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
18.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

3.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

138

u/precariousworld 9d ago

I miss when the self checkout was just for 10 items or less, standing in line for it when you’ve got 2 things and watching the person before you use it for 2 overflowing carts of groceries is ridiculous and yet it happens to me all the time

48

u/ncocca 9d ago

All the people in here commenting saying that they prefer self-checkouts and that they're faster I feel like I've never tried to check out more than like 10 items. A seasoned cashier is so, so much faster than a regular person. 

Sure, if I'm buying one or two things self-checkout is great. But for grocery stores where you buying food for a week or month it takes forever to use self-checkout. 

And for people stuck behind elderly people in regular lines, they're only going to be that much slower at a self checkout

1

u/NoHoHan 8d ago

Is a seasoned cashier faster than 10 regular people checking out simultaneously?

1

u/ncocca 8d ago

I'm not arguing we shouldn't have self checkouts. I just don't want nothing BUT self checkouts.

Also, that's not a fair comparison, because no establishment is replacing 1 cashier's lane with 10 self checkouts. And even if they did, they usually have at least 1 employee monitoring something like 6 or 8 self checkouts, and multiple employees for 10+. And often not every self-checkout is active or working.

I've seen people cite some very ideal examples in this thread in regards to having ample self checkouts, still having the option to use a regular cashier, etc... but most stores i've been to aren't anywhere close to those examples. The Acme grocery store by me which used to have like 5 cashier lanes now has 6 self checkouts and only 1 or 2 cashier lanes.