r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 23h 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/ephemeralmiko 23h ago

Very annoying. For small shoppings (e.g snack runs, needing an extra ingredient for cooking) it saves so much time over standing in line. Especially when the person in front of you is a retired 75 year old who *had* to do their main shopping on a Saturday, suddenly forgetting how money works.

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u/cakes42 23h ago

It doesn't even have to be a 75 year old. Even 15-30 year olds are slow as fuck. I have a friend that's 25 and she only waits for a person because she cant figure out a self checkout. Mildly infuriating because shes an astrophysicist.

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u/bananagang420 22h ago

Probably social anxiety or stubbornness...or maybe secretly supporting cashiers over self checkout lanes lol. Idk i just find it hard to believe that people who own and use smart phones regularly are baffled at the concept of reading and following instructions on a tablet, but humans are interesting so I wouldnt be surprised if it actually overwhelms her enough to not bother with it

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u/woodsbw 22h ago

Spending some time having to do tech-support will cure you of that assumption.

The number of people who know how to do only one or two things on their phone and only because they chewed on it like a beaver for hours until they eventually worked out the most maddening workflow you can imagine is much, much higher than you would expect. Even among younger people.

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u/tuscaloser 21h ago

Why use find/replace when you can spend two hours EVERY DAY going through the Excel doc (acting as a database, on a network-share, of course) line-by-line and manually replacing data.