Instead of having two people at the exit(s) to check receipts, they can scan items at registers.
“Another approach is adding a receipt-scanning gate at self-checkout areas, which Safeway has done at multiple locations in California, in addition to shutting down self-checkout entirely in some stores.”
Am I the only one that finds acts like receipt checks, and showing the camera watching you on the self checkout, to be hostile towards consumers?
I understand it is in response to theft, but has no one thought about the detriment this does to the consumer using self check out? The very nature of the self check out and all of its problems are driving people to hate them, and in turn resent the retailer.
I don't like receipt-at-door, but I'm not sure I'd describes it as hostile as much as kind of sad. (Unless enforcement is biased, or the person doing the checking is being rude, etc.)
I mean, everything in my cart is stuff that I just finished willingly recording into their sales records, so it's not as if I've had time to develop much sense of privacy or attachment over it.
For whatever reason, I think I'm more annoyed/discomfited by the "higher security tiny store within a store" thing some places have been doing, especially when all I wanted was a single toothpaste or something.
> I don't like receipt-at-door, but I'm not sure I'd describes it as hostile as much as kind of sad.
It is straight up illegal in Canada for a store to require you to show your receipt in order to be allowed to leave. It's unlawful detainment.
This applies to Costco as well. Of course you can have your membership revoked if you refuse there. However other grocery stores have no recourse if you leave without showing your receipt.
That seems like a straw-man argument. I've never seen anyone actually detained by private employees who suspect theft, and I'll bet many companies' policies quite explicitly prohibit those employees from trying.
You're saying private employees at grocery stores regularly and illegally detain shoppers?
C'mon man, citation needed.
I'm going to pre-buttal a bunch of "that's not actually the same claim" items here:
* If it's a couple notable incidents before the company gets a bloody nose in an expensive lawsuit and changes things, then that's not regular behavior.
* If the employee detains someone in accordance with local laws (e.g. the seldom-usable "citizen's arrest"), then it's not illegally acting like police.
* If the person is detained by actual police because the employee called them over, then that's not the private company doing the detention.
We clearly live in different jusridictions if someone can go into a store, shoplift, in plain view of private security, and not get detained by them where you are.
Leaving aside the frequency of the event, how about we look up the rules for your jurisdiction, and then we get a better idea about whether the exact situation you (and/or bluefirebrand) are thinking about qualifies as illegal?
For example, down in Washington State, I'd paraphrase the law [0] as "store owners can't be sued back if they had good evidence and only stopped the person enough to record information." (Note, that's separate from "citizen's arrest", which comes more from common-law precedents than from explicit statue.)
Your link doesn't say that though. Where does it supports the claim that suspect-customers were/will-be illegally detained?
Do you have some other source? And I don't mean "it happened once or twice before the company got slammed with a massive lawsuit that made them substantially change the policy."
> Where does it supports the claim that suspect-customers were/will-be illegally detained?
Not sure what your understanding is, but imo if a person is physically blocked from leaving a store, then they are being detained. It doesn't matter if an employee is doing it or if it's a gate with a receipt scanner
They can and have had employees standing at exits to check receipts in the past, but people are under no obligation to present a receipt in order to be allowed to leave so most people just walk right by
Physically placing a barrier in the way to prevent that is detainment. Replacing the employee with a scanning machine doesn't somehow change that.
Except for how at the grocery store the self checkout scale never works well and I need an employee to come over every time I prefer self checkout. Non-self checkouts to me feel like when I drove to a state where I wasn't allowed to pump my own gas, like it's not that hard just let me do it myself and don't bother me please.
The thought that OP was projecting onto you, specifically, when referencing "people" — and likely before ever knowing of your existence — is what's weird.
I refuse to let them check my receipt other than Costco/Sam's where apparently you can lose your membership. Even there if the line is too long I walk out with my stuff.
FWIW, Costco's receipt checkers aren't looking for shoplifting so much as checking to make sure people collected everything they paid for. In particular stuff like gift cards where you pick up a cardboard token in the store and then get the actual item after paying.
At Costco, when it is really busy, it can be a real fire hazard with people lined up just have someone pretend to audit your cart and then cross off your receipt. It is insane they can get away with abusing their customers like that.
Costco attracts people who ascribe a very low value to their own time, just look at the 20+ car lines to save a few bucks on gas. It’s no surprise that type of customer tolerates a line to have their receipt checked.
Have you been in a Costco, or is your primary interaction the gas lines? I guess the receipt line every once in a while takes more than 30 seconds? I can’t think of anything else inside that at all is a tax on my time compared to a normal grocery store.
Checking receipts causes a long line backed up to the registers on busy days, like holidays. Stopping the checking of receipts doesn't magically get all these people with carts through the doors, especially during a stampede. It is a clear hazard.
Agreed. It is unacceptable. We are in 21st century where all thieves are registered with government database with their skillset, area/days/time of operations and all. Retailers should concentrate on those instead of harassing non-thief customers.
> We are in 21st century where all thieves are registered with government database with their skillset, area/days/time of operations and all.
Really? How many of them are prosecuted? Tell me, how is it that porch pirates (thieves) are so prolific if there's some master database of every thief everywhere?
> Retailers should concentrate on those instead of harassing non-thief customers.
Retailers must not discriminate against anyone until after a crime has been committed. Otherwise it's a slippery path down to redlining.
I thought the same until the time they saved me $50 because I was charged for three of something I only bought two of. That the person noticed this in the span of about 5 seconds on a receipt of about 30 items and a fairly full cart was quite impressive.
Grow some patience and empathy. Someone who is penny pinching deserves your respect. Someone who is unable (or perhaps unwilling) to use technology also does.
If you go into a grocery store and aren't patient for those around you... well maybe you should be paying the premium to purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to you. Then you don't have to worry about the extra five minutes it takes for granny-not-yours to write out a check whose sum total is a significantly large chunk of their social security for the month.
It is not penny pinching, it is simply keeping the coinage in their purse light.
It is not from frugality that some people wait until the cashier is giving them the total that they start writing out their check including date, recipient, and purpose.
It is why I prefer the self checkout line, and I do my best not to slow down the people behind me so that they do not have to wait an extra 5 minutes for me.
Still, rising theft — part of what retailers call "shrink" — is the primary reason self-checkout is being ditched in some stores and restricted in others, according to Saunders.
Is this sarcasm? I was at Home Depot the other day and there was a 15 minute wait because they only had one checker. None of the grocery stores here ever have more than two checkers going, even on a paycheck Friday afternoon. And you can forget baggers completely - I think I’ve had my groceries bagged twice in the last four years.
This past never existed. You had Walmart with 30 lanes but with only fifteen open except during Christmas times. But that is still better than the one maybe two lanes open now. I'd much rather wait for one or two people ahead of me with a cashier that knows how to swipe items and has grocery codes memorized instead of wait for 15 people who all don't know what they are doing.
I feel like I'm going crazy when I read comments online about the people who love self check out. Unless you're going into an unpopular CVS to buy a single soda on a hot day, it nearly always takes the same time with more work or longer to check out.
A grocery store with non barcoded produce in self check out is basically the worst a shopping experience can be. Especially now that stores realize many of the biggest lovers of self check out were people who used it to steal so everything requires a double check if anything is off by more then a gram.
> it nearly always takes the same time with more work or longer to check out.
Completely disagree. Self checkout is much faster 90% of the time in my experience. Even when there is literally zero line for the cashier self checkout tends to be faster for me.
It was always basic queuing theory to keep on enough people so that the average queue depth if 4. Enough to see the finish line so as to not cause a riot.
The article only touches lightly on this, but I wonder how much of this is pushback from communities that are tired of Walmart outsourcing their loss prevention to the local police and courts. Walmart has all of the self-checkouts under constant video surveillance. Instead of Walmart paying a cashier to ring people up and make sure everything gets scanned properly, the local government instead pays much more for the police and the prosecutor to go after anyone that abuses the easily abusable system.
Unfortunately, Walmart wins either way. Self checkout will be replaced with employees whose wages are heavily subsidized by food stamps and other welfare. It’s remarkable how dependent Walmart’s business is on free stuff from the government, and how well Walmart milks us for every penny.
Self-checkout would be better with some simple fixes.
- Improve the layout. Provide more input side workspace for the customer to unload their cart. Make the workflow more like cashier checkout - unload cart onto conveyor, pass items across scanner, deposit in bagging area. Don't cram so many self checkout stations into a small area that customers and carts are crowded together trying to use them. De-clutter the self-checkout area. Get rid of the high-margin impulse items.
Remember Bed, Bath, and Beyond, with the most cluttered checkouts in retail? Remember what happened to them? As one retail consultant wrote, "Never put an obstacle in the way of the customer giving you money".
- Big screen with no distractions showing what you've scanned, without abbreviations but maybe with item pictures. Do not treat this as an advertising opportunity. It's a progress chart.
- Use multiple cameras and computer vision to watch what's happening. Provide good cues - "Didn't get a good look at that item - please show it to the scanner again." Use something with enough smarts to approximately recognize products. The system should be able to tell how many bags you used without user help. It should be able to resolve most minor problems without human assistance. This is not primarily an anti-theft measure, although it will help. It's an anti-confusion measure.
- Get the payment system properly synchronized with the checkout system. Never show a display that says to present a card until the system is ready to accept the card. Once a card has been read, say so. Get RFID readers with decent receivers so the customer isn't struggling to get the card read properly. (Looking at you, Toast.)
There's probably a YC24 in this for somebody. All the necessary hardware exists. The integration is terrible.
Which means some human has to be watching for people not scanning stuff.
The idea is to replicate the item handling at human checkout.
For big stuff in the bottom of the cart, there's an existing object recognition system, LaneHawk.[1] So you don't have to take out the case of beer or the bag of seed; the system will recognize big stuff automatically.
- optimize the system to run in true realtime - most self checkouts I used have perceptible latency of a few seconds between one scan and the next one - usually lagging behind of how fast a person can scan all their items, if they are positioned conveniently. Also, after all scanning is done, going to payment has its own delay. The system has to be very responsive...
That's usually "cloud POS", where every little event goes to some faraway shared server.
I recently tried to eat at Roam, on Union Street in San Francisco. But they could not sell me a burger. Their cloud POS system (from Toast, naturally) had failed. So they were out of business until Toast got around to fixing the server end. They couldn't even accept cash - the cloud controls the cash drawer.
That sounds horrible, none of the ones I tried (3 different stores, technically also Ikea, but that was several years ago, and I can’t remember how it worked) have that issue.
This lag is one of the most frustrating things of self checkouts. The manned checkouts don't have this. Its bleep, bleep, bleep, one item after the other. But the self checkouts have that damn refractory period after a scan to recover itself and be ready for the next scan. It's also true of any of the other actions like for payments needing sometimes five button presses each with long pauses. Like just have 'Pay Cash', 'Pay Debit/Credit' as two separate buttons and if you hit 'Pay Debit/Credit', the card reader is ready to go. Oh, even worse is when they give voice instructions, but you can't proceed until its finished talking.
I don't understand why you need to wait to the end to checkout. It should happen via mobile app while you add things to the cart. At the end scan a qr code to pay or something when you leave.
Walmart serves all kinds of income levels of people, some of whom do not have a mobile phone (the poor, the homeless) and others who would have trouble using one (elderly). Requiring an app to track things going into and out of your cart is just not workable there.
Ultimately, it's cheaper to hire minimum wage workers to just deal with stuff. There's always going to be people so desperate for a job that they'll work there and get public assistance to cover what their paycheck doesn't.
What's how it works at Walmart if you have a Walmart+ subscription.
I scan things with my phone as I put them into my cart. As I approach the self-checkout area I press "checkout" in the app, and it tells me how many items it thinks I have and I tell it that is right.
At the self-checkout terminals on the home screen there is a QR code. I scan that from the Walmart app, tell it how many store-provided bags I'm using, and click the "pay" button. A second or two later it thanks me on the screen, the green "this terminal is available light" above the terminal comes on, and a receipt appears on my phone.
I push my cart out to my car, holding up the phone so the person at the Walmart exit can see the receipt. At my car I unload the cart into my bags.
If it is cold or rainy out so I don't want to be standing behind my car unloading my shopping cart I'll bring my bags into the store and load them as I shop.
The only real annoyance was weighed produce, but they recently fixed that. The way it had worked was when scanning the item in the app it would tell you it needed to be weighed and that would done at checkout. At checkout it would go through the items that needed weighing and ask you to put them on the scale. Then it would update your cart with the calculated prices for those items and you could continue checkout.
The problems were that (1) if you put an item on the scale too early it could get confused, and (2) the communications between the scale, terminal, back end, and phone was sometimes flakey. The result was that sometimes checkout would hang at the weighing and an associate would have to come and reset things or transfer your cart to a human operated register and complete checkout there.
It was annoying enough that I'd sometimes not scan the items that would need weighing from the app, and then when I got to the self-checkout terminal I'd first scan (with the terminal's scanner, not the app) and weigh the items that need them, pay with my physical credit card, and then do another checkout for the app scanned items.
A month or so ago they put in new digital scales in the produce section. Now if I add an item that will need weighing from the app it tells me it will need weighing and tells me I can do it at one of the scales or at checkout. The scales in the produce section give the weight in both human friendly form and as a QR code. From the app I pick an item that needs weighing and point the phone at that QR code, and the app updates the item with the weight and price.
We recently got self-checkout at our local supermarket (REWE). The system itself is mostly fine, no distractions, and a clear screen, payment also works just like at the normal register.
One Software issue is probably not one for most, but for kg-price or non-scannable items, I’d love text input for search, and the same instant numbers that the employees can use (e.g. 1056 = cauliflower (by weight), 1432 = cucumber (per piece)), as well as a "repeat" button. That would have to be behind an "advanced interface" switch to not confuse most people, so that will never happen. Still, it’s nice to dream.
Very much agree with the layout. I usually have a full shopping cart. That means, despite me technically preferring the self-checkout, I’ll only use it if my wife is with me because otherwise I’ll run out of space and can’t properly pack things away at a decent speed.
Whenever I have more than one item without a bar code, I don't even bother with the self-checkout. Looking items up is such a pain. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? Are the bananas the ones from country X, Y, Z? What's the name of the pastry?
Even buying drinks is a hassle, because of the pop-up asking you if you bought 1 or 24? Why not just let me input the number I bought? Or better yet, measure it automatically.
The biggest shortcoming of the self-checkouts are the fact that you can't edit an order. Oh, the system scanned the item twice? Good luck getting a cashier to help you remove it again. I've walked over to another self-checkout before, because that was quicker than waiting for someone come over and edit the order.
Living in country where you add bar code to items like that yourself when you pick them up, these problems always feel strange. As with produce you have a sign of price and number there. You put items in plastic bag or not, then go to scale put item there and press button. Prints out barcode. Solves the whole remembering which item thing.
For multiple items, there is separate bar code on larger packaging. Ofc, this does not solve the issue of some large number of individual items...
We used to have those in Germany, but most stores abandoned that approach in favor of registers weighing the produce. I think the only ones I know that still do it with customer scales are CITTI and Real.
Mostly... don't have non-tech people lead the initiative and it has a greate chance of being secure. Ensuring it's a product manager who has enough deep tech experience would further de-risk it.
There's often a tradeoff between security and convenience. Maybe it's a drop bin once something goes in it.
Retail has a large set of known problems with theft, re-labeling, etc. Not sure how many of them could be solved vs how much theft retailers are willing to tolerate.
Your comment seems to be based on the premise that self-checkout is failing because it's a poor user experience.
Self-checkout is failing because of theft. Therefore, all of your suggestions are unhelpful. Helpful suggestions would sound something like (for demonstrative purposes only):
Fully gate in the checkout area and ensure all items are scanned and paid for before opening the exit gate.
> Another approach is adding a receipt-scanning gate at self-checkout areas, which Safeway has done at multiple locations in California, in addition to shutting down self-checkout entirely in some stores.
Checkout needs a clearly visible item path from cart to conveyor to scanner to bagging area to cart, and a moment when the cart is totally empty, so skipping a step is obvious. If the checkout can fill more than one bag, there needs to be more than one bagging area, with a scale for each bin.
If you've been to a Home Depot or Lowes recently, there's maybe 1 or 2 staffed registers open and usually a decent line of customers at self-checkout trying to figure out how to scan items & check out with several staff trying to help/keep an eye on them. These days I just walk to the far end to the "Pro" register which is usually empty -- much quicker.
At my local Home Depot, all the staffed registers are long unavailable, with the exception of one in the "pro" section. There are self-checkout registers... but they're all manned by Home Depot Employees. Not to watch over you, but running them in an admin mode, and using them as normal registers. It is absolutely ridiculous.
I believe the reason may be related to theft. All of the entrances no longer open except one. Well, at least for entering the store, as you can still exit through any of the doors just fine.
If this seems bad, here's how bad it is: Last time I went to Home Depot to get one or two things because they had it and I wanted them now, there were two older women in line in front of me. Aged 60+. They were discussing how ridiculous the situation was. One even said, "I realize they've probably done this because of theft, but this is so stupid now that honestly, I almost feel as if I should steal from the store to stick it to them!"
When old ladies feel that stealing from your store is justifiable, you've done messed up.
I stopped buying from Home Depot when one store decided to try to sell a damaged lawnmower to me not once but twice, and with website phone staff unable to do anything and two different managers/assistant managers referring to other stores. The store they referred me to then also tried to sell another damaged lawnmower.
That was the worst experience I've had at Home Depot and I'll never purchase anything from them again.
Now I buy from Lowe's. My aunt works there -- but at least I know I'm not going to get screwed by family. Or, if I do get screwed by family, then there's family-political solutions there. It's clearly nepotism :) but if it works better than capitalism then sobeit.
Same at my local Home Depot. Shut down regular registers, self check-out being run as a normal register. Outside of time sensitive shops, I'll go 10 minutes out my way to avoid this.
Our local home depot had its entire setup stripped out and redone with self checkout, but the system - in spite of being very glossy and futuristic looking - was designed by someone who had never worked retail before in their entire lives[1]. Moebius loop menus, dead ends that require store login to back out of, infinite loops when undertaking various payment methods[2], and naked windows errors when what looks like Electron rolls over and dies. I haven't seen any one customer successfully use the new setup to navigate a transaction. And it was expensive as hell, according to a disgruntled manager I chatted up.
It's wild. Almost defense-industry-like.
[1] Or possibly ever programmed a computer. I am very possibly the World's Worst Programmer[a], and my completely shambolic first attempt at an Electron-based data entry system with a smartcard auth thingy worked way better than this thing. I at least hid Windows errors for chrissake.
[1.a] I've got that on my business card, along with the incredibly niche things I might actually be able to help you with. Incredibly, I've gotten programming gigs with this.
[2] As shoppers fearfully wonder how many of these transactions are actually posting to accounts.
They scaled back at one store only. This hardly seems like a trend. The Wal-Mart near my house just finished a major remodel this month, and they increased the number of self-checkout stands and cut down on the number of manned lanes. Only one manned lane ever seems to be open. They clearly are pushing people to use self-checkout.
I rate my experience 1 star every single time I use the self check out since they ask me to rate it. And that is not to be spiteful but that is how the experience actually is these days at Walmart. What pissed me off the most is they took away plastic bags for the blue bags which had a 30 cent charge. Then people were not scanning the bags and so they took them away and you had to ask a worker for a bag to which they would ask how many bags. So you would have to estimate your bags and if you didn't get enough would have to find a worker again and ask for more bags. But the workers were always busy with other customers so you had to wait and it seems like they hired the slowest fucking people on earth it hurts my mind to watch how slow they can actually move. So my local Walmart sucks so hard since the self check outs. I do carry bags in my car but I don't always remember to put more in my trunk after a shop so sometimes forget making the experience there miserable.
Using self checkout at Walmart is a huge legal risk. While I'm sure many are lying about intent, there are tons of stories of people who forgot to scan an item in self checkout who are happily prosecuted by Walmart for shoplifting. I don't want to take on the burden of doing the store's labor for free in addition to taking on the legal risk of shoplifting charges because I misscanned an item.
It’s hilarious that the article alleges that this has anything to do with customer satisfaction. The self checkouts were added to reduce staffing costs for cashiers. They’re being removed to reduce shoplifting. These companies do not give a single fuck about making your life more pleasant, despite what their PR may say.
I love self checkout and it transformed my shopping experience for the better. But I knew it wouldn't last forever because of shoplifting.
Walmart is also putting other anti-shoplifting measures in place, such as locking away certain expensive small items like beauty products. I don't know if there is a cultural shift going on, profit seeking or if it's somehow a reflection of the political status quo.
I go to a Dollar Store fairly frequently in my city, and it's just a nightmare due to self-checkout: one physical cashier open with anyone over 50 lining up to use, and another overworked worker dealing with errors in the self-checkout units. Just incredibly amounts of scale errors and other things that require a fingerprint scan by employees to clear.
I absolutely hate going back home to the US and dealing with a self-checkout that assumes you are a thief.
Here in the Netherlands at the local stores, I walk up, scan my items, pay, and walk out. Randomly, the POS selects you for a check and a person comes by and scans a random 5-10 items from your cart to make sure you don’t have extra items. There’s also no “please but the item in the bagging area” bullshit. I literally scan the item and toss it in my backpack or cart; though you learn (from the random checks) not to put it in your backpack unless you want a random stranger digging through your backpack to scan items.
At some stores, you don’t even scan the items. They have an rfid system (similar to some libraries in the US) that just knows what you have. You then just double check the list and pay.
Just thinking about US self-checkout makes me angry. After being treated like an adult, it just makes you angry.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread“Another approach is adding a receipt-scanning gate at self-checkout areas, which Safeway has done at multiple locations in California, in addition to shutting down self-checkout entirely in some stores.”
I understand it is in response to theft, but has no one thought about the detriment this does to the consumer using self check out? The very nature of the self check out and all of its problems are driving people to hate them, and in turn resent the retailer.
It's just not civilised.
I mean, everything in my cart is stuff that I just finished willingly recording into their sales records, so it's not as if I've had time to develop much sense of privacy or attachment over it.
For whatever reason, I think I'm more annoyed/discomfited by the "higher security tiny store within a store" thing some places have been doing, especially when all I wanted was a single toothpaste or something.
It is straight up illegal in Canada for a store to require you to show your receipt in order to be allowed to leave. It's unlawful detainment.
This applies to Costco as well. Of course you can have your membership revoked if you refuse there. However other grocery stores have no recourse if you leave without showing your receipt.
That seems like a straw-man argument. I've never seen anyone actually detained by private employees who suspect theft, and I'll bet many companies' policies quite explicitly prohibit those employees from trying.
Of course they actually do. Just be glad you're lucky enough not to have had to deal with that.
C'mon man, citation needed.
I'm going to pre-buttal a bunch of "that's not actually the same claim" items here:
* If it's a couple notable incidents before the company gets a bloody nose in an expensive lawsuit and changes things, then that's not regular behavior.
* If the employee detains someone in accordance with local laws (e.g. the seldom-usable "citizen's arrest"), then it's not illegally acting like police.
* If the person is detained by actual police because the employee called them over, then that's not the private company doing the detention.
For example, down in Washington State, I'd paraphrase the law [0] as "store owners can't be sued back if they had good evidence and only stopped the person enough to record information." (Note, that's separate from "citizen's arrest", which comes more from common-law precedents than from explicit statue.)
[0] https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=4.24.220
It's not just not a strawman, it's already happening, even if it is illegal
Your link doesn't say that though. Where does it supports the claim that suspect-customers were/will-be illegally detained?
Do you have some other source? And I don't mean "it happened once or twice before the company got slammed with a massive lawsuit that made them substantially change the policy."
Not sure what your understanding is, but imo if a person is physically blocked from leaving a store, then they are being detained. It doesn't matter if an employee is doing it or if it's a gate with a receipt scanner
They can and have had employees standing at exits to check receipts in the past, but people are under no obligation to present a receipt in order to be allowed to leave so most people just walk right by
Physically placing a barrier in the way to prevent that is detainment. Replacing the employee with a scanning machine doesn't somehow change that.
What are you talking about? I use self checkout at every opportunity I can. Feel free not to if you don't want, but this projection is weird.
I'm not a thief and won't be treated like one.
Its also loss prevention.
We’re not talking about “government database” kinds of people.
Really? How many of them are prosecuted? Tell me, how is it that porch pirates (thieves) are so prolific if there's some master database of every thief everywhere?
> Retailers should concentrate on those instead of harassing non-thief customers.
Retailers must not discriminate against anyone until after a crime has been committed. Otherwise it's a slippery path down to redlining.
Bag checkers at BestBuy, on the other hand....
Grow some patience and empathy. Someone who is penny pinching deserves your respect. Someone who is unable (or perhaps unwilling) to use technology also does.
If you go into a grocery store and aren't patient for those around you... well maybe you should be paying the premium to purchase your groceries online and have them delivered to you. Then you don't have to worry about the extra five minutes it takes for granny-not-yours to write out a check whose sum total is a significantly large chunk of their social security for the month.
It is not penny pinching, it is simply keeping the coinage in their purse light.
It is not from frugality that some people wait until the cashier is giving them the total that they start writing out their check including date, recipient, and purpose.
It is why I prefer the self checkout line, and I do my best not to slow down the people behind me so that they do not have to wait an extra 5 minutes for me.
Still, rising theft — part of what retailers call "shrink" — is the primary reason self-checkout is being ditched in some stores and restricted in others, according to Saunders.
I feel like I'm going crazy when I read comments online about the people who love self check out. Unless you're going into an unpopular CVS to buy a single soda on a hot day, it nearly always takes the same time with more work or longer to check out.
A grocery store with non barcoded produce in self check out is basically the worst a shopping experience can be. Especially now that stores realize many of the biggest lovers of self check out were people who used it to steal so everything requires a double check if anything is off by more then a gram.
Completely disagree. Self checkout is much faster 90% of the time in my experience. Even when there is literally zero line for the cashier self checkout tends to be faster for me.
- Improve the layout. Provide more input side workspace for the customer to unload their cart. Make the workflow more like cashier checkout - unload cart onto conveyor, pass items across scanner, deposit in bagging area. Don't cram so many self checkout stations into a small area that customers and carts are crowded together trying to use them. De-clutter the self-checkout area. Get rid of the high-margin impulse items. Remember Bed, Bath, and Beyond, with the most cluttered checkouts in retail? Remember what happened to them? As one retail consultant wrote, "Never put an obstacle in the way of the customer giving you money".
- Big screen with no distractions showing what you've scanned, without abbreviations but maybe with item pictures. Do not treat this as an advertising opportunity. It's a progress chart.
- Use multiple cameras and computer vision to watch what's happening. Provide good cues - "Didn't get a good look at that item - please show it to the scanner again." Use something with enough smarts to approximately recognize products. The system should be able to tell how many bags you used without user help. It should be able to resolve most minor problems without human assistance. This is not primarily an anti-theft measure, although it will help. It's an anti-confusion measure.
- Get the payment system properly synchronized with the checkout system. Never show a display that says to present a card until the system is ready to accept the card. Once a card has been read, say so. Get RFID readers with decent receivers so the customer isn't struggling to get the card read properly. (Looking at you, Toast.)
There's probably a YC24 in this for somebody. All the necessary hardware exists. The integration is terrible.
It’s fast and convenient.
The idea is to replicate the item handling at human checkout.
For big stuff in the bottom of the cart, there's an existing object recognition system, LaneHawk.[1] So you don't have to take out the case of beer or the bag of seed; the system will recognize big stuff automatically.
[1] https://www.datalogic.com/eng/retail/fixed-retail-scanners/l...
- optimize the system to run in true realtime - most self checkouts I used have perceptible latency of a few seconds between one scan and the next one - usually lagging behind of how fast a person can scan all their items, if they are positioned conveniently. Also, after all scanning is done, going to payment has its own delay. The system has to be very responsive...
I recently tried to eat at Roam, on Union Street in San Francisco. But they could not sell me a burger. Their cloud POS system (from Toast, naturally) had failed. So they were out of business until Toast got around to fixing the server end. They couldn't even accept cash - the cloud controls the cash drawer.
Ultimately, it's cheaper to hire minimum wage workers to just deal with stuff. There's always going to be people so desperate for a job that they'll work there and get public assistance to cover what their paycheck doesn't.
I scan things with my phone as I put them into my cart. As I approach the self-checkout area I press "checkout" in the app, and it tells me how many items it thinks I have and I tell it that is right.
At the self-checkout terminals on the home screen there is a QR code. I scan that from the Walmart app, tell it how many store-provided bags I'm using, and click the "pay" button. A second or two later it thanks me on the screen, the green "this terminal is available light" above the terminal comes on, and a receipt appears on my phone.
I push my cart out to my car, holding up the phone so the person at the Walmart exit can see the receipt. At my car I unload the cart into my bags.
If it is cold or rainy out so I don't want to be standing behind my car unloading my shopping cart I'll bring my bags into the store and load them as I shop.
The only real annoyance was weighed produce, but they recently fixed that. The way it had worked was when scanning the item in the app it would tell you it needed to be weighed and that would done at checkout. At checkout it would go through the items that needed weighing and ask you to put them on the scale. Then it would update your cart with the calculated prices for those items and you could continue checkout.
The problems were that (1) if you put an item on the scale too early it could get confused, and (2) the communications between the scale, terminal, back end, and phone was sometimes flakey. The result was that sometimes checkout would hang at the weighing and an associate would have to come and reset things or transfer your cart to a human operated register and complete checkout there.
It was annoying enough that I'd sometimes not scan the items that would need weighing from the app, and then when I got to the self-checkout terminal I'd first scan (with the terminal's scanner, not the app) and weigh the items that need them, pay with my physical credit card, and then do another checkout for the app scanned items.
A month or so ago they put in new digital scales in the produce section. Now if I add an item that will need weighing from the app it tells me it will need weighing and tells me I can do it at one of the scales or at checkout. The scales in the produce section give the weight in both human friendly form and as a QR code. From the app I pick an item that needs weighing and point the phone at that QR code, and the app updates the item with the weight and price.
One Software issue is probably not one for most, but for kg-price or non-scannable items, I’d love text input for search, and the same instant numbers that the employees can use (e.g. 1056 = cauliflower (by weight), 1432 = cucumber (per piece)), as well as a "repeat" button. That would have to be behind an "advanced interface" switch to not confuse most people, so that will never happen. Still, it’s nice to dream.
Very much agree with the layout. I usually have a full shopping cart. That means, despite me technically preferring the self-checkout, I’ll only use it if my wife is with me because otherwise I’ll run out of space and can’t properly pack things away at a decent speed.
Even buying drinks is a hassle, because of the pop-up asking you if you bought 1 or 24? Why not just let me input the number I bought? Or better yet, measure it automatically.
The biggest shortcoming of the self-checkouts are the fact that you can't edit an order. Oh, the system scanned the item twice? Good luck getting a cashier to help you remove it again. I've walked over to another self-checkout before, because that was quicker than waiting for someone come over and edit the order.
For multiple items, there is separate bar code on larger packaging. Ofc, this does not solve the issue of some large number of individual items...
One approach I've thought about is if the shopping cart coul be the POS.
There's often a tradeoff between security and convenience. Maybe it's a drop bin once something goes in it.
Retail has a large set of known problems with theft, re-labeling, etc. Not sure how many of them could be solved vs how much theft retailers are willing to tolerate.
Self-checkout is failing because of theft. Therefore, all of your suggestions are unhelpful. Helpful suggestions would sound something like (for demonstrative purposes only):
Fully gate in the checkout area and ensure all items are scanned and paid for before opening the exit gate.
> Another approach is adding a receipt-scanning gate at self-checkout areas, which Safeway has done at multiple locations in California, in addition to shutting down self-checkout entirely in some stores.
At my local Home Depot, all the staffed registers are long unavailable, with the exception of one in the "pro" section. There are self-checkout registers... but they're all manned by Home Depot Employees. Not to watch over you, but running them in an admin mode, and using them as normal registers. It is absolutely ridiculous.
I believe the reason may be related to theft. All of the entrances no longer open except one. Well, at least for entering the store, as you can still exit through any of the doors just fine.
If this seems bad, here's how bad it is: Last time I went to Home Depot to get one or two things because they had it and I wanted them now, there were two older women in line in front of me. Aged 60+. They were discussing how ridiculous the situation was. One even said, "I realize they've probably done this because of theft, but this is so stupid now that honestly, I almost feel as if I should steal from the store to stick it to them!"
When old ladies feel that stealing from your store is justifiable, you've done messed up.
That was the worst experience I've had at Home Depot and I'll never purchase anything from them again.
Now I buy from Lowe's. My aunt works there -- but at least I know I'm not going to get screwed by family. Or, if I do get screwed by family, then there's family-political solutions there. It's clearly nepotism :) but if it works better than capitalism then sobeit.
It's wild. Almost defense-industry-like.
[1] Or possibly ever programmed a computer. I am very possibly the World's Worst Programmer[a], and my completely shambolic first attempt at an Electron-based data entry system with a smartcard auth thingy worked way better than this thing. I at least hid Windows errors for chrissake.
[1.a] I've got that on my business card, along with the incredibly niche things I might actually be able to help you with. Incredibly, I've gotten programming gigs with this.
[2] As shoppers fearfully wonder how many of these transactions are actually posting to accounts.
Edit: one story of many https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/walmart-shoplifting-la...
In Singapore, where I live, self-checkouts are gaining popularity and work quite well.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay8cZfe8S_o
Walmart is also putting other anti-shoplifting measures in place, such as locking away certain expensive small items like beauty products. I don't know if there is a cultural shift going on, profit seeking or if it's somehow a reflection of the political status quo.
Here in the Netherlands at the local stores, I walk up, scan my items, pay, and walk out. Randomly, the POS selects you for a check and a person comes by and scans a random 5-10 items from your cart to make sure you don’t have extra items. There’s also no “please but the item in the bagging area” bullshit. I literally scan the item and toss it in my backpack or cart; though you learn (from the random checks) not to put it in your backpack unless you want a random stranger digging through your backpack to scan items.
At some stores, you don’t even scan the items. They have an rfid system (similar to some libraries in the US) that just knows what you have. You then just double check the list and pay.
Just thinking about US self-checkout makes me angry. After being treated like an adult, it just makes you angry.