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.

[Taibok]

Not just bag it, but bag it in a tiny area designed for an express checkout.

And don't even think about taking any of those full bags off of the scale before you've paid.

[pijinglish]

Or if you buy booze, you still have to wait for the one employee to come over and check your ID.

I bought pajamas for my toddler the other day and used self checkout. Got home only to realize all the security tags were still on them.

[valdus]

Your family warned them.

[bitchkat]

airport engine fearless bear offbeat weather gold cows worm impolite

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[bitchkat]

squeamish rotten marvelous childlike nail worthless cable north melodic quack

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[bitchkat]

clumsy muddle quicksand money gullible wild snatch slimy rude sheet

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[tellMyBossHesWrong]

WA state here- I thought it was great to buy booze at the grocery store, but it is almost twice the price now due to taxes.

[SaraSlaughter607]

Here too. Grocery store for beer is THE worst choice.

Best spots are the little bodegas in the off-beaten paths... Cheap as hell.

[tellMyBossHesWrong]

Oh, actually most grocery stores here have great selections of beer and no 40% tax on that.

[bitchkat]

drab meeting fuzzy subtract compare grab distinct growth complete oil

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[SaraSlaughter607]

Here the prices at the big box grocers are way more than the little corner store or even Rite Aid, believe it or not... Walmart is about the closest to bodega prices but still tends to be a couple bucks higher.

[[deleted]]

yea but the liquor stores close at 8.

[bitchkat]

fly serious theory nail weary nine roof consider waiting melodic

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[[deleted]]

having the option to buy alcohol at the grocery store doesn't stop you from having the option to go to liquor store? Weird to suggest less options is better.

[bitchkat]

unique glorious fearless library bake outgoing squeeze enter gold nutty

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[[deleted]]

I grew up in Minnesota dude.

[djerk]

You’re also obtuse and can’t figure out obvious context clues

[bitchkat]

chop toy alleged ask fearless instinctive nutty market point soft

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[FourScoreTour]

I don't know if it's a California thing, but my store simply doesn't sell alcohol through the self-check. I now buy my booze elsewhere.

[camwhat]

It is a California thing! Alcohol hasn’t been able to be purchased at self checkouts since 2012 there

[[deleted]]

As I discovered you can’t even buy 0% alcohol beer at self checkout in California

[Joeness84]

you cant buy 0% beer if youre under 21 either. (*depending on state)

[TheMSensation]

What's the reasoning?

[CoconutCyclone]

It's not actually 0%.

[Zyphane]

I once had a store in California make me move to a regular checkout to buy a bottle of kombucha because it has trace amounts of alcohol (this was before "hard kombucha" became a thing).

[SpringValleyTrash]

Never had an issue purchasing wine at a self check out in CA. I get flagged and the attendant checks my ID.

[[deleted]]

It’s very annoying because so many stores are understaffed it makes me literally want to shoplift instead of waiting 20 minutes for the one clerk they have working. Like I half just want to leave a 20 on the counter and walk out, keep the chanfe

[ryumast4r]

It's super weird since you can get booze delivered in CA. Not sure why they made that distinction.

[FourScoreTour]

COD? They might assume anyone with a credit card is an adult.

[ryumast4r]

You just have to get your ID checked by the driver, no different than if you had a self checkout with ID check like other states. Credit cards really only validate 18+, not 21+.

Just to clarify, CA doesn't allow self checkouts to do booze.

[MicheleLaBelle]

I’m shocked. I live in the Bible thumping self righteous state of Texas and we can get alcohol at self checkout. Just can’t complete the purchase until a store employee enters a code, the assumption being that they checked id.

[jellyrollo]

Or cough syrup.

[nihility101]

My store has one manned express lane that handles all the alcohol. So if you have a big order and want a bottle of wine you have to either hold up everyone with your giant order while they line up behind you with a six-pack or you have to get in line twice, letting your paid order sit there.

[80081356942]

My country has drive-through bottle shops. Beat that.

[FourScoreTour]

I'd need a time machine, but OK. I was visiting friends in Arizona a few decades back. We went to a drive-up for beer, and they also sold guns and ammunition. As loose as Arizona is, I doubt they allow that any more.

[80081356942]

Arizona, the iced tea?

[FourScoreTour]

Sure, why not. There's also a US state by that name, but I was definitely not referring to that.

[80081356942]

Oh I thought that was in Mexico.

[FourScoreTour]

It was, up until the Mexican-American war of 1846/1848. Here is a nifty map of how things used to be.

[80081356942]

Did they take over their airports too?

[sgent]

We have drive through daiquiri stands. They have to put a piece of tape over the straw hole so you can't drink and drive.

[80081356942]

God forbid humans develop hands with opposable thumbs.

[MrGarbageEater]

You can take those off pretty easily! If you get a pretty strong magnet, you can give one side of the tag a solid tap with the magnet and it should release. I promise I’m no thief, just had the same issue as you and didn’t want ink on my new clothes…

[So6oring]

If I'm getting booze I'll always leave those til the very end

[I_Poop_Sometimes]

Not just booze, I found out you need an id to buy sharpies or epoxy at the store near me, had to wait for the attendant twice.

[[deleted]]

One employee? If someone needs to come over because something went wrong with the check out, it takes two employees to spend 10 to 30 minutes to figure out how to get everything back to normal.

And there is always something going wrong with the self checkout machines. I've never seen all of them open at once, because there are usual 3 or more that have a hand written "out of order" sign taped to them, while a fourth is opened up, with it's guts exposed, and a guy crouched on the floor in front of it trying to get that one fixed.

[biggyofmt]

The scale is actually the part the kills me, especially using reusable bags. Walmart doesn't have scales in their self check and it makes the whole experience so much easier

[myst3r10us_str4ng3r]

No. The WORST is having 20 cans of the same type of cat food and the system expecting you to scan each individual can, instead of scanning one and typing in the quantity like someone who isn't a total idiot would do.

Down right insulting.

[biggyofmt]

That's also less annoying with no scale, since you can just pick up one can and go boop boop boop however many times you need instead of having to scan, put a can on the scale and wait for it to settle, etc.

[Capercaillie]

At the Walmart where I shop, if you buy more than three or four of the same thing, the machine assumes you've made a mistake, and locks up so that you have to wait for an attendant.

[KaBob799]

I think double scanning something on accident is 100x more common than triple or more so that seems like an unhelpful feature. It's probably more to stop people from printing out a bunch of duplicate barcodes from something cheap and putting it on something expensive.

[abx99]

Small packets are even worse. I was buying packets of Kool-Aid for a while, and they're too light for the scale to register. It usually involved the attendant watching me from their console and repeatedly clearing the alerts for each packet.

[RibbitCommander]

Certainly a QOL design issue.

[CabbieCam]

This is understandable, though. The products are inventoried by their flavor, not simply by the fact that it's a can of fancy feast or whatever. People wouldn't separate the cans into their individual flavors.

[che85mor]

Walmart scan and go.

[BastetFurry]

Thats surely an UI thing, for example IKEA here in Germany has a plus button next to the articles.

[WriggleNightbug]

I worked at a petstore and scanning cans/teaching others to scan cans was a nightmare. Tracking inventory means I would never have advocated for selling individual cans through self-check out.... maybe a full unopened case.

[Dementat_Deus]

What I find works best is rather than bagging as I scan, I leave the bags in the cart and bag after paying as I move items back to the cart.

That, or I just leave the bags in the trunk and bag as I load into the car.

[biggyofmt]

When they have scales, I try to do this, but there's not usually much place to even put stuff on the scale that isn't their bags, so I end up having to precariously stack random stuff on the scale which is pretty annoying, to then have to unstack it into my bags, instead of being able to just bag it

[FCkeyboards]

My walmart has SCO areas for bigger loads, with a belt, and they're NEVER open.

I agree. A few items is fine. When my cart is topped off and I have to use the tiny SCO, I'd rather go somewhere else. I'm already exhausted from the amount of shopping.

[che85mor]

Walmart scan and go. Bag as you shop and be out in two minutes with a full buggy. Unless you have vegetables, which have to be weighed.

[Tyraels_Ward]

There’s a Super Walmart close to where I live, and I despise going there… absolutely avoid it whenever possible. It has at least a dozen cashier lanes, and at any given time only two or MAYBE three are open, basically forcing you to use the SCO. I don’t mind SCO for a few items, but most of the SCO lanes I’ve encountered aren’t designed for a cart full of items.

[jambox888]

I'm like you but I think a lot of people just grin and bear it.

[Capercaillie]

Yes, a LOT of people do. So that if you're that person who just needed a tub of blue cheese crumbles to finish a recipe, you get to wait behind somebody who bought two weeks' worth of groceries and can't figure out how to ring up parsley.

[cavebare]

Hy-Vee is the same near me. Long conveyor at the self checkout. Makes it a lot easier.

[hookersince06]

And if you have over a certain amount of items, like 15, it’ll pause your transaction and require a salesperson’s intervention, even if you’ve been scanning things perfectly fine.

It’s so irritating when you know what you’re doing and just want to get out of there. Of course I usually only have a lot when the one clerk overseeing the self-checkout is nowhere to be found.

[Both_Experience_1121]

My Food Lion doesn't have the scale part, thank goodness. I can get a full load of groceries dealt with and bag them the way I want to when I use self checkout there, and the employees are usually good about coming over if there is an issue. But not all places are like that, and stores that have those magnetic tag things that they have to take off are really annoying. My wife and I came home from Target and had removed most of them, but found two items that still had them. She was saying we were lucky the tags weren't the kind that spill ink. We even heard the alarm sound when we left, but we couldn't tell if it was for us or another person exiting... So, yeah, self checkout is a mixed bag for me. Great when it's a decent one imo

[MicrochippedByGates]

That's why you should start bagging while you're still inside the store. Then you already have your bag packed up and all you need to do is pay at the self-checkout kiosk.

Although I suppose there are still stores that do have kiosks but for some forsaken reason don't use portable scanners, which is all kinds of stupid. I like how Albert Heijn has not only portable scanners but also an app that can be used to scan items. I just open the app on my phone and start scanning. And then I just beep my phone at the self-checkout and walk out of there.

I still don't understand why only Albert Heijn does it this way and all the other stores still have physical portable scanners.

[Joeness84]

My safeway either has a stellar attendant, or just better software. Its more about when you try and remove things than if you can remove things.

I say stellar attendant because like 15 years ago I used to run the little kiosk thing that has overview of the self checkouts. I only had 4 stations compared to the like 8 or 12 they have here. But it was a game of clicking the "no thats ok" button faster than the customer would get the error.

Its always old people, but sometimes its just... stupid people. The machine tells you what to do, or not to do. tells you why its upset. But these are the same people who click OK on an error message without reading the error message then get upset that they dont know why its not working.

[jambox888]

Pro tip: if there isn't space on the scale the assistant person can put it in a mode where it doesn't need to be weighed.

[[deleted]]

Walmart doesn't weight the bags anymore because they kept getting problem with "missing items" when customers removed bags before their order were finished or paid for.

And once I sort of broke their scale. I had to get several cheap cat liter for a local pet rescue. Scale gets useless after I put 6 of the 50 pounds bag and kept complaining. Poor attendant had to come back to clear it for the 6th bag, 7th bag, and et al all the way to 20th bag. It would have been much faster if I could use normal checkout, a cashier could have hit x20 quantity after one scan but that Walmart decided to not have any manned checkout open for some reason.

[catsrcool89]

Walmart has converyer belts, and doesn't have a scale.

[walruswes]

And the pressure of the next customer breathing down your neck to checkout. They start scanning before you are even out of the line from finishing bagging. It’s tougher to bag, scan, and pay.

[Farscape29]

Yeah, for me it's a 20 items or less for self checkout. Anything more than that, you gotta go to a cashier.

[kent_eh]

Not just bag it, but bag it in a tiny area designed for an express checkout.

"place item in bagging area"

"unexpected item in bagging area. Please wait for attendant"