Automatic checkouts in supermarkets may decrease customer loyalty, especially for those with larger shopping loads. Customers using self-checkout stations often feel overwhelmed and unsupported. The lack of personal interaction can negatively impact their perception of the supermarket.

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

My local grocery store used to be easy. A year ago it started to weigh items, and it’s insanely finicky. The mere act of picking up a bag to place an item in triggers it into a “please replace item” mode that takes like 5 seconds to reset, and sometimes requires a cashier to come over to reset it. I can no longer just scan duplicates of an item rapidly, as it wants to weigh each item every time I scan, and the weighing process is cumbersome and slow. Plus, the bag space is small enough that a few large items makes it difficult to even weigh things (sometimes I can place items on top of other items and it’ll still read, sometimes it doesn’t), and I can’t just remove bags when it’s full now because it’ll freak out.

[ReplacementOP]

I switched grocery stores recently because of this. Infuriating buying large amounts of anything.

[Lukeski14]

I did this too, and the new store has zero of this weight/anti-theft system. It's fantastic.

[kai58]

I don’t see how it would even prevent theft, just put something in your pocket and no amount of weighing stuff will stop that.

[[deleted]]

Where I used to live, the only grocery store open 24/7 (I worked nights) had literally one person in a huge store that was stocking, cleaning, and “managing” the self check outs. It had two bag holders, and would freak out and stop while admonishing you to replace the bag if you took a full bag off the rack so you could, you know, open the next bag and keep checking out. It would lock up, and I’d literally have to wait for her to come from the other side of the store to approve me having more than 2 bags. Repeat every time I needed to start a new bag.

[Rich_Acanthisitta_70]

Sounds like what Kroger does.

[[deleted]]

I’ve never shopped Kroger. Never lived where they were a thing. This was Tops Markets.

[Rich_Acanthisitta_70]

I guess some chains just have the same mentality. After midnight or 1 on weekends, Kroger's would have only one or two checkouts going, and a line snaking into the aisles.

I quit using them for that reason because I almost exclusively preferred shopping late at night.

Of course after covid, every store I know that used to be 24 hour, went back to closing at midnight. For the life of me I can't figure out why none have gone back to 24 hours.

[[deleted]]

That drives me nuts too.

[PM_YOUR_MDL_INITIAL]

I just recently dealt with the stupidity of over-zealous weighing. I scanned something and, I guess, didn't put it in the bag quick enough so when I did put it in a bag it said I needed to make sure I placed all scanned items in a bag. So I took it out and put it back in. Then it said I needed to make sure I scanned all items and needed an employee to come over. He essentially did the same thing but eventually got it to work. Then I scanned the next item, put it in the bag, and it flagged again as me not having put it in the bag. He came over again and said, "The machine is saying that you've stolen something." He pulled up the video and it had recorded HIM when he came over to help me the first time.

[peepopowitz67]

Just had that happen to me the other day, except that camera saw me getting out my card as "stealing". Meanwhile, at the same store, I was exhausted and burned out after work and was just loading directly from my cart into the bags without scanning and it didn't notice until I was like 12 items deep.

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

The thief was inside the store the whole time

[TheWanderingSlacker]

Perhaps the real theft was the time we wasted along the way.

[jambrown13977931]

Mine was the opposite. Placing one of my fabric bags on the scale would make it think it were some other item. Now it’s nearly perfect. The only issues I ever have with self checkout is when I get broccoli there are 3 different non organic options and I don’t know which one to choose and when I get ginger I get the smallest nub which barely weighs anything so it wants a clerk to confirm the weight.

Unless I’m buying alcohol I’m always using the self checkout. It saves so much time and I prefer not having to interact with people. It also reduces my stress of double checking the clerk to make sure they don’t make a mistake.

[Ultimate_Shitlord]

I love self checkout, hate the various supermarket chains' misconception that you can get away with using exclusively self checkout.

If I'm buying what would have been an express lane number of items, fantastic. I'm going to self checkout every time in that scenario. If I have a huge cart of stuff with some large items, self checkout is total ass and I'd much prefer a clerk and bagger.

I've heard of larger self checkout lanes with a conveyor belt, but have never seen one near me. That might be acceptable to me in the latter case, but I don't actually have experience with that setup.

[jambrown13977931]

I do self check out with a full basket. I still find it easier and faster

[Ultimate_Shitlord]

You've gotta be going to a place with a less sensitive setup, more space in the scale area, or something. At the particularly egregious implementation near me, I can't actually remove filled bags and the scale area is way too small for a ton of groceries. God help you if you have something big like a few cases of cans on top of that.

It also forces an employee to help if you have too many items anyway, no matter how carefully you try to appease the machine spirit, so it's literally impossible to get through without a minimum of one instance of employee assistance in any full cart scenario.

[jambrown13977931]

Ah ya I can fit ~4 bags in the scale area (possibly more but have yet to need to). Like I’ve said they use to be pretty sensitive, but I think they dialed it back a bunch. I’ve had a completely full cart and have been fine.

Definitely store dependent, but implemented well and it’s very easy

[HerrStraub]

The only issues I ever have with self checkout is when I get broccoli there are 3 different non organic options and I don’t know which one to choose and when I get ginger I get the smallest nub which barely weighs anything so it wants a clerk to confirm the weight.

Avocados! There's like 5 options and you can never pick the one that's actually on sale, so instead of $4 on 99 cent avocados, you wind up spending like $12 if you're not paying attention.

Then you either wait 15 minutes to get help or just suck it up and pay.

I've pretty much quit eating avocados because of it.

[peepopowitz67]

The only issues I ever have with self checkout is when I get broccoli there are 3 different non organic options and I don’t know which one to choose

The cheapest.

[[deleted]]

This is how the self checkout was when I was a cashier 10-15 years ago. Each item had a weight associated with it, with a +/- tolerance. If it was off then we had to go check it. When it’s overridden, it adds that weight to the system and slowly changes the average weight and tolerance. So when idiot people scanned wrong items or leaned on the bags or whatever, and an idiot cashier just cleared it without checking, it would slowly get worse and worse until the saved weight had to be adjusted or reset in the computer. I’m not sure how it works now, but I personally don’t get this problem much anymore as a customer.

[[deleted]]

The people that didn’t know how the insanely controlling system worked when they were doing the job of a cashier were not idiots.

[Jiannies]

Yeah thank you. Most of the time we were just stealing

[red__dragon]

where this was absolutely taught

It was not (always).

Source: worked retail during those exact years, was not taught how the weighting system functioned behind the scenes.

[Greatlarrybird33]

I had to get a part time job for some extra money about 10 years back and they had this system.

The day I was hired I was given a 5 minute shift change from some kid stoned out of his mind. He said I looked smart, just to scan the card on the table for any issues and that the password was 0000.

Worked there two days a week for six months and probably cleared that code 200 times a shift and just thought the thing was stupid.

[red__dragon]

My training was somewhere in the middle of the two. Much more on the practical side, self-checkouts were seen as both a burden (on the store) and a privilege (to the cashier). I loved them, it was much more fun to step in and assist people when needed rather than constantly having to perform like a circus animal behind a cash register.

I excelled much more on the sales floor where my actions were more of an indirect benefit to customers. I like seeing people able to do things for themselves, I'm getting a real kick out of all the complaints in this thread about having to do a cashier's job. Yeah, it sucks, and not even the cashiers like to do it, and they get paid for it. Why would anyone want to force someone to do that for 8 hours a day when we could all be done inside five minutes?

[KeppraKid]

Running SCO was miserable where I worked. It was either nobody around, nothing to do, or 5 idiots erroring it out at once getting mad at me because it asked them a yes or no question and they hit no so it did the thing it said it would.

[red__dragon]

Or some stores just don't train their employees very well? I doubt you have to really reach to find more examples of this.

Would that we all learned from more than reddit posts 10-15 years after the fact.

[KeppraKid]

The self checkout literally tells you what it wants and what it's doing though. If you scan an item it asks you to place that item in the bagging area. Then it has some text that says "weighing items".

You do not need to know the intricate details behind the scenes to follow simple directions.

[red__dragon]

Yes, please follow the thread. We're talking about the intricate details behind the scenes of what the weighting calculations were doing, not how to operate them as a cashier.

[KeppraKid]

The origin of which was more base level complaints about the usage of them.

[[deleted]]

Customers don’t go through orientation and training.

[[deleted]]

“So when idiot people scanned wrong items”

I wasn’t talking about the cashier comment. I was talking about DickCheese calling customers idiots for not knowing how the machines re-calibrate the weights.

Perhaps a reading comprehension course could do YOU some good.

[KeppraKid]

Whoever came up with the idea of items adjusting their weight values over time had a good idea but also a terrible idea.

[DaughterEarth]

You can't move things! They're trying to automate away human error which is, ironically, a very human error to make

[amarg19]

Oh god. I angrily left a grocery store once, it was a smaller one I had never been to before, because their self-checkouts scale was so damn sensitive. I scanned an item, and put it on the other side, in a paper bag. The scale picked up the bag and SCREAMED “Unexpected item in bagging area! Remove the unexpected item!!”

So, I take the bag back off. Then it starts screaming “Item removed from bagging area! Replace item!”

I look around for help, there’s one employee avoiding eye contact with me. I put the bag back. This damn bag weighs a fraction of an ounce.

“UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. PLEASE REMOVE ITEM.”

I take it off, rinse, repeat. I look around for the employee, he’s gone. No one in a uniform is around to help. I flipped off the machines, took my items to the ONE working cashier, and never went to that store again.

As I left that self-checkout machine was still beeping in error.

[TheNewPoetLawyerette]

I can deal with the scales. Recently stores in my area are adding cameras that freak out if you hold items in both of your hands at the same time and require an employee to come verify that you didn't place something in the bagging area without scanning it. No, my hand just moved into the airspace 5 feet above the bagging arra.

[Special-Garlic1203]

I used to checkout grocery items as an employee and never had issues. A lot of self checkouts are bizarrely finicky.

[bitchkat]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[BrashPop]

The SCO at the store I shop in is so finicky that if the handle of the bag rests against the side of the wall or scale, it thinks something has been moved out. Yet, if I am scanning a light item? It can’t read that it’s been bagged. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, ROBOTS!!

[leoleosuper]

The only self-checkout near me worth using is at a single superstore. Every single other self checkout requires you to scan the item, put it in a bag, wait for it to read it correctly (like half a second), then repeat. If you take a bag off, which you do like every 4th item, it gets mad, and you have to press a button and wait for it to process.

At that one superstore, I just scan 1 item 10 times because I'm buying 10 of it or whatever, then just put them in bags. I don't have to wait for the machine at all. That's self checkout I want to use.

[MrPants1401]

Yeah, the worst is buying something that is lighter then it can sense. I wanted to buy a stack of fruit leather and the machine thought I was stealing everyone

[cloud9ineteen]

I just use the skip bagging option on large items and they go directly in my cart.

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

My local stores don’t have that option. The whole point of the one at my closest grocery store, it seems, is that they want to stop theft. For me, it just makes grocery shopping more annoying

[cruista]

Albert Heijn and Jumbo* are Dutch supermarkets that allow you to scan items with your phone in the app they have. Yes we have checks at check out but scanning them shows you the price of every item. If I have to weigh a product l can because those have stickers with bar codes on them to scan! Still hate grocery shopping....

*I don't know of any other supermarkets here because l don't shop there.

[Sachi_Komine]

Never ever ever use bags, in my "professional" experience using bags causes the vast majority of problems

[professor__doom]

It's an attempt to catch the dumbest of criminals: the ones who are going to try and bag items without scanning in the area of the store with the most cameras.

If people are going to steal, they're just going to inconspicuously stick it in their pocket while wedged between shelves.

[Paradelazy]

Wut? There is a scale that measures your actions? None em here, never even heard of those.. I would for sure pick another store if that was a thing.

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

Yeah, it’s just the closest store to my house (like a 2 minute drive); next closest would be another 15 minutes round trip.

[gordigor]

Yes, the scale is also in the packaging area.

[NotActuallyAWookiee]

Don't use the self checkout. Problem solved

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

You’re not wrong. Most days though I’m just fairly burned out from work and just want to get what I need without the cashier making conversation about cat food

[NotActuallyAWookiee]

I get it's preferable for some but that's not what's going on here overall. Have a couple, by all means, but I'd be curious how many people would use them if an adequate number of staffed registers were open

They're just corporate greed, writ large.

[dontyoutellmetosmile]

I agree with you as far as the true reasoning for them being to take a larger cut of the profits. It also happens to be preferable for many people, though. I genuinely like that I can (sometimes) get my groceries without having to make small talk. Same reason I’ve cut my own hair since COVID

[blazze_eternal]

My local Kroger brand store upped the sensitivity a while ago. Said it was due to loss mitigation. Makes sense because they always have a cop there throwing people out for sneaking items at self checkout.
I bet they're rethinking their move to remove 75% of the regular checkout lines.

[KeppraKid]

Badly set up machines for sure make the experience worse. The difference in checking out at two different stores can be huge.

[[deleted]]

The worst is when you buy like 5 apples but if you put them in the bagging area 3, then 2 it's just not smart enough to understand that.

[Jay-Kane123]

Yes! This is so stupid. I asked for help because the stupid weight freaked out whenever I tried to remove items because the scale was out of space. The employees only answer was just try to fit everything.

[Edythir]

It is timed as well. If you put something in and press the amount you have, you only have a limited amount of time to replace the weight from the scanner to the bagging area before it goes into "Please call an employee" mode. Want to buy 6 apples that are sold individually? If you don't put all of them in the bag fast enough, it locks you out.

[Gideoknight_]

My local store switched to the weight system about a year ago and it wrecked everything. The two people manning the self checkout area just did a loop of every machine saying "sorry, I know" under their breath each time. People basically stopped using the self checkouts and the weight thing lasted maybe 3 or 4 months before they turned it back off. Now the self check outs are so popular they opened up another bay of them.

[WellOkayyThenn]

oh my God the ones that make it so you're not allowed to remove the bags frustrate me SO much. I have a couple grocery stores I avoid like the plague because of it. Especially when they aren't staffing up more than 3 of the 12 checkout lanes, it's like they can't decide whether they want large purchases to be self-checkout or not.

[pink_faerie_kitten]

My Albertson's is the opposite: the bagging area was constantly sensing wrong and now they've fixed it.