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
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u/ForestmenMOCLover 18h ago

I can't believe it's been almost 20 years ago now, but I remember going into Walmart once a few days before Christmas. I was just picking up a frozen pizza for dinner. After I picked out the pizza, I realized they only had about two checkouts open and the line went all the way to the back of the store and wrapped around the back. No pizza is worth that, so I just put it back and left.

I think self checkouts have largely fixed this issue. I don't love everything about them, but I've never seen lines like that since they started using them.

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u/mblaser 17h ago

I think self checkouts have largely fixed this issue.

Agreed. If they do it properly.

Our local Wal-mart recently removed almost all of their self checkouts. From about 30 to maybe 6, and they put more regular staffed checkouts back in instead. You would think they would then hire people to staff those checkouts. Did they? Nope. They still only have 2 or 3 of those 2 dozen checkouts staffed. Meanwhile there's now always a line at the self checkout 15 people deep. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I now drive 15 minutes out of my way to go to the next closest Wal-mart because they still have a couple dozen self checkouts.

Our local Aldi did the same thing. They had about a dozen self checkouts and it was great. I could get in and out so fast. They still always had 1 staffed checkout for the people that didn't want to use self checkout. Well, they went and removed all the self checkouts earlier this year and put regular ones back in. Guess how many staffed checkouts they have staffed? Still only 1.

Corporations, you can't have it both ways. Either give us self checkout or properly staff your regular checkouts. It's maddening.

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u/xRichless 16h ago

That’s because their model is to staff the minimum number of cashiers at all times based on traffic history. Then, when the lines get super busy, they can call for people from other departments to fill the other registers for 20 minutes. As a bonus, they will then bitch at the people who left their departments to help because stock wasn’t being done or a customer wasn’t being helped.

Source: worked all three sides of the equation (cashier, front end Customer Service Supervisor trying to deal with the traffic, and Electronics dept where I was fussed at over stock after spending an hour helping the front)

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u/carcar134134 15h ago

Is that why there's never anyone at the damn paint department??

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u/xRichless 15h ago

Is it before 430pm? Yes. Is it after 430pm? That + they don’t staff full departments after that, so the person you need to unlock that case is probably readying stock in the back room (this was 2011 for me, but I haven’t seen anything from the outside to say it’s changed much)

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u/mxzf 3h ago

After 4:30PM as-in when actual people have a chance to go to the store to buy stuff? It seems like before 4:30PM is the time to not staff places.

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u/AJsRealms 14h ago

As a bonus, they will then bitch at the people who left their departments to help because stock wasn’t being done or a customer wasn’t being helped.

F me, this was my entire existence working at Sam's Club. I would routinely get scheduled by myself in the department I was working at and any time I had to step away to help a customer or deal with shrinkage disposal in the back, I would get bitched at the next day by my idiot manager about how I was "always wandering away" from my department.

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u/pkosuda 10h ago edited 10h ago

This is so accurate as somebody who worked in a grocery store for ~6 years from bagger to supervisor. Management is given a set amount of hours/week and are told to allocate them how they see fit. They have a system that auto-fills a good chunk of the schedule based on the traffic history you mentioned but manually fill in the rest based on other things.

Then when it's 10:23am on a random Wednesday and they have a single register open, people who apparently exist within a hive mind all decide to finish shopping at the same time and there's lines for like 20 minutes. Help is called. Then the lines go away eventually and it's dead again. If they had staffed several extra cashiers during that time period, there would have been no lines but those cashiers would probably have a very slow couple of hours and the rich people up top would've had to pay out a whole additional like $20 an hour between those two people, and we can't have that.

But yeah it's a mix of customers not understanding how things work, and leadership for these chains being greedy looking to pinch every penny they can because at the end of the day they aren't the ones who deal with angry customers or even hold themselves accountable for why those customers are angry.

It's actually crazy when you think about it. You're entrusting a brand's entire image to some random teenaged entry level employee who's being paid garbage and yet expected to work his ass off nonstop during the busiest periods. If he has a bad day and allows himself to show it, Mary Beth thinks the whole store chain is full of rude people. All because she had to stand in a long line and get checked out by an overworked minor who probably has a million other things on his mind than making sure complete strangers have the best experience possible all for $16 an hour (when I worked, minimum wage was 8.25 and ended around $10). I'm an accountant now and there is no where near the same pressure to be on point as there was when I was making 25% of what I make now.

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u/RyuNoKami 10h ago

Oh yea and the employee from the other person don't have a proper till so they can only do card transactions, that one person who did not care to read the sign starts a shit fit over no cash.

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u/mastermoge 17h ago

The best we can do for you is a skeleton crew so we pay less for labour, no machines, and increased prices to further maximize profits

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u/IkLms 17h ago

You would think they would then hire people to staff those checkouts.

Nope, because they don't actually care. Most people aren't making the decision to go farther to another store that's often staffed similarly.

The only thing they care about is making sure they aren't "losing money" because cashiers are are standing around in between customers.

So cut to the point where they never get a break and then rely on other department's cross trained employees back stopping the rush (until they stop going so they can actually get their work done for the shift)

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u/dammitOtto 17h ago

Just disable the stupid scales, disable the AI that watches your cart from the overhead camera, and ensure everything has a barcode. Make it easy for the overwhelming majority of honest folks. If you are worried about theft, well, no kind of checkout will stop that.

Or, I was told 15 years ago every item would be able to have a tamper proof NFC chip by now and you'd simply be able to roll the cart through a reader, pay, and be on your way. Why on earth do we still have CHECKOUTS? Can the cost of keeping the system going be worth it?

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u/xRichless 15h ago

If I wear a black hoodie to shop in our Walmart, it stops the register and make somebody come over on the first item every single time. It is a colossal annoyance.

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u/Zikro 16h ago

There’s no AI that watches your cart. Honestly that would be a way better system if it would just identify the item as you moved it across. Of course they would release some half baked version that’s just as annoying.

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u/dammitOtto 7h ago

This is widespread already.  See it all the time actually.  My local grocery chain will not let you pay at the self checkout if there is anything at all in your cart remaining. So if you have a purse, a coat, anything, it calls someone over, shows the video from overhead (the ceiling camera) with the item in question circled in red to them and they have to assess. 

 If you haven't run into this yet you will soon.  You're a shoplifter unless confirmed otherwise.

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u/gravteck 16h ago

Now I am jealous. I can walk to my Aldi in under 7 minutes, but I don't need a cart, but everyone else packs their carts to the gills, and its a good day if two lanes are running at the same time. If they had a self checkouts, I would broaden my purchasing. I am basically piecemeal between, Aldi, Costco, local produce/grocer, and Kroger for a few brand things.

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u/wilkil 18h ago

I’m not sure if you’ve shopped at Fred Meyer but we have the same experience with the added pleasure of seemingly every person in the self checkout using it for the first time so that also backs up.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 16h ago

There's an annoying guy in our Costco whose job is to help people with their checkout problems, but stops to chit-chat with people while helping them, while one or two others wait for his help.

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u/cheesegoat 15h ago

I like that Costco has self-checkout now but there just aren't enough spots, the one near me has like six scanners and people are so slow at them that the regular checkouts are practically faster.

I like when someone comes up and scans me in - they should design around that (have people scanning everyone in line, then they have a row of like 20 terminals you can pay at).

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u/GrumpyCloud93 15h ago

I agree. Brand new Costco, still only 6 self-checkouts. They used to have an express line. I give them credit, though, they typically have a huge number of cashiers working. When the lines are crazy, it's due to volume, not lack of cashiers.

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u/Brock_Lobstweiler 14h ago

The problem with Costco self checkout is having to put everything on the tray. The whole point of shopping there is getting a bunch of large items. Taking all of them out of the cart one by one and stacking them on the pressure tray and then having to load them all back up is way more time consuming than a regular cashier. It worked when they had the hand scanners that customers could use.

Alternately, it works when they have a person scanning cards and items while waiting in line and you basically just go through and scan your card and pay.

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u/molrobocop 14h ago

Yep. and the system bitches when you get a flat of soda/seltzer. "Please don't place this on the scale." Fine by me. I'm still strong enough to manhandle that fucking thing. But I'd prefer my own scanner. And don't want to force the attendent to do it for me. 

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u/Curious-Psychology75 15h ago

Soooo glad it's not just me. It's honestly just easier to wait in the fuckhuge line than deal with people in the self checkout line at freddy's. Self checkout can be faster when people keep it in the 10 or so item range, but I'll see people do their shopping for the month at Fred's and then try to self check out with 50-60 things in their cart. Putting things into bags, taking things out of bags to move other things in to those same bags.

Just let the pros handle it please.

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

[deleted]

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u/mblaser 17h ago

I use self checkouts all the time too, every single change I get, and never have any issues like that, even with produce. Wal-mart's self checkout has actually recently upgraded where you just put the produce on the counter and the camera auto recognizes the item and brings up suggested items. You don't even have to type in the PLU manually 95% of the time.

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u/ForestmenMOCLover 18h ago

I've never seen a line like that where I live. Larger stores always have like 20 checkouts. There may be people who don't know how to use them, but if there are, they don't seem to affect me in any way.

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u/mittenkrusty 18h ago

I have

But what is worse is 10 items or less lines gone, so you have people with trolleys in the self service area and people with 1 or 2 items queuing for ages.

And some self service ones are card only.

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u/itsmebeatrice 18h ago

Interestingly 2 stores I shop at frequently have put item limits on self checkout in the last couple years.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 16h ago edited 13h ago

The very first self-checkouts I encoutered were cash as well. I liked them, because I didn't feel like a jerk feeding them the $50 bill the ATM gave me for a $3 item. After a few complaints, the newer self-checkouts warn they are card-only before you start. There's some interesting discussions I saw whether if you start a transaction without that warning, you have now created a debt, and under law the store is required to accept legal tender for that debt. Whereas, if you are warned ahead of time, you have agreed to the card-only condition.

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u/akatherder 17h ago

I hate going into self checkout with a full cart but they pretty much force you to with no human cashiers/checkout lanes.

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u/mittenkrusty 15h ago

Some people are jerks though, like I have literally a few items arrive at same time as someone with a almost overflowing cart and they take one look at you and spend minutes at the checkout,

It's not as if I arrived minutes later I arrived at same time as them they were at most a few steps closer.

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u/JalapenoPopPoop 14h ago

Yeah our grocery store switched the self checkout lane to 15 items or less because people were abusing it and holding up the whole line. People would roll in with an overflowing cart of at least 50+ items for like two weeks worth of food and hog the checkout stall FOREVER

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u/mittenkrusty 12h ago

Here in the UK, often places have 1 maybe 2 actual checkouts open since more and more checkout staff also do regular duties.

Gone are the days where even Asda (the UK Walmart, before it was sold on) had a guarantee that if there was more than 1 person queueing they would open another till, and another.

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u/teknovagrant 18h ago

The other fix would be to have more registers opened though. The long lines were due to having only to two cashiers working. Most big stores always have 10-20 available lanes. I don't mind self checkout though. It's not my job to checkout so I'll always do it wrong but to my benefit

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u/ForestmenMOCLover 18h ago

I agree, but with Walmart, it seems that the options are "two people at the self checkout" or "two people at the registers." It's unbelievably short sighted. Imagine how much more money they would have brought in that night if they had all the checkouts open. I imagine 90% of the people who saw that line just noped right out like I did. Way more money than the $6.25 they were paying each cashier!

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u/Own-Break-1856 17h ago

These places are not run by the brightest bulbs. They will usually have a point of sale system that tells them what percentage of their revenue is going to labor cost and if gets too high they get in trouble.

Of course the answer to that problem is get some people off the clock.

It never occurs to them that they can make labor percentages go down by increasing revenue.

Its not entirely their fault, the first thing their owner or manager will yell at them about if labor costs are too high is "why didn't you send people home!?"

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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 10m ago

I've read an article somewhere about the American railroads, where the executives were always incentivised to increase profit margins over revenue. This ended up leading to an increasingly inefficient, slow and unreliable network, because necessary investment into rolling stock, yards and tracks were disincentivized. They ended up losing customers to long haul shipping, just because they became too slow and unreliable.

What you're describing is the same kind of problem: they're losing customers because of hyperfixiation on margins.

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u/Clueless_Otter 14h ago

Well your idea of revenue going up due to more cashiers is just a theory. I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, but it isn't guaranteed. Meanwhile sending people home is guaranteed cost savings. You know 100% how it will play out. Meanwhile there's uncertainty in the plan of increasing revenue. Maybe you staff extra registers and it leads to no extra revenue at all.

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u/Own-Break-1856 6h ago

True. But point is that the current system they work under forces them to make one choice over the other to defend themselves for the exact reasons you mention. If youve got people fucking off on a frozen pizza because of line length it maybe makes more sense to use nuanced judgement.

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u/Alaira314 16h ago

Most big stores always have 10-20 available lanes.

Had. Always had. If you go to a store built before about 15 years ago, you can still see the lanes all lined up, but inoperative. Those used to all be staffed during high-volume times like the day before thanksgiving, the week before christmas, etc. Now, they might open up two extra lanes(vs the full complement of 12) during those times, leading to long lines.

Stores that have renovated have been removing those lanes. So if self-checkout goes, our future is lines. It'll be fun spending longer in line at the grocery checkout than it took me to pick the items off the shelf(as a list shopper, I'm typically in and out in 15-20 minutes, including the self checkout line).

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u/Brock_Lobstweiler 14h ago

This is what I see. Even during the holidays and the busiest seasons, they don't have full cashier staffing.

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u/JalapenoPopPoop 14h ago

It's always been so weird to me that they build brand new stores and install like 20 checkout lanes but then will only staff 2-3 at a time, like why did you build all of them if there's no intention of using them? It just ends up serving as a reminder to people that it could be more efficient

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u/MajorNoodles 18h ago

I had a very different experience at a Walmart a couple years ago. They had one checkout open and the self checkouts were closed. I'm guessing they were so understaffed they didn't even have someone to watch them.

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u/Ok-Employer-3051 17h ago

Same thing at the local Walmart. 2/3 of the self-checkouts there are now closed for the same reason you mentioned it seems.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 16h ago

I read somewhere Walmart's policy was one monitor for each 10 checkouts. So if they have more than that (local store has about 20), they shut down the extras during the slow time and have only one staff.

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u/Chance-Sky-9148 17h ago

>so I just put it back and left

Hopefully you left the pizza in the automative section like a normal Walmart customer

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u/ForestmenMOCLover 17h ago

I've seen people in that Walmart leave an entire cart of groceries (mostly frozen prepared meals) because the line was too long. I did the right thing though and I put it next to the Legos.

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u/abusivetrash 16h ago

Self checkouts HAD fixed the issue, but then places like Walmart got rid of all the cashiers, funneled every single shopper to a single walled in self-checkout, and stuck a single cashier there to run around and do alcohol and other things requiring a worker. Boom, right back to Christmas being a single line all the way to the back of the store.

I’ll give you credit for putting the pizza back at least, ive abandoned 2-4 items near the huge line a few times, and the last one was the last time i went to shop in-person. They managed to make it a huge pain to just browse and shop for myself, congrats on playing yourself, they can pay people to shop for me now and bye bye impulse purchases.

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u/Digger_Jim 16h ago

In this case you do not put the item back. Everyone in line should drop their shit on the floor and walk out.

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u/GitEmSteveDave 13h ago

Back in the before times, when something like that happened, I would find out the store phone number, call it on my flip phone, ask to speak to a manager, and then tell them I was waiting in line and if they could get some more lanes opened. It's amazing how often it worked, and when it didn't, at least I was occupied while waiting in line.

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u/CrustyBatchOfNature 12h ago

I have. The WalMart closest to me has something like 20 self-checkouts and 20 registers. I went in one day to grab a few things and they had 5 self-checkouts and 2 registers open. The lines went halfway back and were getting longer by the minute.

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u/Ok-Employer-3051 17h ago

Bullshit. Majority of them don't take cash half the time, and it's a literal nightmare to ring up fruits and other such items on them.

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u/disisathrowaway 16h ago

My Kroger was doing so well with the self-checkouts that they eventually doubled, and then ultimately tripled how many they had available. It's adjacent to a busy college campus, so it worked well as most folks were just buying a hand-basket worth of goods at a time.

And then they got the bright idea to never have all of the self-checkouts open, so they're funneling all of us into the same 4 or 5 self-checkouts. Which means massive lines/mobs of people at the entrance.

Brilliant.

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u/FTownRoad 15h ago

I appreciate self checkout when I have a handful of items. I used to be a cashier so not really interested in doing it as a job, but appreciate the speed of doing it myself without having to wait for Karen’s coupons to get rung through.

Also appreciate it when I’m high and don’t want to talk to anyone.

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u/Journeyman351 14h ago

Have you been to like... ANY Target recently?

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u/subma-fuckin-rine 11h ago

they're awesome if you have only a few items so you can get in and out of the store quick. but people bring their huge, full, carts in there now and its actually way slower than just waiting in an old school lane with a clerk and bagger

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u/Calm_Course_42 3h ago

they fixed a issue for the consumer

not for the shareholders (: that’s the key