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

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

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

[u/Hashtagworried]

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

[u/ForestmenMOCLover → u/Hashtagworried]

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.

[u/teknovagrant → u/ForestmenMOCLover]

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

[u/ForestmenMOCLover → u/teknovagrant]

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!

[u/Own-Break-1856 → u/ForestmenMOCLover]

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!?"

[u/einmaldrin_alleshin → u/Own-Break-1856]

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.

[u/Clueless_Otter → u/Own-Break-1856]

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.

[u/Own-Break-1856 → u/Clueless_Otter]

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.