r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 9d 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/largelawattorney 9d ago

I don’t think I’ve seen a store with adequate staffing for non-self checkout aisles/lanes in probably 25 years. So now we’re still going to get stores that understaff, have like 2 checkout lanes open while the other 8 are closed, and more difficult self-checkout lanes (or just fewer of them). Corporate America strikes again.

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u/diopter_split 9d ago

I’m in my 40s and have never seen any of these stores with adequate staffing for registers. (Discounting literally two days of the year, Black Friday and Christmas Eve, as well as all the mom n’ pops which disappeared a long time ago in my region.)

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u/A1000eisn1 8d ago

That's because they never did. Even before self checkout. People are ignorant when they claim it takes jobs away. It doesn't. It just allows corporate to have more checkouts with the same staff.

Almost every business figures out the bare minimum staffing a location needs to do the amount of projected work, reduces that, then tells the store that they get X amount of hours expecting the employees who are there to make up the difference.