The Picard ManeuverOr just anyone who likes the convenience
DavidGarciaMy laziness triumphs over my introversion. plus, fuck robots tikin er jerbs
ššø š šŖ šŖ šµ š± šŖšTheyāre not even doing good jobs.
Comments like this always make me wonder:
Is there some magical world where all of the minimum wage teenagers are Peggy Hill levels of bagging experts? Pretty much since I was a child I learned that you need to simultaneously bag your own groceries (for fear of having every single can thrown at the carton of eggs) while also monitoring the cashier so they donāt accidentally scan the same thing ten times. And when you catch them after the second scan? Now you need to wait for the manager to let them void that item.
AnUnusualRelicWhy does this kind of thing only happen in the US?
Likely for the same reason people believe in this magical world where cashiers are ridiculously well trained and love their jobs?
Iāve had similar experiences in the UK (think Sainsburys?) and even Germany. Squishing the bread is less of an issue when you favor the crusty stuff but have definitely had bean cans dropped on eggs.
Iāve never seen cashiers loving their jobs, but Iāve never seen them mishandling stuff either.
OTOH, Iāve never seen them filling the bags, so that may have something to do with it.
Cashiers in Europe are well trained and probably love it. Because we donāt offload those jobs to students trying to make a quick buck. Here it can be seen as a proper career which you can do your whole life if you want.
But that is maybe because we donāt have as many arrogant fuckers who think service jobs are bottom tier and the people working them shouldnāt even be seen as human.
Thankfully it seems both cashiers and baggers are better trained than they used to be at least at the larger chains. I donāt have either of these issues at supermarkets.
That doesnāt mean they wonāt be lazy or lack hustle though.
Swedneckwait employees bagging your items is a real thing in the US? why? whatās this american obsession with having shittily paid people do everything for them?
squibletSometimes I catch incorrect prices or the cashier keying in the wrong vegetable at checkout, but you can also read your receipt later and ask for a refund. Iāve never had a grocery store quibble when I said I was Mia charged or an item was bad.
I donāt want to interact with a cashier either but fuck if I want to scan my own shit either.
Itās also way more awkward when something goes wrong and now I have to initiate.
u/lukmly013 š¾ (lemmy.sdf.org)āWarning! Shopping bag content is 0.00003pg heavier than expected. Please call an assistant or remove the excess items.ā
Thankfully, Walmart stopped weighing items entirely. Not sure how it affects theft, but it sure makes the checkout process smoother. Donāt need to wait after scanning each item. Donāt need take reusable bags out of your cart. And they replaced almost all of their checkout lanes with self checkouts.
Too bad Walmart is evil, because their checkout is š and Samās scan-and-go is just š¦. Every other store is just bad UX.
Thatās because they now have cameras at each kiosk recording the whole checkout process.
Doesnāt every store have cameras everywhere recording everything?
These have AI to detect extra things you didnāt scan. I had to have an employee come check my items because I was using a cardboard flag to hold the canned goods I was buying. It locked up as soon as I moved the cardboard to the bagging area.
They always had that.
I've always been fine with it. It doesn't feel like I'm forced to do someone else's job to me because they can be convenient if you have a small order, and it reduces lines. That said, I'd much rather see people employed and sometimes I like the personal interaction.
Same, self checkout is just 9 times out of 10 the most convenient option for people who donāt buy a cart full of stuff.
Itās not like stores are hiring people just to man the registers eitherā¦ They hire X amount of people and if they need to open another register thatās someone who has to stop doing something else in the store, so self-checkout just lets them always have a bunch of registers open with only one employee overseeing them all and helping people out.
At least this is how it works in sweden, maybe in the US stores do it differently since they seem to have great difficulty making something as basic as scanning a barcode work.
In my experience with the US the strategy is to minimize cashiers, ideally have one person running a full service lane and managing the self checkouts between their customer line. Oh and they can handle returns and exchanges too. And online order pickup. The stock crew is separate and itās 50/50 chance theyāre trained on registers.
From what Iāve seen in stores and job applications, the checkout clerks do have a separate job position, but if needed other people will stop what theyāre doing and help.
Hereās a tip: Get a better job.
You probably leave no tip when you eat out, right? I say that because this phrase is the one most associated with being put on the tip line on a check. Anyway, Iām not trying to attack you. It is just frustrating to hear people think some jobs are less important than others in terms of a livelihood. In my opinion it is more appropriate to point out that replacing that job with a robot allows the person replaced to do something different within their field.
That was just a rude comment to make.
I actually do tip, funny enough.
NeatoWe can't feasibly stop automation, nor should we. We SHOULD be taking the profits back from billionaires that they've stolen since time immemorial. Automation means less work overall. But we need to ensure the workers actually benefit from that.
Self checkout is not automation. Itās making the customer do the work.
Automation would be: Stick an RFID-tag to all your items, make me check in with my phone at the entrance. Automatically āscanā all the items when my cart and my phone leave the store at the same time. Bill me.
RQGYeah. Thatās like saying a buffet automates waiters.
janaOr a fuckton of cameras: youtu.be/NrmMk1Myrxc?si=olYDaZnChc4LN47k
Introducing Amazon Go and the worldās most advanced shopping technology
As the customer youāre already taking stuff out of your cart and putting it on the counter. Maybe automation isnāt the right word, but itās certainly more efficient than having a human clerk. It removes a bottleneck.
But itās not a bottleneck. Itās the opposite. An experienced human checker will tap in the code for oranges way before you find it in their stupid menu.
It is a bottleneck, because the experienced human checker is only entering orange codes for one person at a time. There could be ten people all checking themselves out simultaneously. Even if one or two get slowed down by a menu, itās still a net decrease in average time spent at checkout.
And introduces others: āunexpected item in bagging areaā
True, but isnāt that an implementation issue that can be fixed, rather than an inherent issue with the concept?
I went to a gas station that had thisā¦ it was kind of incredible. Put like 10 items on a sensor and it recognized all of them. Then put them in a bag.
Those Amazon just walk out stores like youāre describing are extremely expensive to setup though. Even a spall space requires tons of cameras and sensors, all items to be placed on shelves a certain way, lots of networking backend, etc. Most business are unable to do so right now and Iād say most buildings canāt accommodate it. My work looked into putting one of those in one of our spaces as a test and the cost/work to make it happen in even a small area of our business wasnāt worth it
So it will take more time until the tech is cheaper. Or, hear me out, this one is crazy: We enploy cashiers!
I think in terms is control, more people feel as though they can stop/protest automation more than they can take profits back. I think that was the luddite mentality? I speculate, itās been a while since i learned it in school.
They tried the latter, and when that failed, they tried the former.
Mister NeonI really hate making small talk, Iāll use the scanner.
My introversion and social anxiety is so estreme, that self checkouts make me imagine what I would do if I mess up something, or take too long to finish, or imagine people observing me and the way I interact with the machine.
Damn, I got a bit of anxiety just by writing this. The feeling is similar to using a computer while there are people constantly looking at my screen.
Sabata11792Don't forget the horrors of having to have someone's grandma sort though all your stuff since you look nervous.
Yeah, some of them are continually recording video, which is annoying. Probably a bunch of facial recognition and emotion/behavior analysis too.
I would love to use self checkouts more often, and need to interact with people less, but the frustration of trying to get those fucking grocery bags open is more traumatic than just going to a cashier.
CMLVIAs a previous cashier, best way to do it is to take your middle finger and swipe down across the center. Like a vertical slap on the bag's face. About the middle of the bag, pull your arm back towards you. It will usually separate the outside wall of the bag from the stack, and when you pull towards you, the bag will "stick" to your finger and then open at the top.
I hated moving slowly as a cashier, cause lines made me mad. So I had to find the quickest way to do everything, and that method works great (for me) until about the last 4 bags.
I completely forgot that there would still be some places with plastic bags at the register. I have a bin I bring and everything just drops in no problem.
What bothers me the most is the fucking Walmart recipt checkers.
Don't make me check out my own shit if you don't trust me.
flying_monkiesThe correct response to them is a wave and a "no, I'm good" as you walk past.
I donāt even bother with the no thank you, I just ignore them. Itās nothing but security theatre anyway.
The ones at Costco seem pretty serious. They want to count the total items sold and how many you have. At Walmart all Iāve ever gotten is āuhā¦ itās fineā probably because itās too much trouble.
One Napoleon Dynamite-looking cuntbag gave me trouble at Costco one time because he couldnāt fucking countā¦ I had my items on my own dolly vs a cart, which seemed to make him think I was an indigent shoplifter (really I was walking to my house 2 blocks away). He counted ā¦ 11!! Receipt says 10!! Okay, so which item did the clerk miss? He counted againā¦ 9!! Uh, okay, am I missing something? He counted againā¦ 11!! Then he found an item he missed and said , oh, that explains it (? Isnāt that 12?) Just turned to someone else and went on like nothing happened.
I don't so much mind it at the membership stores because it's part of the membership.
But my local Walmart recently hired some new woman for it. Most others just glance at it an say "you're good" to every 10th person but this one takes your recipt and checks every item in every bag, and does this to every person and then freaks out if people walk past the line.
Lately Walmart self checkout gives you an option to just text you the receipt which I always choose because I donāt need an extra piece of paper that Iām just going to lose in 2 seconds. I think it makes me look extra sus to the receipt checkers though because now they try to stop me every time. I really donāt care though, Walmartās problem with shrinkage is not my problem, and Iām not going to take the time to stop, take my phone out of my pocket, and pull up the receipt just to satisfy them. Like Walmart, you gave me the option not to print a receipt, and youāre confused that I donāt have one?
I donāt mind using a self checkout except that theyāre all terrible. The rep has to come over so often, itās just a regular checkout with extra steps.
snooggumsI had that experience when they were new, but barely ever need assistance for almost a decade.
Semi-Hemi-DemigodI'm so good at them I'll change the language to Spanish and check out just for funsies.
My wife likes to put it in random languages. Real good fun until there was some sort of error and we had no idea what was going on and it didnāt allow us to change the language. Even the cashier was puzzled. I had a nice āI told you soā moment there.
They HAVE gotten a lot better. I was thinking about adding a disclaimer for the present, looks like I should have.
MudManAs not just an introvert, but an introvert who had to deal with a language barrier for a long time, I don't love going through the normal checkout, but I actively dread the idea of having the support person come over because the balance can't read my tomatoes or whatever.
I'd say online ordering works around both, social anxiety-wise, but then you have to live in fear of when they inevitably call you to say that they don't have this particular type of banana and maybe you'd like some identical type of banana but we definitely need to have a conversation about it first.
If it smells like shit everywhere you go, check your shoe.
I rarely have problems and I donāt have to bother taking out my headphones.
NepentheNot that that saying never had the last four letters of DARVO written all over it to begin with, mind, but I'm so used to seeing it in the context of discrediting trauma that I had to stare at it for several minutes to realize it meant, "If the machine constantly fucks up, maybe you're just too stupid for touchscreens."
Not gonna lie, my time in customer service has notably damaged my impression of people. But really, my dude? The contribution is a more insulting version of "works fine for me?"
DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender
Abusers often employ a manipulative strategy known as DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim, and Offender) to maintain their power and control. Through DARVO, they deny any wrongdoing, attack the accuser, and reverse roles with the victim, casting themselves as the harmed party. This powerful form of manipulation has lasting effects on the true victim and
Honestly, the thing that drives me the most crazy about self checkouts is people using them with full carts. They're perfect if you're just grabbing a few things: Just as fast, if not faster, than the 'N items or fewer' checkouts, and no need to interact with anyone. But if you're showing up with 6 bags worth of groceries, and everything in your cart has a coupon or at-cash discount with it, then you need the cashier anyway, so just GTFO of the way. Having the nanny cashier who's looking after 8 self-checkouts come over every 10 seconds to deal with another one of your discounts, or to let you swap bags because you've already filled the item placement area, slows things down for everybody.