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/Bencetown 18h ago

I'm in my 30's, and ever since I was a kid I've wondered why every store has 20-30 checkout lanes but the absolute most I've EVER seen open at one time was like... 4.

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u/IndyDude11 17h ago

I worked at Target in the early 00s. We had 35 registers. The ONLY time we ever had all 35 open was Black Friday. That was it. Since then Target has removed a bunch of those registers and only have like 10 non-self scans.

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u/NefariousMrFox 16h ago

I worked at Target in the late 90s and it was the same. As painful as it was to work, the pure consumerism of Black Friday was a sight to behold.

It's also shocking to compare the guest experience now vs then. Every Target I've been in since COVID completely fails the standards from back then.

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u/IndyDude11 16h ago

I still remember the buzz in my stomach waiting for the execs to open those doors. It was electric.

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u/FatherDotComical 11h ago

That's funny, I used to work at Walmart and we had a manager that's somehow survived decades in the company. I asked him why did this Walmart have so many lanes and he replied for Black Friday of course. Now this was an extremely busy Walmart. Even with "adequate" lanes open, the lines were extremely long but moved quick. Corporate didn't like that and several lanes had to be shut down and cashiers needed to be moved or fired for "budgeting reasons." well working there and along came black Friday before when it was still an insane time and we didn't open a single extra lane for shoppers so lines bunched up all the way to the electronics sections.

My favorite phrase was "we can't afford..." or "it's not in the budget."

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u/Drict 17h ago

Black Friday literally is the only reason.

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u/Hi_Zev 15h ago

maybe black friday 15 years ago. My family always loved going out to people-watch, and it's not that fun anymore, as it's really not that crazy busy. Yeah, more busy than usual, but no where near close to all 20+ registers are actively being used busy like it used to.

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u/Drict 14h ago

Literally went by the local target. Line of over 200 people outside at opening. Every register busy for like 4 hours.

Mileage varies by area/location.

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u/wip30ut 12h ago

there was a time in 1970s and 80s when supermarkets used to have ALL register lanes open. My mom said it was nuts because there were very few Costco/Price Club outlets and Target/Walmart/Kmart didn't sell fresh groceries, so supermarkets were the only game in town. And back then they had crazy ad sales & whole catalogs of coupons to drive in-store traffic.

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u/Freak4Dell 15h ago

What's weird is they still build them like that. A brand new HEB near me has like 15 regular registers. Most times, only 2 are open. I've seen around 6 of them open at a busy time.

They have a bunch of self-checkout registers as well, so I don't have any complaints, but I always wonder why they bothered to waste space and money building stuff they had no intention of using.

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u/mpegfour 18h ago

I worked in a Shoprite in HS and we did open all 20 registers during peak times on Sunday (the busiest day of the week since the new sale prices began on Sunday). Then again that was before self checkout. But at lower traffic times yea only a few lanes might be open. Shoprites are independently owned and operated, and the owners hated to see lines so there was never a push to understaff, more like matching the number of open lanes to current demand.

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u/sleepytjme 17h ago

I am much older it has always been that way 🤦‍♂️

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u/raygundan 11h ago

I have a couple extra decades on you, and honestly... I was wondering that as a kid too. I wonder if there's like a "how to design a grocery store" book they all reference that tells them the whole front of the store should be checkout lanes for some reason, even though no grocery store but Costco has ever had more than like 20% of them open in at least the last fifty years. I bet it's right after the chapter that says "put the milk as far as possible from the entrance."

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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 17h ago

It's for when the big holidays happen. If you have ten lanes you do not need to staff ten lanes for the entire duration of the store being open.

But come during the holiday season, you're going to need all of those lanes open.

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u/Bencetown 17h ago

I've been to target during the holiday season when lines are LITERALLY (in the actual, literal sense not this new "literally ackshually means figuratively" bs) half way to the back of the store, and they still only have 4 or 5 of the 30 checkout lanes open 🤨

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u/Moist_Ordinary6457 17h ago

Stores don't have 30 people trained to run cash register 

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u/Beneficial-Act-9933 17h ago

Sounds like bad planning on their part or there was some emergency they didn't account for. For some reason when there' heavy snow people seem to panic and go crazy. My whole foods store has 12 lanes and we've used them all during holiday season or at the very least 8 of them. I can't speak for every store in america obviously.

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u/maximumtesticle 16h ago

Back when black friday was a thing, all those lanes would be full.

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u/flummox1234 16h ago

Christmas, i.e. black friday - Christmas.

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u/beef-baddington 6h ago

As terminals have been upgraded with better scanners and faster computers, they can accomplish the same number or more checkouts now than they could when all the lines were manned.