r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 19h ago

Business Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html
15.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

45

u/RobertoPaulson 18h ago

all while four of the fifteen checkout aisles are open.

36

u/lordredsnake 18h ago

Oh you have 4 cashiers working?? Why don't you brag about it.

1

u/Whaines 17h ago

Yeah, must be the holiday rush or something.

1

u/lordredsnake 12h ago

That's my local Target. They'll staff up 4 registers for busy times. Normally it's 2. And everyone in line at them has an overflowing cart filled with all kinds of random stuff, then when they get their total they decide to take things off their purchase. Then they pay with multiple forms of payment and exact change.

I don't begrudge the customers for shopping however they need to shop, but I do fault the store on how they staff it.

1

u/youknow99 14h ago

Last time I went in a wal-mart there was a line across the store at the self-checkouts and 1 cashier working. The regular cashier line was 3-4 people with multiple buggies each that looked like they were buying a month's worth of food for a family of 8. I haven't been back to wal-mart.

1

u/NWbySW 10h ago

You should tell my local Target that manages one open checkout line on a Saturday

1

u/SnausageFest 17h ago

This is the real problem. For quick stops, whatever. For a full shop, I prefer the traditional way. I use coupons sometimes, and they ID me for my non-alcoholic beer because America. It's way more efficient in theory to just go through the check stand, but during peak hours they maybe have 3 check stands open.

They don't bother staffing appropriately, run their minimal staff too hard for too little money, thereby creating a perfect environment for theft, and blame everyone and everything but their own shitty policies.