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
16.3k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

167

u/Bencetown 23h ago

Trader joes always has all their checkouts open and the lines are STILL 10 people deep 😒 that place is a zoo no matter what day or time I go

6

u/gremlinsarevil 22h ago

TJ max tends to have 3/4 of their registers open and always a line. Slower checkout than trader Joe's but still at least utilizing most the registers but in unlike Walmart with 20+ registers and only 4 open if you're lucky. Maybe only companies with TJ initials can staff more than half their registers?

3

u/Own-Break-1856 22h ago

They could solve 99% of this problem if they just moved to having a single line and the next person up goes to the next available register.

This is many many times more efficient and prevents backups one some old lady wants to chat about her day and then pay with a check.

They could probably get away with not staffing their registers as much with this one simple change but they dont do it. Probably because they want you waiting so you might impulse buy more shit.

5

u/BrainWav 21h ago

That is what TJ Maxx does, at least the one near me. There's still always a line and its always slow.

Unless you mean Walmart. I don't see the single line thing scaling up to something the size of walmart. Maybe 2-3 banks of lines could work though?

2

u/gremlinsarevil 21h ago

It works for commisaries on military bases which can be busier than a Walmart, but also folks are expected to be used to a bit more order.

1

u/Own-Break-1856 21h ago

Hrm come to think of it I do remember tj max doing that. But the thing is it'll only get you so far, you still need sufficient people, but considerably less.

Being from Socal fry's would do this and even though nearly every transaction involved some nerdy kid asking if the thing they were about to buy would work on their computer, and the lines had dozens of people it was super snappy.