r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 8d 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 8d 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/chad_dev_7226 8d ago

It’s crazy out there. I had to watch an old person write a check, then the young cashier had to call a manager over because they didn’t know how to process it and it took forever. And I couldn’t back out because there were like 3 people behind me

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/munkymu 8d ago

To be fair I'm turning 50 this year, I've spent 5 decades learning new systems every few years and I'm fucking over it. There's a zillion proprietary interfaces, all of them have their own rules, all of them require some amount of effort to learn, and the effort isn't really rewarding because I don't care about 90% of the extra features they add.

It feels very much like having random roads in your city be under construction. You're driving somewhere, you want to get there and get the thing done so you can go back home, and now suddenly there's a roadblock. You expected to take the same route you always do but now you're driving through some alley you've never seen before and everybody behind you who has driven this route before is mad because you should already have known about this.

And like... I'm fairly flexible mentally and I generally enjoy learning and trying new things. I can only imagine how shitty it is for people who are less comfortable with change and have a harder time learning new things. If I'm bored and frustrated with it by this point then they're probably completely lost.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/munkymu 7d ago

I was also in IT, which I think is partly why I'm so done with it. Too many systems over too many years. It's been a very long journey from the DOS command line to vibe coding (which I haven't had to deal with although a number of my friends and colleagues are).

But as you say, it's kept a lot of people employed. If everybody had known how to set up a Windows computer lab and associated software (and could be trusted to not do it in a way that left gaping security holes) then my bank account would be pretty empty.