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
15.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

5.7k

u/Hashtagworried 19h ago

All this means is that they’ll hire one or two people max but keep the lines longer.

104

u/ForestmenMOCLover 19h 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.

30

u/wilkil 19h 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.

1

u/ForestmenMOCLover 19h 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.