I use the self-checkout so I don't have to talk to anyone.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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Self-check out makes it easier to steal from the mega corporation. 🤷🏻♂️
They're the most surveilled places in the store and now stores are looking into face recognition tech to effectively ban thieves from stores
They might not care about small stuff, but repeatedly doing it will definitely put you on their radar
honestly no, you'd hypothetically probably be better off putting something in your bag than risk being one of those times the machine asks a worker over to scan shit
Lol, the cashier dgaf. They come over, input the code to canal the alert and go back to their chat, 90% of the time without even looking. The times they do look, they tell you what's wrong and you fix it.
It's not stealing, it's getting paid to do the cashiers job. Honestly I underpay myself every day i go to work at the self checkout.
Why waste time in a queue? It's quicker to self checkout and get back to my own thing.
Self checkout hate is plain stupid, it's for the customers who wanna get in an out quick.
They are running lean enough many places that you actually wait in line to check yourself out. I have no problem checking myself out. Waiting in line to use a machine because they don't have enough of them on the other hand... Literally some places run like one minder for 12 machines but they will have another 12 machines disabled because they don't want to come off another minder.
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You can pull the self checkout option out of my rigid, dead, introverted hands.
Most times the corpos have the employees watching you like a damn criminal during self-checkout, I find talking to the cashier much less awkward
Fuckin' conversators with their 'eye contact' its just bullshit.
I love it when a cashier checkout is available because everyone is doing the self-checkout and I can get my stuff bagged properly (I’m terrible at bagging up). I’ll even chat with them as they’re in the middle of the most boring shift imaginable.
as a former cashier, fuck talking to people, the mind's enough
Will they bag groceries into reusable bags, or are you using plastic bags?
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The self-checkout at Aldi is a godsend. Way too many times I've been on my lunch break trying to buy a sandwich and snack, only for some old git to be using the time at the till to have a chinwag with the cashier!
By all means, have a chat with the cashier, but not when there's a massive queue of people waiting behind you! Also, you know those shelves near the window with the sign saying "Pack here"? That's not a suggestion. Pack your shopping away from the tills so people can keep buying stuff.
Look, saying “I don’t work here” to avoid using self-checkout completely misses the point. Technology has always evolved by shifting little tasks onto the user in exchange for speed and convenience. It’s not about “working for free,” it’s just self-service - like when grocery stores first let people grab stuff off shelves instead of asking a clerk behind a counter. At the time, some people probably whined about it too, but now nobody thinks twice because it’s way faster and gives you more control. Same thing with ATMs - you used to have to stand in line and talk to a bank teller just to get cash, now you punch a few buttons yourself. Are you ‘working for the bank’ when you use an ATM? No, you’re just getting your money faster without the hassle. Self-checkout is the same idea: a tiny bit of effort, way more convenience. Complaining about it like it’s some moral stand is honestly missing the bigger picture.
Except self checkout isn't faster. The professionals that check you out do this every day, they're way faster than me.
Not to mention 100% of the time I use self checkout, the machine doesn't realize I've put something in the bagging area and I need a staff member to sort out the broken machine, but because there's 1 staff member doing this for a dozen machines, they're constantly busy sorting out these broken machines so you often have to wait minutes for them to fix it.
Not sure about your lower-than-ideal scanning success rate machines, possibly a location issue. The machines i use work pretty much flawlessly and even if the process itself might be a little longer, the lines are usually nonexistent compared to a cashier.
Cashiers are at minimum twice as fast as customers mainly because after doing it for a while they start knowing were the bar codes are in most products and don't have to look around for them, know which are the awkward things to scan and how to do it, and are so used to the layout and sequence of the screens that they just go through them naturally.
You simply can't be as fast at doing something you do once in a while, as somebody who spends hours every day doing it.
Also were I live the cashier doesn't do bagging, the customer does, so whilst in a self-service checkout you're doing both scanning and bagging, with a cashier they're doing the scanning and you're doing the bagging which also makes the whole thing much faster even if you're making sure things are bagged the way you want it (for example, having all cold things in the same bag) because you can focus on bagging.
As for the lines being non-existent in self-service, that's not quite so simple a judgement as it seems:
- First, I noticed that in stores where they introduced self-service checkout they invariably reduced the number of people manning the other checkouts in order to "induce" customers to use the self-checkout (because "the lines are usually nonexistent compared to a cashier").
- Second, once a store has fully transited to only self-checkout, you get lines at the self-checkout, mainly because as I pointed out above, customers are way slower at doing the checkout themselves than cashiers so even though there are more self-checkout tills that there were tills with cashiers before, people take longer to go through them, especially when they have lots of things to checkout, so effectively each self-checkout till has less capacity than a cashier till.
That said, self-checkout is faster for customers in stores with mixed systems (both self-checkout and cashiers) if you have only a few things to checkout.
That'd be a great point if self-checkout was anywhere near as convenient as an ATM. But it's not, it's literally the same machine a cashier uses, bolted onto a card reader. There's no added convenience unless you're buying literally only one item. It's not innovation, it's outsourcing labor to the customer so the company can cut jobs and boost profits. You're doing 100% of the work they used to pay Someone for.
You are completely wrong about this. The cashier UI is less friendly and has lots of functions. Many are designed to be used with a keyboard or with small touch targets.
The user UI can basically do nothing but add items and pay. It is drastically simplified with few larger buttons and a greater degree of thought put into UI as you don't get to train every user to use your UI.
Not to mention the constant paranoia and assumption that you're stealing from them whilst saving them an immense amount of labour costs. Cameras watching your every move and "UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA".
Makes for such an enjoyable shopping experience...
People steal a LOT. It's impossible to catch the folks who steal without watching everyone. You are being watched whilst you shop too.
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Ah, but you're forgetting the emotional labor of forcing your lips to say "hi" while awkwardly shifting your eyes away from the cashier because after 20 years of life in your lonely, desolate suburban wasteland with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no people to see, you've grown unimaginably socially anxious and you've completely forgotten how to talk to anyone.
Frankly, I think you're just a luddite, or something. You.. hate.. barcode scanners, just admit it.
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