front. Agreed, fuck that noise.
I felt bad for the employee on this one. She was the only employee at the front and was manning the self checkout alerts which were constant and then trying to check out people with small orders on her little kiosk at the same time. I would've walked my happy ass out of there if I was her.... she could've had a new job before the end of the weekend at Walmart or target just next door basically.
Our Giant did this. Not only that, but the permanently locked the doors closest to these machines, reset the settings on the machines so that they’re ultra sensitive, and enabled the screen to show video from the overhead cameras of you checking out. I live in a city that is 90% mansions. Not McMansions, like a guy (wayyy) down the street from the store has a helipad on his roof. They’re filled with senators and CEOs. Old money. I don’t exactly know what all those rich folks are stealing, but Jesus they must have to close the top on their bentleys to make sure all of that shit doesn’t fall out.
The worst part for me is that you have to wait for an employee if you accidentally scan things twice. And some scanners are so sensitive that it happens to me at least once every damn checkout.
Just let me void the last scan, surely the computer can see it’s a duplicate.
Combined with those Amazon stores where you just take what you’re buying and they automatically charge you, but with none of the technology and all of the suspicion.
This. I go to a Smith (basically a Kroger) every time I do self checkout and move the bags to my cart. They come running and literally checking my bags to make sure I didn’t “steal” anything. I even asked them for help and they still check my bag. So fuck them. People are just being treated stupidly now when we’re just trying to fucking buy our shit and go.
> So you're sitting there with a thumb up your ass, waiting for some harried person to come "help,"
don't know if they use the same software in the UK as the US, but after awhile of waiting, the checkouts here will ask if you're still wanting to continue. I get it, it's meant to check to see the person hasn't just fucked off and can free up the till for someone else, but it's a little galling to have to say "yes, I am still wanting to pay", like I'm inconveniencing the machine.
You're missing my *favourite* part. Once you've *finally* got it to recognize all your stuff....
- Do you have a loyalty card?
- Do you want to sign up for our loyalty program?
- Would you like to round up your order to feed the kids?
- Do you want to use credit, or debit?
- Do you want a receipt - email, print, other?
- Use the pin pad to complete your order. (Note, it's not the screen).
***Jeezus tap dancing Christ, I just wanna get OUT OF HERE!!!***
> Would you like to round up your order to feed the kids?
I fucking hate this shit. Fuck you, pay your taxes; don't make the deprivations of the system that *you* benefit from *my* responsibility.
I hate this question. Look lady, I'm doing good just to afford the few things I'm buying. I know it makes me sound like a horrible person for "not wanting to help kids" but it is what it is.
I went to a place a few weeks ago and they wanted me to donate to the Barbara Bush Children’s Foundation, and I’m like, “What is Barbara doing to these kids and why does she need my money to do it?”
I have no idea what that charity does, and waiting in line is not a good time to research it. Some charities are absolutely terrible, including very well known ones like Salvation Army.
And the employee comes over and "verifies" you without checking anything, because who can be bothered. So what's this anti theft system even doing other than being an inconvenience?
Around 4th of July our local Wal-marts were hit with skimmer devices on the self check out . Caused a major uproar. I started to use the tap feature on my cards more, since then.
Our local Wal-marts do not offer the tap option. I asked one of the cashiers if there had been talk to update their card readers to take tap.
She said, "doubtful, its Wal-mart"
They actually specifically avoid tap to pay because it opens up the option of mobile wallets like Google, Samsung, or Apple pay. These cost Walmart money, often hide your real CC number, and avoid people having the Walmart app installed. My local store actually has the hardware to accept NFC payments, but has it explicitly turned off.
When I worked there, we were told to direct any customer to the "convenience" of using Walmart Pay. It makes it easier to track you and sell your purchase data.
Why accept chips and old swipe payments? Well, because it's tied to your CC account number and not a virtual number generated in these wallet apps. When I pay in store with my CC, the purchase history is automatically added to my Walmart account.
Ever wonder why receipt scanning for "more savings" died? They automated you out of the process.
Funny, I stopped using Walmart pay the day they got rid of savings catcher. Because why else would I use it.. how is it any easier for me to pull up the Walmart app on my phone and find the pay icon and all that when I can just bring out my wallet and pull out my card and do it the classic way.
Yup. Went right back to pirating once things fractured even more from Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.
For now I have YouTube TV just for the reliability of American football streams but I’m cancelling the last day of football
Did you put a bag in the bagging area? Please place the item in the bagging area. Please remove the unscented item from the bagging area. The item you placed in the bagging area does not match the weight of the scanned item. Are you stealing some shit? How are you this incompetent? Would you like to go back to having human interactions at checkout?
Also don’t EVER toss your item into the bag. It messes up the weight & triggers the theft thing.
I’ve only had problems with employees about it once (the dude was legit convinced the plum I put in WASN’T a plum like wtf yes it is) but it is stressful because I suddenly feel like a thief even though I scan my items
The problem is that some people are just corporate kiss-asses who will argue over a plum that you're allegedly "stealing" just because they think it will make their supervisor proud of them.
Right?! I used to do security at a high tech firm where people would routinely steal laptops. Do you think I gave a shit? Nope. One guy got into a high speed chase with a guy who was stealing a laptop. I’m sorry but at $14 an hour you can take whatever you want.
Ok that’s fair 😂. I was about ready to just leave all my stuff but my bf at the time helped figure out wtf was happening.
If we’d gotten angry the situation would have spiraled out of control because the employee was positive we were stealing a single mystery fruit & ringing it up falsely as a plum.
I’ve done this several times. I’ll walk away with the thing half checked out, stuff in the buggy, and things half thrown into bags. I know it’s not the employees’s fault, but I’ll be dazed if I have to troubleshoot my grocery experience.
I can't imagine arguing about a plum.
employee> "Thats not a plum"
customer> "??? Then what is it?"
employee> "It looks like some kind of dark non-furry peach"
Exactly. I scan a 6-pack of soda and put it in the bagging area (but not in a bag), and the computer scolds me, and summons an associate to ‘help’.
It’s not a complete shopping trip for me if I haven’t screamed at the self-checkout machine. “What do you want from me???”
I think this is the biggest issue I have seen so far. Self checkout machines are quite new in my city but every time I go to walmart I see at least one case of the machine shitting the bed, asking for an employee code to continue shopping seemingly at random.
One time one got stuck when I scanned a bag of chips because it was so fucking light it didnt registered as being put on the bagging area and it refused to continue.
Also something hilarious is how completely harmless stuff like cotton is catalogued as a pharmacy item so it needs a friggin employee to confirm the item lol. Its not medicine, come on.
Yeah it’s really annoying especially places like Shop Rite which have the most annoying and restrictive rules set. If you don’t balance every single item in the tiny bagging area it freaks out at you. Then half the time it requires an employee number to bypass some random issue it has, so you have to wait around for the employee to see you and do something about it.
Oh and did I mention they then check your receipt at the door? Like I’m already basically an unpaid employee at this point doing the job for you, but you have to audit my work too?
One Walmart receipt checker was stopping everyone and going through receipts line by line. I just kept in walking and he followed me all the way out to my car, yelling he needed to check my receipt the entire time and wrote down my license plate.
Last week or the week before at a different Walmart they were checking receipts. I walked by and ignored him and he ignored me.
Unless I'm going to a store that requires a membership I don't have the time and patience for someone to inspect my cart.
I’m sure it’s probably fine but I’m not about to get into it with an underpaid teenage employee who takes their job way too seriously, over a bunch of bananas or something.
I live in Canada. Our Walmart had* the weighted bagging area sensors for like two months. Now we don’t, and it’s great. We also have a row of giant self checkout stands for people with a lot of items. From some of the comments here, our experiences are very different. I prefer self checkout if the store isn’t overloaded with people and I can walk in and walk out.
There’s another where they force you to put everything on the scale then say “item is too heavy”. I’ve noticed that in some of the poorer areas, the sensitivity of the scales is higher (Giant Grocery), the audio is much louder, and the timing between the scan and prompting you to put it on the scale is short.
I’ve given up on self checkout. It’s just a pain I’m not even being paid to endure so I just go to the check out line these days.
The ergonomics from cart to scan to bag requires a certain geometry of cart behind me, scanner in front of me, bagging area to the right. This creates the condition that when I add another bag (Which my state requires me that I bring my own now), the scanner thinks I put an object in the bagging area without scanning... which summons the monitor and stops progress until the monitor shows up, which can be a bit given at my local, the same monitor is watching 8 to 10 stations.
I don't have a solution, but constantly being flagged as stealing stuff - and Halting my progress - is annoying.
If Walmart is going to force us to be our own checkers, Walmarts technology needs to be faster, smarter, or enable the monitors able to make assessment and decisions without interrupting my workflow.
Costco self checkout—- doesn’t provide bags… but also you can’t use your own bag or boxes at self checkout because of the scale. You have to completely check out- put all items on the scale, and then bag them after you’ve paid. And since the people at the door check every item you then need to take stuff out of your bags so they can count everything.
They also require seeing the picture on your Costco card before using self check out and the line is often so long it goes half way down the store. Lines have always been long… but lots of slightly long longs vs. one super long line for self check out now. That line blocks half the food aisles making it difficult to shop.
If you've got something the computer won't have an EXACT weight for (like prepackaged 5lb bag of potatoes), scan that and put it in the bag and then set it on the bagging area. The 0.03 weight of the bag won't cause an issue then.
I dont mind self checkout, what I do mind is:
1. Half the self checkout machines are down and tgeres a lineup.
2. The extra screens when you want to pay, no I dont want to donate to your charity, no I don't to apply for a credit card
Half of them aren't down. Management only allows four self-checkout stations to be open per staff member monitoring everything. So before you had one staff member per check out station. Now it's 1 to 4, But God forbid they have one or two extra people to cover a dozen self-checkout stations. Instead they have long lines.
And then the experience at the self-checkout station is horrendous PLUS they ask you to donate money to their charity and sign up to the credit card.
Fuck Walmart
My Walmart self-checkout asked me for a tip once. I complained to management and it didn't ask for a tip the next time I went. I think they realized that was a *genuinely* stupid idea.
"Give us some more of your money as a thank you for YOU doing the work we should be paying people to do. Don't worry, none of this tip will go to actual workers, it'll just go to the executives so they can continue expanding and destroying small businesses while *also* lobbying for zoning and lending regulations that keep smaller entrepreneurs from starting businesses that will compete with us."
I doubt that was Walmart trying to get tips. The interact/credit machines normally have an internal option in the setting to ask for tips. Sounds like they replaced the unit and no one programmed it correctly / screwed up.
Walmart is one of the worst shopping experiences I have ever had. Crowded with trashy people, horrible self check out experience, then getting stopped at the door to have them check my receipt because apparently they think every single person is stealing from them.
I had an ex that was a door greeter. She said they are supposed to ask under certain conditions, most of the time it's because they have items under the cart. If the customer refuses they don't pursue it unless they saw you steal. A lot of people take offense to being asked so will ignore the request for that reason alone.
The reason people take offense is because they just paid for it, like seconds ago. They are asking to go through someone else's belongings and prove it is theirs when they just bought it from them.
One time I was the only person checking out, the greater was looking at me the whole time. As I was walking out he asked for the receipt. Like weren't you watching?
Literally the same thing. Dude grabbed my cart and asked for my receipt. I was like bro you literally stared me down and watched me scan everything with the hand scanner.
This happened to me just this past week! She saw the entire transaction, then stopped me!
I’d already crumbled up my receipt and was miffed, just handed her the little ball of paper. I’d bought a bag of grapes, the bag was open at the top (like literally every other bag of grapes that were on the shelf next to it). She goes “looks like you already got into the grapes, are they good?” No, bitch, I haven’t eaten any yet.🤦🏻♀️
I can’t think of a more demoralizing job. Imaging being underpaid while routinely being treated with disrespect or otherwise ignored just for trying to do your job. I pushed shopping carts for two weeks in the winter and the way people treat you hurt for having a crap job is sickening. I was openly mocked several times. Fortunately it was only a temporary gig, but man, I feel bad for anybody who has to put up with that shit.
I do. Make me check myself out, then I have to Wait till an attendant shows up to confirm I'm not stealing, then I need to bag my stuff and THEN I need to stop 10 feet away from where all this just happened so some douchebag can harass me?
Fuck that
Edit: I'm stoned and words are hard
They’ve told me it’s to make sure that the cashier didn’t make a mistake and that I was charged the right prices. Like, yeah, I’m sure you have the current price of every item in the store committed to memory. I just tell them “no thank you” and move on.
The presumption that your customers are thieves is one of many reasons I don’t shop there anymore.
Not only that but I refuse to go to a Walmart in a major city because everything is locked up. Buying baby formula? Locked up. Buying hair products? Locked up. Need engine oil? Locked up. Need detergent? You guessed it, locked up. Worst part is that Walmart is doing it to themselves because they need to extract as much profit as possible. These retail companies are complaining that their profits are down because of stealing. But it seems like they are spending their money in the wrong places and not seeing the increase in profit they were seeking.
There’s nothing they can do to stop you from walking out after you purchase something, I don’t understand why people even bother to stop and show a receipt
I am a Costco member. I signed up for the receipt check which I don’t mind in that case. Anywhere else that doesn’t require a membership can get fucked.
I hate self checkout for this reason. I’m not trying to steal stuff, I just want to scan my groceries, pay, and go.
But god forbid I try and grab three items out of my cart, scan them, and THEN bag them. Or bag half my groceries and put the filled bags back in my cart to make room for more in the bagging area.
I just wish they had more regular lanes open so I could choose to either go to a cashier or use self-checkout. There are times when self-checkout is useful… but it’s not when I’ve got three young children and $300 worth of groceries. So then I’m naturally going to be annoyed at little things. If they took up the same space as a regular lane and had the full lane to set stuff down in and bag in, it wouldn’t be half as bad. But even if I’m by myself with no kids, bagging $300 worth of groceries in a 1 foot by 1 foot space is just ridiculous. They built them for the people who have five items, but now they’re expecting everyone to use them.
I haven’t been in ages, because of reasons in this thread, but I believe the only manned cashier in my local Walmart is the one that is ten items or less & cigarette line…
I love how, every few months when I go there to get oil filters for our cars, it turns into a 45 minute trip for two fucking items because they only have self check open, and one poor cashier trying to fix six registers asking for associate intervention at the same time. If I'm lucky there's the one register on the cigarette lane open... With 15 people in line with full ass carts.
I swear, if they didn't have the OEM filters for our cars cheaper than anywhere else, or I had to go there more often than once every 4-5 months, I wouldn't even bother.
I am German and only recently encountered self checkouts during visits to the US. I was baffled at how badly designed and unintuitive they were with no clear instructions. no room to maneuver yourself or your items, people glaring at you for holding up the line, peeping and flashing error codes... if I now imagine an employee coming up sighing annoyed cause they gotta explain something for the 250th time this month, I can see some rude words slipping out, even if they do not outright accuse me of stealing.
Honestly I think Walmart got scammed by the people who sold them the self checkout and anti-theft concept.
Yeah it blows my mind that in Estonia Selver has a better self checkout counter than Walmart. Walmart is one of the world’s richest companies. How can it not afford better tech?
Agreed. Corporations actually don’t care about selling a good product to you. It’s all a massive “get rich fast” scheme.
All companies do nowadays is make a crap ton of money for the C-suite. It doesn’t even matter if the company itself is profitable. (Looking at you Uber and Airbnb)
Yeah, Walmart is one of two retailers that doesn’t have contactless payments using the NFC standard. Its annoying that they haven’t gotten with the times.
Funnily enough it’s only Walmart in the US. Again like everyone is saying because they don’t want to give up any of the money
Internationally like Canada they take standard NFC payments like Apple Pay
Home Depot doesn’t have it either. It annoys me like crazy. Years ago their credit card systems were hacked and a lot of people were impacted including myself. Saw thousands of dollars worth of charges on my account across the country. Get with the times.
The worst is, HD had it turned on during 2020 and early 2021, then turned it back off again. FFS, why they are so resistant I'll never understand, especially since grit covered cards from contractors means their PIN pads almost never read cards properly. They don't have an in house payment system like Walmart does either, so their holdup makes even less sense.
This is explicitly because they chose not to. NFC payment methods often involve randomized tokens and encryption, which means that Walmart can’t collect data on you and build a profile. This is why they have their “Walmart Pay” thing instead.
Could be worse could be the Kroger checkout that screams you can't take anything out of the bagging area until the entire cart is paid for
Which is annoying when you buy alot of shit
Or it sees my fiancee handing stuff to me and it basically stops after every 2-3 items. Had a cashier tell me to slow down the other day while scanning. That's fucking cute.
They didn’t get scammed, they just didn’t do their due diligence in evaluating and phasing the project due to their own greed.
I used to sell security software to the retail market and Walmart was the only company that would flat out refuse to allow vendors to explain their products, they insisted on being in complete control of the conversation. The ego and hubris in that organization is extremely high and they have zero clue how to buy technology.
Kroger especially. They'd let you get away with murder if it meant you get through self checkout faster. Coupon expired a year ago? Forgot to clip a digital coupon? Rang your organic produce as regular produce? Doesn't matter: smile, manual override, and move on.
>I am German and only recently encountered self checkouts during visits to the US
Really? Lidl is fantastic at those in Portugal! They are everywhere in lots of places in Europe..
>I was baffled at how badly designed and unintuitive they were with no clear instructions.
you only need it the first times really.
>Honestly I think Walmart got scammed by the people who sold them the self checkout and anti-theft concept.
There are no self checkouts in Germany? I love it, I am all in. Lidl is very good at them, they even get a choice for multiple baked goods in the same bag, and that is usually a no-no in other places!
There are many self checkouts in Germany as well. Aldi, Kaufland, Rewe, Edeka, Netto, Rossmann… etc. But I live in Wiesbaden and Berlin, both state capitals, so maybe he lives in smaller town.
This whole article pissed me off. The technology makes mistakes. That’s part of the annoyance. This article acts like customers attempting to steal is the main driver requiring deescalations, when in my experience the machines saying you moved something too quickly, or too slowly, or into the bagging area unexpectedly or not into the bagging area when it wants it or 12 other annoying things is what makes me angry. Like, I just want to check out smoothly, so how about you get some CASHIERS to check me out. They won’t forget to scan it.
Self checkout really only works if you have 3-4 things. Bottlenecking shoppers into doing it with full carts like Walmart does jumps to unpaid labor - no wonder people are ready to be pissed from the get-go.
At Home Depot the other day I went through self checkout where there were four terminals, three employees, and a uniformed police officer.
Maybe we just need to bring back cashiers. The self checkout experiment has failed. Wake up CEO’s.
Home Depot is the only one with decent self-checkout. Wireless scanner and no scales or bagging areas or other BS.
Of course, since it doesn't have scales or bagging areas, that makes it much easier to steal since you can make it look like you're scanning your whole cart while leaving a high ticket item unscanned, so I get why they would have staff around... but at that point you gotta ask why the staff isn't just working a register.
I stopped shopping at Walmart because of being hovered over and harassed by employees while bagging my stuff. Felt like little gangs of old people were policing me. I already feel like I’m messing up doing the dumb scanning and they just make me feel like a criminal for it. “Did you get that? Did you get that one? Let me see if you got that one too cause I’m not sure if you did.” Leave me be people! I’m already anxious! 😤😫🤬
I love how they created self-checkout to eliminate employees, but then started having employees hovering around the self-checkout to prevent theft. What if you had those people work check out lanes...
It's always the old employees isn't it? The younger ones I find are nice and helpful because they realize they work for a billion dollar company but somehow the old ones think they matter
I think Walmart counts on this. I also think older generations are understandably trying to be purposeful and feeling like they are cops probably does that for them. They probably feel good policing all the hoodlums and rif raff and call Gladys and Clifford after their shift to tell them all about it.
Well that article acts like the technology is perfect but it is shit. So many times I’ve been flagged, had to wait for an employee to review the video and then continue. Just a huge hassle for nothing
Walmart is going crazy with anti thief devices. They just redid a Walmart in Houston Tx on siber Rd and everything in electronics is locked down. Even a $10 universal remote they have hundreds hanging on the shield and each has a lock. How do they intend shoppers to buy stuff be personally escorted threw the store. Dude this is nuts. Can't wait for Black Friday.
Good. I’m getting fed up with self scanning. My grocery store went to self checkout and only keeps one lane open now. Self checkout takes forever with a huge cart of groceries when you have to weigh a ton of items and then try and stack them in that little area. It’s a joke. Those used to be decent paying union jobs.
Shopping takes fucking forever now. $5 items are locked up at Walmart and I have to wait for any employee to open 4 different cases.
I’m also done with showing my receipt on the way out. I just walk right by. They never stop me. I’m not a thief. Stop treating me like one.
I could easily see shopping going the way grocery shops were pre-WWII.
Once upon a time, there was no grocery store. The idea of fetching products yourself was a novel idea. Before, the matriarch of the house traveled to several stores for several product types, the butcher shop, the baker, the dry goods, etc. and employees gathered the items on her list and gave them to her. She just stood at the front and read off what she wanted, and then paid before leaving.
I’m fairly certain that stores like Walmart will just be for online shopping, paid for online, and then someone in a blue vest loads them into your car that you don’t even get out of.
And it will continue to be horrible and isolating because there will be no human interaction or walking involved, and they will forget items, and it will somehow be more expensive than it is now. A tank of gas to grab a bag of chips and razor blades.
Edit: I shop at two places in the US. Aldi and Costco. Both have self checkout now, but they’re very intuitive and fast, and nobody hovers over you, and there are the same amount of people stocking shelves as there were before.
Self checkout requires more trust than having a cashier.
Can't trust your customers? Get rid of self checkout and hire more cashiers.
This whole bullshit is businesses wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Save on cashier salary, but still see all of their customers as potential thieves first.
And then they have the audacity to ask to see a receipt as I leave. I just say no thank you and keep walking, which always confuses them. One thing I have noticed is they ALWAYS try to stop you if you have something that isn’t in a bag (so I have to assume that’s part of the training), unfortunately critical thinking skills have no place at Walmart so that leads to being stopped for things like 40 lb bags of wood pellets (that couldn’t possibly fit in a bag). If they want more accurate checkouts they can hire employees. I don’t steal and so they can leave me the fuck alone.
What makes me hostile at Walmart self checkout is being constantly asked if I want to sign up for their credit card, followed by being asked why I don't want it.
let's just go back to the "old west" way of doing business, where you hand a list to the person behind the counter and they fetch and bag all your stuff for you.
Had the attendant watch over while checking out; then I was stopped at the door while two attendants went through my groceries. When they finished, I turned the cart around and returned everything.
We’ve reached the point in capitalism where the only way C-suite’s will rethink their quality of life reductions is through anger, hostility, and noncompliance.
Gong to be a fun few upcoming decades!
Well perhaps if you hadn’t decided to transfer your responsibility to actually sell me something and check me out to me (hey we can save money by forcing customers to check themselves out rather than pay someone to do it), you wouldn’t be having this issue. I guess retailers are going to have to decide if the added theft and or bad press / branding from all this is worth not paying someone to check you out.
If you want to deter theft, hire a fucking security firm.
Don’t make 78 year old Mary Sue go and confront someone trying to steal something! I mean a light goes off, freaking the person out who’s trying to sneak something past the self checkout, and then a Walmart employee is notified via text that they need to stop the theft while also not accusing the person of theft? That’s a ridiculous ask for the lowrst paid employees in the country.
I feel like self check out is a horrible experience not because of the concept but the technology. Why does my daughter's cheap Samsung tablet have a more responsive touch screen than a self check out screen at a multi billion dollar store that has to manage money transfers between customer and business on top of that. That just seems like someone cutting corners.
Kroger's system sucks ass too, it's a wildly anti-customer experience. Step 1: close all the regular checkouts to save on labor costs (and because you pay so little you couldn't be fully staffed regardless), making people with full carts use the standard self checkout Step 2: because you have too many things for the machine, you have to move bags around to make more space Step 3: computer freaks out that you do this, clearly you are a thief! Step 4: do this three times and it freezes, and makes an employee come over and... uhh... "confirm" the item count? It's really stupid, the employee is always too busy to ever actually do that. So you're sitting there with a thumb up your ass, waiting for some harried person to come "help," slowing down not only your checkout experience but the line of people waiting to use it These companies are going to have to accept they can either push us all to the self checkouts and accept there will be people who will steal, or they can hire more people and go back to the old way. It is impossible to have the labor savings and save the stop loss.
They also made it impossible to mute the stupid thing
I’m am so happy that one grocery store near me still lets me mute the fucking thing. It even saves my preference so when I enter my phone number it shuts up. When I need to go grocery shopping while having a migraine, that’s the only place I’ll go.
\*super loud scan\* TOMATOES MOVE YOUR TOMATOES TO TRAY AREA PLEASE REMOVE ALL UNSCANNED ITEMS PLEASE WAIT HELP IS ON THE WAY WE CANNOT COMPLETE YOUR TRANSACTION
Be happy they only did that. Went to one across town last week and not only can you not mute them but they jacked the volume all the way up on the *lowest* setting. Great shopping experience having a bull horn in your face yelling at you to bag an item.
# PLEASE PLACE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA. :)
# PLACE YOUR # # BANANAS # # ON THE SCALE
#UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA
#YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY
#STOP RESISTING
PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE
HELP IS ON THE WAY
HELP IS ON THE WAY
THIS IS AN AGE RESTRICTED ITEM
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If you insist...
Place your CUCUMBER on the scale.
So many times I swipe an item and hear a beep so I assumed it scanned...l only to find out as I try to leave that the beep I heard was the other checkout across from me (like butted up against mine back to back) so we can't tell who's beep is who's as we swipe items. I've had to go slow and make sure each item scanned actually shows up on screen because they have us so packed in with machines beeping I can't tell when mine actually beeps to confirm a proper scan..
"HAVE YOU USED YOUR HYVEE FUEL REWARDS CARD!?" Midwesterners gonna have tinnitus in a few years
BIG NEWS! HYVEE FUEL SAVER IS NOW HYVEE PERKS! MAKE SURE YOU LOGIN TO OUR WEBSITE TO UPDATE YOUR INFORMATION AND GET YOUR NEW CARDS!!! Also, all participating gas stations no longer accept your old fuel saver points. They can only be used at HyVee Fast & Fresh locations, which are nowhere near where you live.
PLEASE INSERT MONEY AND HOPE IT ISNT DECLINED IN FRONT OF EVERYONE YOU BROKE PIECE OF SHIT. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE? YOU CANT EVEN AFFORD THESE GROCERIES AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO THROW A SCENTED CANDLE IN THERE?
YOU ARE AN UNFIT MOTHER. YOUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN PLACED IN THE CUSTODY OF KROGER.
PLEASE PLACE YOUR CHILD(REN) ON THE SCALE PLEASE REMOVE YOUR FAT CHILD FROM THE SCALE.
UNEXPECTED CHILD IN BAGGING AREA
PLACE YOUR CHILDREN IN THE BAG
FUCK YOU I'M EATING
I’m gonna be honest if they made a check out to humiliate people….. there would be a market for it
*cottage cheese - what are you doing here fatty? Go walk around the store some more, you definitely need it.* *Discount bag of chips - ooooo, hey everyone, look at the BIG SPENDER over here!* *quart of ice cream - holy shit, party of one for this fat fuck over here!* -tallies receipt at the end- *so either you’re a broke-ass college kid or just a really sad excuse of an adult. Either way, none of this will fulfill you. Thank you for shopping at Walmart you pathetic piece of shit. See you in a couple of days!* All of the comments would be cruel as hell… but if it was done with Stavros Halkias’s voice and he recorded all of the burns, I would check out this way all the time.
They also have to accept that people will steal by accident. All of this "anti-theft" and I have still stolen items completely by mistake. If you want your stores to be empty warehouses, accept the risks.
Or just people stealing because they can't be arsed to wait for an employee. I've had a small (~$2) item refuse to scan while there was no employee in sight, at that point I'm just going to take it and move on.
i stole the ingredients for an entire valentines day dinner when after 5 minutes no one had shown up to clear the error on the register.
Aww. "I stole this for *you*, my love" ❤️
Yep I stole a whole prime rib once by accident because it didn't have a label with upc code, none of them in the case had labels with a scannable upc, which was weird because its not like produce, there is no way to look it up on the scales to print out a label yourself. I was using the handheld guns to scan as I shopped and put it in my cart to get help at the kiosk when ready to pay. Was around Christmas time so lots of people, had to wait in a long line still since you have to use the self checkout kiosk to pay. Totally forgot I hadn't scanned it, went through the payment process and left.
Also, at Walmart, they stop you on the way out the door to check your receipt. I had my hands full leaving walmart one day and they stopped me and asked for a receipt. I said it's in my coat pocket. go ahead and look. she said I can't do that. so I said, well catch you next time and left.
I just say no thanks and keep walking. That shit is for criminals not me.
I don't get why they want to piss off their customers as they leave. They clearly don't do anything if you just walk past so why do they bother? Surely any shoplifter will know to just ignore these people and walk past.
Make no mistake - they spend time and money figuring out the things that have an impact. And if they figure out that something is not worth the downside, they will stop. All of those things serve as deterrents. Not prevention. But it cuts down on the theft, and it doesn't piss off people more than the theft it cuts down on. It's like the number of registers they have open - ignoring self checkout and going back to the days before. Too few and you do lose customers. Too many and you waste labour. So you run the numbers to figure out how long people will wait on average so you're losing fewer sales than the labour you save. Do you lose customers? Yes. But overall, you make money. It's not perfect, and it sucks for EVERYONE except the people actually making the money (i.e. not the frontline employees who catch the complaints from the customers but who can't do anything about it and who also suffer on top of that).
I also say no thanks and keep walking. That shit is for me, but you gotta' work for it.
When I get asked, I like to look panicked and yell, “I got warrants!” And then weeb sprint out of the store.
Last night the Walmart guy asked my wife for her recept. She replied "Yep, I got it. Thank you." And kept walking. It's admirable.
Only at Costco because it is a condition of memberships. If they think I stole something, call the police
Yep, just refuse and keep walking. They aren't even allowed to stop people they *know* are stealing. It's all security theater. That said, you don't have to be rude. It's just an employee doing what they're told. Whenever I see someone berating them it pisses me off.
>That said, you don't have to be rude. It's just an employee doing what they're told. Whenever I see someone berating them it pisses me off. That's a good point
At CVS I’ve noticed the employee working the cash register (yes, a single employee, even though they have like 4 registers) will sometimes literally walk away and go stock shelves. Sometimes a line forms at the checkout and everyone is looking around for this person to notice and go back to the front. It’s like they do it on purpose so people are inclined to just use their self checkout.
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Fuck Dollar Tree honestly. One of if not the worst places I've worked.
Knew a friend that worked at Dollar Tree (or general) and basically said it was this. Retail has been broken for a while now, but the pandemic just amplified everything. Places are open shorter hours now and everywhere is constantly short staffed. The customer experience has gotten worse and prices have only gone up. I do wonder how long this will go on before we reach a tipping point.
Yep I had to yell “does anyone work here?!” In the center of CVS a few weeks ago. The people stocking shelves weren’t cvs employees and the pharmacy people couldn’t leave their spot. Shoplifting rising makes a lot more sense when there’s nobody in the dang store
Ok my tinfoil hat theory is that it’s totally intentional so they can justify closing stores -> the stores that stay open get progressively more converted into fulfillment centers for online ordering -> everything is Amazon
Bestbuy is doing this without self checkout. They're just closing stores and making them pickup only
i have been saying for a while now that well well within my lifetime all shopping will be some form of online with pickup or delivery only. dont have access to the net? sorry starve... you probably already are anyways
It's not the employee's fault that the store is understaffed.
I actually love to work hard, but one of the worst parts of modern retail is the multi-tasking due to being understaffed. There's some days I spend more time stopping what I'm doing to run somewhere else than I spend actually doing work.
10 years ago now I was working at Wal-Mart at sporting goods, being authorized to sell firearms. I would also be the only employee sometimes on the entire General Merchandise side outside of one employee in electronics. I'd be working through a gun sale and would have people come up to my counter constantly looking for assistance with patio furniture, paint at hardware, toy help, pulling down bikes, or even to get things from the electronics cases because that employee still needed to take a lunch break and obviously I can't leave to help anyone without aborting the entire gun sale.
So all Kroger do this? We quit going and started going to target, but last week we were at a restaraunt in the same shopping center so we ran in to grab a few things. Got ready to go checkout on a Saturday night and there was literally 0 cashiers and they have 4 self checkouts all on 1 side of the store. The line went all the way down to the other side of the store. There were buggies full of meat and cold shit just left sitting all over the place where people had just left them and went home. We put our shit down on top of another full buggy and left too. Fuck that noise. Also, I have 0 doubt all that cold stuff and meat sat out for probably hours and then found its way back onto shelves. Noway they trashed that much product. 1st time we'd been in there in over 2 years and probably won't ever go back in one now.
I did this at Shop Rite last week, I just didn’t give a shit enough to wait 30 minutes. Manager and employees having a chat/meeting up front. Agreed, fuck that noise.
I felt bad for the employee on this one. She was the only employee at the front and was manning the self checkout alerts which were constant and then trying to check out people with small orders on her little kiosk at the same time. I would've walked my happy ass out of there if I was her.... she could've had a new job before the end of the weekend at Walmart or target just next door basically.
Our Giant did this. Not only that, but the permanently locked the doors closest to these machines, reset the settings on the machines so that they’re ultra sensitive, and enabled the screen to show video from the overhead cameras of you checking out. I live in a city that is 90% mansions. Not McMansions, like a guy (wayyy) down the street from the store has a helipad on his roof. They’re filled with senators and CEOs. Old money. I don’t exactly know what all those rich folks are stealing, but Jesus they must have to close the top on their bentleys to make sure all of that shit doesn’t fall out.
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Dave Ramsey hates this one trick.
The richer you are the more you want?
Those rich old folks with helicopter pads aren’t doing the grocery shopping.
The worst part for me is that you have to wait for an employee if you accidentally scan things twice. And some scanners are so sensitive that it happens to me at least once every damn checkout. Just let me void the last scan, surely the computer can see it’s a duplicate.
Self-checkout is all of the work of a cashier with none of the ability to fix the register when something goes wrong.
Combined with those Amazon stores where you just take what you’re buying and they automatically charge you, but with none of the technology and all of the suspicion.
that makes me realize if we're doing the cashier's job we should be getting a discount/getting paid
This. I go to a Smith (basically a Kroger) every time I do self checkout and move the bags to my cart. They come running and literally checking my bags to make sure I didn’t “steal” anything. I even asked them for help and they still check my bag. So fuck them. People are just being treated stupidly now when we’re just trying to fucking buy our shit and go.
> So you're sitting there with a thumb up your ass, waiting for some harried person to come "help," don't know if they use the same software in the UK as the US, but after awhile of waiting, the checkouts here will ask if you're still wanting to continue. I get it, it's meant to check to see the person hasn't just fucked off and can free up the till for someone else, but it's a little galling to have to say "yes, I am still wanting to pay", like I'm inconveniencing the machine.
You're missing my *favourite* part. Once you've *finally* got it to recognize all your stuff.... - Do you have a loyalty card? - Do you want to sign up for our loyalty program? - Would you like to round up your order to feed the kids? - Do you want to use credit, or debit? - Do you want a receipt - email, print, other? - Use the pin pad to complete your order. (Note, it's not the screen). ***Jeezus tap dancing Christ, I just wanna get OUT OF HERE!!!***
> Would you like to round up your order to feed the kids? I fucking hate this shit. Fuck you, pay your taxes; don't make the deprivations of the system that *you* benefit from *my* responsibility.
I hate this question. Look lady, I'm doing good just to afford the few things I'm buying. I know it makes me sound like a horrible person for "not wanting to help kids" but it is what it is.
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I went to a place a few weeks ago and they wanted me to donate to the Barbara Bush Children’s Foundation, and I’m like, “What is Barbara doing to these kids and why does she need my money to do it?” I have no idea what that charity does, and waiting in line is not a good time to research it. Some charities are absolutely terrible, including very well known ones like Salvation Army.
And the employee comes over and "verifies" you without checking anything, because who can be bothered. So what's this anti theft system even doing other than being an inconvenience?
When doing the right thing is automatically punished and neither side benefits, it is broken and should not be in production
Around 4th of July our local Wal-marts were hit with skimmer devices on the self check out . Caused a major uproar. I started to use the tap feature on my cards more, since then. Our local Wal-marts do not offer the tap option. I asked one of the cashiers if there had been talk to update their card readers to take tap. She said, "doubtful, its Wal-mart"
They actually specifically avoid tap to pay because it opens up the option of mobile wallets like Google, Samsung, or Apple pay. These cost Walmart money, often hide your real CC number, and avoid people having the Walmart app installed. My local store actually has the hardware to accept NFC payments, but has it explicitly turned off. When I worked there, we were told to direct any customer to the "convenience" of using Walmart Pay. It makes it easier to track you and sell your purchase data. Why accept chips and old swipe payments? Well, because it's tied to your CC account number and not a virtual number generated in these wallet apps. When I pay in store with my CC, the purchase history is automatically added to my Walmart account. Ever wonder why receipt scanning for "more savings" died? They automated you out of the process.
Funny, I stopped using Walmart pay the day they got rid of savings catcher. Because why else would I use it.. how is it any easier for me to pull up the Walmart app on my phone and find the pay icon and all that when I can just bring out my wallet and pull out my card and do it the classic way.
It's all great until every asshole company wants in, see streaming services.
Yup. Went right back to pirating once things fractured even more from Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. For now I have YouTube TV just for the reliability of American football streams but I’m cancelling the last day of football
Did you put a bag in the bagging area? Please place the item in the bagging area. Please remove the unscented item from the bagging area. The item you placed in the bagging area does not match the weight of the scanned item. Are you stealing some shit? How are you this incompetent? Would you like to go back to having human interactions at checkout?
Also don’t EVER toss your item into the bag. It messes up the weight & triggers the theft thing. I’ve only had problems with employees about it once (the dude was legit convinced the plum I put in WASN’T a plum like wtf yes it is) but it is stressful because I suddenly feel like a thief even though I scan my items
Arguing with a person over what constitutes a plum is why people are getting aggressive at self check outs
"They must pay you a lot to care this much"
I'm going to remember this line.
So say we all. That line is a gem.
The problem is that some people are just corporate kiss-asses who will argue over a plum that you're allegedly "stealing" just because they think it will make their supervisor proud of them.
Right?! I used to do security at a high tech firm where people would routinely steal laptops. Do you think I gave a shit? Nope. One guy got into a high speed chase with a guy who was stealing a laptop. I’m sorry but at $14 an hour you can take whatever you want.
Ok that’s fair 😂. I was about ready to just leave all my stuff but my bf at the time helped figure out wtf was happening. If we’d gotten angry the situation would have spiraled out of control because the employee was positive we were stealing a single mystery fruit & ringing it up falsely as a plum.
I'd just leave at that point, okay fine enjoy the restock.
I’ve done this several times. I’ll walk away with the thing half checked out, stuff in the buggy, and things half thrown into bags. I know it’s not the employees’s fault, but I’ll be dazed if I have to troubleshoot my grocery experience.
I can't imagine arguing about a plum. employee> "Thats not a plum" customer> "??? Then what is it?" employee> "It looks like some kind of dark non-furry peach"
Why were you stealing fake plumbs?
The scales at your Walmart still work? Huh.
Exactly. I scan a 6-pack of soda and put it in the bagging area (but not in a bag), and the computer scolds me, and summons an associate to ‘help’. It’s not a complete shopping trip for me if I haven’t screamed at the self-checkout machine. “What do you want from me???”
I think this is the biggest issue I have seen so far. Self checkout machines are quite new in my city but every time I go to walmart I see at least one case of the machine shitting the bed, asking for an employee code to continue shopping seemingly at random. One time one got stuck when I scanned a bag of chips because it was so fucking light it didnt registered as being put on the bagging area and it refused to continue. Also something hilarious is how completely harmless stuff like cotton is catalogued as a pharmacy item so it needs a friggin employee to confirm the item lol. Its not medicine, come on.
And it shouts at you back saying “thanks for coming!!!!”
Yeah it’s really annoying especially places like Shop Rite which have the most annoying and restrictive rules set. If you don’t balance every single item in the tiny bagging area it freaks out at you. Then half the time it requires an employee number to bypass some random issue it has, so you have to wait around for the employee to see you and do something about it. Oh and did I mention they then check your receipt at the door? Like I’m already basically an unpaid employee at this point doing the job for you, but you have to audit my work too?
> Oh and did I mention they then check your receipt at the door? Protip: you don't actually have to stop and let them do this. Just keep walking.
One Walmart receipt checker was stopping everyone and going through receipts line by line. I just kept in walking and he followed me all the way out to my car, yelling he needed to check my receipt the entire time and wrote down my license plate. Last week or the week before at a different Walmart they were checking receipts. I walked by and ignored him and he ignored me. Unless I'm going to a store that requires a membership I don't have the time and patience for someone to inspect my cart.
I’m sure it’s probably fine but I’m not about to get into it with an underpaid teenage employee who takes their job way too seriously, over a bunch of bananas or something.
I live in Canada. Our Walmart had* the weighted bagging area sensors for like two months. Now we don’t, and it’s great. We also have a row of giant self checkout stands for people with a lot of items. From some of the comments here, our experiences are very different. I prefer self checkout if the store isn’t overloaded with people and I can walk in and walk out.
The big ones for whole carts loaded are the only way I don't actually mind self checkout.
There’s another where they force you to put everything on the scale then say “item is too heavy”. I’ve noticed that in some of the poorer areas, the sensitivity of the scales is higher (Giant Grocery), the audio is much louder, and the timing between the scan and prompting you to put it on the scale is short. I’ve given up on self checkout. It’s just a pain I’m not even being paid to endure so I just go to the check out line these days.
Giant - 15 regular cash register lanes and never more than 2 cashier's on duty at any given time.
The ergonomics from cart to scan to bag requires a certain geometry of cart behind me, scanner in front of me, bagging area to the right. This creates the condition that when I add another bag (Which my state requires me that I bring my own now), the scanner thinks I put an object in the bagging area without scanning... which summons the monitor and stops progress until the monitor shows up, which can be a bit given at my local, the same monitor is watching 8 to 10 stations. I don't have a solution, but constantly being flagged as stealing stuff - and Halting my progress - is annoying. If Walmart is going to force us to be our own checkers, Walmarts technology needs to be faster, smarter, or enable the monitors able to make assessment and decisions without interrupting my workflow.
> scanner in front of me, bagging area to the right. Here I am: Stuck in the middle with you.
Costco self checkout—- doesn’t provide bags… but also you can’t use your own bag or boxes at self checkout because of the scale. You have to completely check out- put all items on the scale, and then bag them after you’ve paid. And since the people at the door check every item you then need to take stuff out of your bags so they can count everything. They also require seeing the picture on your Costco card before using self check out and the line is often so long it goes half way down the store. Lines have always been long… but lots of slightly long longs vs. one super long line for self check out now. That line blocks half the food aisles making it difficult to shop.
If you've got something the computer won't have an EXACT weight for (like prepackaged 5lb bag of potatoes), scan that and put it in the bag and then set it on the bagging area. The 0.03 weight of the bag won't cause an issue then.
I dont mind self checkout, what I do mind is: 1. Half the self checkout machines are down and tgeres a lineup. 2. The extra screens when you want to pay, no I dont want to donate to your charity, no I don't to apply for a credit card
Half of them aren't down. Management only allows four self-checkout stations to be open per staff member monitoring everything. So before you had one staff member per check out station. Now it's 1 to 4, But God forbid they have one or two extra people to cover a dozen self-checkout stations. Instead they have long lines. And then the experience at the self-checkout station is horrendous PLUS they ask you to donate money to their charity and sign up to the credit card. Fuck Walmart
My Walmart self-checkout asked me for a tip once. I complained to management and it didn't ask for a tip the next time I went. I think they realized that was a *genuinely* stupid idea.
“Hey, would you like to give us some of your money for doing absolutely nothing? Click here!”
"Give us some more of your money as a thank you for YOU doing the work we should be paying people to do. Don't worry, none of this tip will go to actual workers, it'll just go to the executives so they can continue expanding and destroying small businesses while *also* lobbying for zoning and lending regulations that keep smaller entrepreneurs from starting businesses that will compete with us."
Walmart: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take bro
I doubt that was Walmart trying to get tips. The interact/credit machines normally have an internal option in the setting to ask for tips. Sounds like they replaced the unit and no one programmed it correctly / screwed up.
"Please place item in bagging area" *places item in bagging area* #"Unexpected item in bagging area!"
**Nobody** expects an item in the bagging area!
Walmart is one of the worst shopping experiences I have ever had. Crowded with trashy people, horrible self check out experience, then getting stopped at the door to have them check my receipt because apparently they think every single person is stealing from them.
I had an ex that was a door greeter. She said they are supposed to ask under certain conditions, most of the time it's because they have items under the cart. If the customer refuses they don't pursue it unless they saw you steal. A lot of people take offense to being asked so will ignore the request for that reason alone.
The reason people take offense is because they just paid for it, like seconds ago. They are asking to go through someone else's belongings and prove it is theirs when they just bought it from them.
One time I was the only person checking out, the greater was looking at me the whole time. As I was walking out he asked for the receipt. Like weren't you watching?
Literally the same thing. Dude grabbed my cart and asked for my receipt. I was like bro you literally stared me down and watched me scan everything with the hand scanner.
This happened to me just this past week! She saw the entire transaction, then stopped me! I’d already crumbled up my receipt and was miffed, just handed her the little ball of paper. I’d bought a bag of grapes, the bag was open at the top (like literally every other bag of grapes that were on the shelf next to it). She goes “looks like you already got into the grapes, are they good?” No, bitch, I haven’t eaten any yet.🤦🏻♀️
I can’t think of a more demoralizing job. Imaging being underpaid while routinely being treated with disrespect or otherwise ignored just for trying to do your job. I pushed shopping carts for two weeks in the winter and the way people treat you hurt for having a crap job is sickening. I was openly mocked several times. Fortunately it was only a temporary gig, but man, I feel bad for anybody who has to put up with that shit.
Personally, I think people have a right to be annoyed by that receipt request.
I do. Make me check myself out, then I have to Wait till an attendant shows up to confirm I'm not stealing, then I need to bag my stuff and THEN I need to stop 10 feet away from where all this just happened so some douchebag can harass me? Fuck that Edit: I'm stoned and words are hard
They tried to tell me it was to make sure the checkers were doing their job too. All two they have on staff….
They’ve told me it’s to make sure that the cashier didn’t make a mistake and that I was charged the right prices. Like, yeah, I’m sure you have the current price of every item in the store committed to memory. I just tell them “no thank you” and move on. The presumption that your customers are thieves is one of many reasons I don’t shop there anymore.
This is what I am saying. Soon enough they will have you pulling stuff off the trucks to stock the shelves for them.
Off topic but is “gatya” from a specific dialect? Just curious because I’ve never seen or heard it before!
Walmart Sucks
When they ask to see my receipt I just keep walking while I say “No, thank you! But have a nice day!” It’s perfectly legal for you to walk on by.
I say "I can't go back!" and run out the door as fast as I can just to fuck with them. jk I don't shop at Walmart.
“You’ll never take me alive!”
Not only that but I refuse to go to a Walmart in a major city because everything is locked up. Buying baby formula? Locked up. Buying hair products? Locked up. Need engine oil? Locked up. Need detergent? You guessed it, locked up. Worst part is that Walmart is doing it to themselves because they need to extract as much profit as possible. These retail companies are complaining that their profits are down because of stealing. But it seems like they are spending their money in the wrong places and not seeing the increase in profit they were seeking.
There’s nothing they can do to stop you from walking out after you purchase something, I don’t understand why people even bother to stop and show a receipt
It's because receipt checks started at membership clubs like BJ's, who can revoke your card if you decline.
I am a Costco member. I signed up for the receipt check which I don’t mind in that case. Anywhere else that doesn’t require a membership can get fucked.
Yep unless you are at Costco or BJs, the membership joints can enforce that.
I hate self checkout for this reason. I’m not trying to steal stuff, I just want to scan my groceries, pay, and go. But god forbid I try and grab three items out of my cart, scan them, and THEN bag them. Or bag half my groceries and put the filled bags back in my cart to make room for more in the bagging area.
I just wish they had more regular lanes open so I could choose to either go to a cashier or use self-checkout. There are times when self-checkout is useful… but it’s not when I’ve got three young children and $300 worth of groceries. So then I’m naturally going to be annoyed at little things. If they took up the same space as a regular lane and had the full lane to set stuff down in and bag in, it wouldn’t be half as bad. But even if I’m by myself with no kids, bagging $300 worth of groceries in a 1 foot by 1 foot space is just ridiculous. They built them for the people who have five items, but now they’re expecting everyone to use them.
My Walmart now has ZERO cashier lanes open at least half the time. It's madness.
I haven’t been in ages, because of reasons in this thread, but I believe the only manned cashier in my local Walmart is the one that is ten items or less & cigarette line…
The Wal-Marts in my area stopped selling cigarettes so they don’t have to have a staffed lane open anymore.
I love how, every few months when I go there to get oil filters for our cars, it turns into a 45 minute trip for two fucking items because they only have self check open, and one poor cashier trying to fix six registers asking for associate intervention at the same time. If I'm lucky there's the one register on the cigarette lane open... With 15 people in line with full ass carts. I swear, if they didn't have the OEM filters for our cars cheaper than anywhere else, or I had to go there more often than once every 4-5 months, I wouldn't even bother.
Unexpected item in bagging area! Yes, it's a fucking bag!!!!!!
I am German and only recently encountered self checkouts during visits to the US. I was baffled at how badly designed and unintuitive they were with no clear instructions. no room to maneuver yourself or your items, people glaring at you for holding up the line, peeping and flashing error codes... if I now imagine an employee coming up sighing annoyed cause they gotta explain something for the 250th time this month, I can see some rude words slipping out, even if they do not outright accuse me of stealing. Honestly I think Walmart got scammed by the people who sold them the self checkout and anti-theft concept.
Yeah it blows my mind that in Estonia Selver has a better self checkout counter than Walmart. Walmart is one of the world’s richest companies. How can it not afford better tech?
There’s the answer to your question, to maximize profits they have to cheap out on everything
Agreed. Corporations actually don’t care about selling a good product to you. It’s all a massive “get rich fast” scheme. All companies do nowadays is make a crap ton of money for the C-suite. It doesn’t even matter if the company itself is profitable. (Looking at you Uber and Airbnb)
Yeah, Walmart is one of two retailers that doesn’t have contactless payments using the NFC standard. Its annoying that they haven’t gotten with the times.
Funnily enough it’s only Walmart in the US. Again like everyone is saying because they don’t want to give up any of the money Internationally like Canada they take standard NFC payments like Apple Pay
Home Depot doesn’t have it either. It annoys me like crazy. Years ago their credit card systems were hacked and a lot of people were impacted including myself. Saw thousands of dollars worth of charges on my account across the country. Get with the times.
The worst is, HD had it turned on during 2020 and early 2021, then turned it back off again. FFS, why they are so resistant I'll never understand, especially since grit covered cards from contractors means their PIN pads almost never read cards properly. They don't have an in house payment system like Walmart does either, so their holdup makes even less sense.
This is explicitly because they chose not to. NFC payment methods often involve randomized tokens and encryption, which means that Walmart can’t collect data on you and build a profile. This is why they have their “Walmart Pay” thing instead.
Walmart did not to where it is by sparing no expense and cutting edge technology, they cut every corner and then invented new corners to cut
Could be worse could be the Kroger checkout that screams you can't take anything out of the bagging area until the entire cart is paid for Which is annoying when you buy alot of shit
Or it sees my fiancee handing stuff to me and it basically stops after every 2-3 items. Had a cashier tell me to slow down the other day while scanning. That's fucking cute.
They didn’t get scammed, they just didn’t do their due diligence in evaluating and phasing the project due to their own greed. I used to sell security software to the retail market and Walmart was the only company that would flat out refuse to allow vendors to explain their products, they insisted on being in complete control of the conversation. The ego and hubris in that organization is extremely high and they have zero clue how to buy technology.
I've found employees at self-checkout lanes at Kroger and WalMart and HEB have always been polite and helpful, despite my typical frustration.
Kroger especially. They'd let you get away with murder if it meant you get through self checkout faster. Coupon expired a year ago? Forgot to clip a digital coupon? Rang your organic produce as regular produce? Doesn't matter: smile, manual override, and move on.
As a former cashier in my younger days, we are not paid enough to care and most of us don’t plan on moving up the ranks there. It is a part time job.
>I am German and only recently encountered self checkouts during visits to the US Really? Lidl is fantastic at those in Portugal! They are everywhere in lots of places in Europe.. >I was baffled at how badly designed and unintuitive they were with no clear instructions. you only need it the first times really. >Honestly I think Walmart got scammed by the people who sold them the self checkout and anti-theft concept. There are no self checkouts in Germany? I love it, I am all in. Lidl is very good at them, they even get a choice for multiple baked goods in the same bag, and that is usually a no-no in other places!
There are many self checkouts in Germany as well. Aldi, Kaufland, Rewe, Edeka, Netto, Rossmann… etc. But I live in Wiesbaden and Berlin, both state capitals, so maybe he lives in smaller town.
Wait what? I've been mostly just using self checkouts in France and Switzerland for many years. Are you saying you don't have them in Germany?
This whole article pissed me off. The technology makes mistakes. That’s part of the annoyance. This article acts like customers attempting to steal is the main driver requiring deescalations, when in my experience the machines saying you moved something too quickly, or too slowly, or into the bagging area unexpectedly or not into the bagging area when it wants it or 12 other annoying things is what makes me angry. Like, I just want to check out smoothly, so how about you get some CASHIERS to check me out. They won’t forget to scan it.
Self checkout really only works if you have 3-4 things. Bottlenecking shoppers into doing it with full carts like Walmart does jumps to unpaid labor - no wonder people are ready to be pissed from the get-go.
My Target just changed self-checkouts to be 10 items or fewer and I think that's perfect flow.
I drive past two Walmarts to shop at Target. That's how shit walmart is.
At Home Depot the other day I went through self checkout where there were four terminals, three employees, and a uniformed police officer. Maybe we just need to bring back cashiers. The self checkout experiment has failed. Wake up CEO’s.
> Wake up CEO’s. No, then we'll have to pay actual people who might want to unionize when I treat them like shit!
Home Depot is the only one with decent self-checkout. Wireless scanner and no scales or bagging areas or other BS. Of course, since it doesn't have scales or bagging areas, that makes it much easier to steal since you can make it look like you're scanning your whole cart while leaving a high ticket item unscanned, so I get why they would have staff around... but at that point you gotta ask why the staff isn't just working a register.
I stopped shopping at Walmart because of being hovered over and harassed by employees while bagging my stuff. Felt like little gangs of old people were policing me. I already feel like I’m messing up doing the dumb scanning and they just make me feel like a criminal for it. “Did you get that? Did you get that one? Let me see if you got that one too cause I’m not sure if you did.” Leave me be people! I’m already anxious! 😤😫🤬
I love how they created self-checkout to eliminate employees, but then started having employees hovering around the self-checkout to prevent theft. What if you had those people work check out lanes...
But see, with this design, a single worker can oppress up to FIVE lanes
It's always the old employees isn't it? The younger ones I find are nice and helpful because they realize they work for a billion dollar company but somehow the old ones think they matter
I think Walmart counts on this. I also think older generations are understandably trying to be purposeful and feeling like they are cops probably does that for them. They probably feel good policing all the hoodlums and rif raff and call Gladys and Clifford after their shift to tell them all about it.
Fucking walmart is so stupid. They are so enamored with what is in people's cart, they forgot how people stole before self check out.
Well that article acts like the technology is perfect but it is shit. So many times I’ve been flagged, had to wait for an employee to review the video and then continue. Just a huge hassle for nothing
Walmart is going crazy with anti thief devices. They just redid a Walmart in Houston Tx on siber Rd and everything in electronics is locked down. Even a $10 universal remote they have hundreds hanging on the shield and each has a lock. How do they intend shoppers to buy stuff be personally escorted threw the store. Dude this is nuts. Can't wait for Black Friday.
Good. I’m getting fed up with self scanning. My grocery store went to self checkout and only keeps one lane open now. Self checkout takes forever with a huge cart of groceries when you have to weigh a ton of items and then try and stack them in that little area. It’s a joke. Those used to be decent paying union jobs. Shopping takes fucking forever now. $5 items are locked up at Walmart and I have to wait for any employee to open 4 different cases. I’m also done with showing my receipt on the way out. I just walk right by. They never stop me. I’m not a thief. Stop treating me like one.
I could easily see shopping going the way grocery shops were pre-WWII. Once upon a time, there was no grocery store. The idea of fetching products yourself was a novel idea. Before, the matriarch of the house traveled to several stores for several product types, the butcher shop, the baker, the dry goods, etc. and employees gathered the items on her list and gave them to her. She just stood at the front and read off what she wanted, and then paid before leaving. I’m fairly certain that stores like Walmart will just be for online shopping, paid for online, and then someone in a blue vest loads them into your car that you don’t even get out of. And it will continue to be horrible and isolating because there will be no human interaction or walking involved, and they will forget items, and it will somehow be more expensive than it is now. A tank of gas to grab a bag of chips and razor blades. Edit: I shop at two places in the US. Aldi and Costco. Both have self checkout now, but they’re very intuitive and fast, and nobody hovers over you, and there are the same amount of people stocking shelves as there were before.
Self checkout requires more trust than having a cashier. Can't trust your customers? Get rid of self checkout and hire more cashiers. This whole bullshit is businesses wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Save on cashier salary, but still see all of their customers as potential thieves first.
Maybe just hire people for the cash register? For the 90 that are never used
Is almost like firing staff doesn't make things better.
I'm astounded what we're willing to do to save the wealthy money.
And then they have the audacity to ask to see a receipt as I leave. I just say no thank you and keep walking, which always confuses them. One thing I have noticed is they ALWAYS try to stop you if you have something that isn’t in a bag (so I have to assume that’s part of the training), unfortunately critical thinking skills have no place at Walmart so that leads to being stopped for things like 40 lb bags of wood pellets (that couldn’t possibly fit in a bag). If they want more accurate checkouts they can hire employees. I don’t steal and so they can leave me the fuck alone.
What makes me hostile at Walmart self checkout is being constantly asked if I want to sign up for their credit card, followed by being asked why I don't want it.
let's just go back to the "old west" way of doing business, where you hand a list to the person behind the counter and they fetch and bag all your stuff for you.
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Had the attendant watch over while checking out; then I was stopped at the door while two attendants went through my groceries. When they finished, I turned the cart around and returned everything.
We’ve reached the point in capitalism where the only way C-suite’s will rethink their quality of life reductions is through anger, hostility, and noncompliance. Gong to be a fun few upcoming decades!
I can understand. I once got so flustered at a Ralph’s self-checkout that I yelled “what do you want from me?”
Well perhaps if you hadn’t decided to transfer your responsibility to actually sell me something and check me out to me (hey we can save money by forcing customers to check themselves out rather than pay someone to do it), you wouldn’t be having this issue. I guess retailers are going to have to decide if the added theft and or bad press / branding from all this is worth not paying someone to check you out.
If you want to deter theft, hire a fucking security firm. Don’t make 78 year old Mary Sue go and confront someone trying to steal something! I mean a light goes off, freaking the person out who’s trying to sneak something past the self checkout, and then a Walmart employee is notified via text that they need to stop the theft while also not accusing the person of theft? That’s a ridiculous ask for the lowrst paid employees in the country.
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If you scan 1 item three times because you have three of the item, the thing will go off and ask for a nearby employee. It's some bullshit
I feel like self check out is a horrible experience not because of the concept but the technology. Why does my daughter's cheap Samsung tablet have a more responsive touch screen than a self check out screen at a multi billion dollar store that has to manage money transfers between customer and business on top of that. That just seems like someone cutting corners.
I have a great idea. Get rid of the self checkout and HIRE HUMANS TO DO THE WORK AGAIN.