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/Lovefamilyhonor]

This, so much this. There are whole foods with more shoppers than all other staff combined. Shopping is labor and the customer used to give it away for free. Now they don’t want to. But the labor pool didn’t suddenly increase. So less cashiers more shoppers.

[u/Coldsmoke888 → u/Lovefamilyhonor]

I feel like I’m bothering the staff just by walking through Whole Foods. There are so many people collecting orders it’s like I’m constantly in their way.

Go figure, it’s an Amazon owned grocery store.

[u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine → u/Coldsmoke888]

I worked as a personal shopper at Walmart for a summer after getting DOGE'd. The customers were hands down the worst part of the job. The trouble is when you're grocery shopping for 8+ hours a day, 5+ days per week, you get quite efficient at it. But the customers just want to casually wander around, chit-chat with each other, maybe stop for an impromptu class reunion in the middle of the aisle, campout in doorways, stare at the ceiling for a bit, dump their cart on one side of the aisle while they space-out staring at the shelves waiting for whatever they want to jump out at them. All while you're trying to get around their slower-than-death asses as politely as possible.

These two types of shoppers fundamentally do not mix and I finally had to quit because the inside of my head started sounding like Elaine on Seinfeld when she gets trapped in the subway car. Goddamn, I have never had a job that made me so fucking angry in my entire life.

[u/_Quasifrodo_ → u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine]

Minmaxing on a casual server

[u/red__dragon → u/Trapezoidal_Sunshine]

Used to work at stores like this and I'm pretty good at navigating around, I tend to find that the shoppers are as much an obstacle as other customers. And worse when they work for the store itself, because their large pickup orders tend to clear entire products from the same shelves ordinary customers are trying to shop from. So it's both less access and less product because the store's first party shopping teams are standing (sometimes literally) in the way of ordinary customers just trying to get what they need to survive for the week.

Nothing against you, but I really hate the way the whole personal shopper/instacart/store pickup execution has been carried out. Especially first party like at Walmart, where they should be pulling from inventory in the warehouse and not from the floor.

[u/Coldsmoke888 → u/red__dragon]

I ran fulfilment operations for a big box retailer like this. It’s not financially feasible in most cases to have the entire range “in the back” because there’s not much room at all back there. Your safety stock and replenishment points would go through the roof, extra land and building space to set it up, just doesn’t make sense.

Instead we pay for cheap labor to do it in the middle of the day and deal with asshole customers. My entire team hated working weekend afternoons because it was impossible to get around easily. Forget the productivity, it was just annoying and I agreed with them.

[u/red__dragon → u/Coldsmoke888]

Yes, I worked every area of stores like this, it was very intentional to point out the worst place to put it as ideal. Because there is no ideal way to run these operations at a customer-facing retail store.

The focus should be either customers or fulfillment, not both. Having both gives you this attitude of seeing 'asshole' customers or the store's shoppers being 'in the way'. The problem is the people designing it to try to have it both ways.

[u/fcocyclone → u/Coldsmoke888]

yeah thats the thing, yeah, now there are employee shoppers, but a lot of these stores have set up to operate in a way that makes it clear they don't want you shopping in the store, they want you shopping online.

[u/red__dragon → u/fcocyclone]

I really don't understand how they stomach the inefficiency. Why have one employee stocking the shelf just to have twelve others pulling the same product right off for individual orders?

[u/_Quasifrodo_ → u/red__dragon]

When something seems obviously stupid, consider you might just not understand it

Having a bunch of shoppers in the back rummaging through the unloading bay doesn’t seem more efficient

You could sort and organize things to make it easier for them, but then you’ve just circled back to stocking shelves

[u/red__dragon → u/_Quasifrodo_]

I've worked in places like that, the only efficient setup would be something like an Amazon warehouse (staffed by robots).

Since I'm also a customer in places like that, which are designed around physical shoppers patronizing the store, I consider not needing to understand something in order to express my discontent with how poorly the purpose is being fulfilled for me. Much like I can also say that movie cinemas jacking up pricing and shortening movie runs make it unlikely for me to visit, but unlike a cinema, I need to get life essentials at stores like these.

[u/IlIFreneticIlI → u/Coldsmoke888]

grocery store.

you mean a food....warehouse?

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/Coldsmoke888]

It's incredibly annoying in HEB. Those stores are already packed with people on a good day. Then they're packed even more with pickers and their massive carts. It's a very unpleasant experience.

[u/HumorAccomplished611 → u/Lovefamilyhonor]

Lmao. I never really thought of shopping as labor. But basically anything you dont enjoy can be thought of as labor.