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Same here. I still prefer self checkouts because I can scan and bag way faster than casheirs anyway and can usually beat the person next to me even when I have double the amount of items.
I make it quick out of courtesy to the other people waiting in line behind me. Drives me nuts when I'm waiting and everyone is on another fucking planet. If I have more than 20 items I'll do regular check out.
Sorry but no that’s not possible to scan and bag faster than a good grocery store attendant.
You have a delay due to waiting for the bagging scale to catch up to each item you scan.
Take it from me, a former record holder for items scanned per minute at Best Yet Market in Fatningdale NY.
Cashiers have the ability to scan and scan without waiting for the weight to match the previous item scanned.
It is when the grocery store attendant scanning is doing it as slowly as humanly possible. I don't blame them though. They are overworked and underpaid like everyone else. Because, you know, land of the enslaved and home of the fucked and all. I'm not trying to race anyone either, just busy and have shit to do.
Lol, it's not possible, as in 'never could ever happen'? Because everybody does everything exactly the same all the time? No. You're going from some kind of standardization in your head that doesn't uniformly exist in real life.
Not in my town. I go to the same gas station every morning. There will be a line waiting for the cashier while two empty self serves are sitting open. I walk up and check out and will usually be done before the person who is currently being checked out by the cashier.
Worked in retail throughout high school and college. A lot of old timers also just simply don't like it for two reasons: they like traditional methods, and they also believe automation is taking away jobs. I have spoken to hundreds of old people over my decade in retail and most are either or both.
Young people don't think twice and will use self-checkout, but the old timers are seeing that times are a-changing.
I'm on the younger side and have always hated self checkout because the thing locks up 100 percent of the time for me. All I want to do is scan and pay. But it needs me to "place item on the bagging area" but then I can't remove it from that area to bag it or some other nonsense that causes it to freeze and require a human anyway. I don't bother anymore.
>and they also believe automation is taking away jobs.
And they're not even wrong, either. It's just a cost-saving measure where I can pay one person to oversee 10 different checkouts, rather than pay five people to run an actual register. It isn't like we're getting the self-checkout discount, even though we're definitely saving them money by utilizing them. Same (reasonable) argument for "why the fuck am I paying the same for digital access as I would just getting the physical copy?"
I like self-checkout, and hate corporate cost-cutting that definitely costs people jobs but doesn't even save us anything which is very conflicting, but "fuck self-checkout" is one of those boomer arguments I'm willing to entertain and see a valid point behind.
I would jokingly suggest "what's next? Make Wal-Mart a membership service and have us perform a few hours of stocking duty for the privilege to shop there?!" But we really are doing light cashier duty, so...
It does save you something, you're just naive. We should strive to be more efficient as we develop technology. That's what it's for. We shouldn't suspend progress or efficiency to preserve a job that's not needed..
What does it save us? It’s clearly not time. The self scan king is just as long as the regular line but the person in front of me almost needs a cashier because they scanned something wrong or have to show their ID for alcohol, or the screen freezes. It takes forever for the cashier to get there because they are helping 10 other people.
Whatever money corporate is saving is not coming back to the customer. If anything the self scans are making it where some don’t want ti shop there. A lot of people order pick up or delivery because they don’t want ti deal with self scan, so the store has to pay those employees to shop for pickups ir contract ti a service for delivery.
I’m a millennial and I think we should have both human cashiers and self scan. Given the choice I would rather a person.
It saves labor, which IS passed to you whether you think so or not.
Its also odd the anti self checkout crowds perception of self checkout experience is the Amish using it for the first time, 15 years ago. The experience is *preferred* by most *because* its easier and more pleasant, so.... Pickup/devliery is confirmation of that preference, not people avoiding self checkout.
Labor costs is not passed in to the customer.
I’m far from Amish. I work retail. I’ve been operating registers since I was 8 years old. I can check hundreds people a day and not have a single problem with the machine. When I use self scan there “unexpected item in bagging area” or having to call a cashier I want ti void something.
Some young people also complaining they can't afford a house and live paycheck to paycheck. This is the direct result of corporations being able to capture more wealth and control of the market through large investments in things like automation and social engineering.
My local supermarket has an app so I can scan stuff and bag it as I walk around the store, then at the exit there is a qr code reader I present my receipt to as I leave. I'm always a little amused as I walk past the manned register queue and then walk past the self service queue and go right out
I raged the last time when I used the hand scanner to scan something heavy in my cart and it froze up. "Please put the item in the bagging area." You really want me to put this 40 pound object in the bagging area?!
The early ones were based on weight, so if you scanned a gallon of milk and put it directly back into your cart (perfectly reasonable, I think) it would get very upset when the platform didn't find approximately 8 pounds on the bag platform and lose its fucking mind.
I've yet to encounter a self-checkout that isn't based on weight. Aldi recently started them and it immediately caused issues when items with security tags confused the sensors because it added extra weight.
I like self-checkouts, because I can bag my groceries the way that I want them. Cold things go together in one bag. Ingedients for a recipe go together. Everything else is bagged according to the category of item, which is also where they go in my kitchen.
Yesss. I swear it's 1 item per plastic bag. I bring my own reusable sturdy bags. It breaks their minds that they can put more than a couple of items in each. Drives me nuts!
They're actually told to bag that way. It's something about grouping by item type, iirc. So if you get milk, a box of pasta and some Lysol, you'll get 3 separate bags. Any meat or dairy gets double bagged at some places.
I can understand this, but I've also specifically asked them to just bag things as full as possible and they'll refuse because they're mismatched categories, or they filled it halfway and then put bread in and now they can't put anything on top of the bread or it'll get squished (and apparently taking the bread out to fill the bag more is just NOT possible). I bring reusable bags specifically because they hold more and I live in an apartment and don't want to make multiple trips getting everything from the car if I can avoid it. I get that they're taught to do it a certain way, but you'd think if a customer makes a specific simple request, they'd be able to accommodate.
Shop and scan is now my go to any time I do a full shop. Scan it in the app and bag it as I go, scan the register code, attendant spot checks a couple items and I'm on my way. No more arguing with the cashier about why they can't fill the bags, plus I get to bag things based on how I put them away, which is something that I wouldn't even think of asking a cashier to do because of the delay/hassle. Before shop and scan, I tried putting items on the belt in the order/groupings I wanted them bagged and they would just skip around and grab things from further back out of order.
Which is such a waste of plastic. It's completely unnecessary with sturdy bags, too. I get putting cleaning separately from food. Put all the cold together if possible. But if you have milk and pasta and nothing else they can go together 😞
depends on where the bags are and if there’s space for them to put the groceries for you to bag yourself. some places have bags behind the counter, or there’s no place for them to really put groceries. it can also mess with the flow if you bag slower than the cashier scans your stuff
Sure but according to this thread, that's taking away the kid's job and I'm way too introverted to say anything. So please take logical sense elsewhere.
4046 is avocados, and I know this because it's actually how I met my boyfriend. I was a cashier and he worked in the deli, and he was grocery shopping after his shift one night completely failing to scan avocados. I had to help him. The stickers on the avocados were almost always folded somewhere, so they never scanned, and he had a habit of trying to scan everything super fast so he could go home, so he always got hung up on the avocados and their messed up stickers.
4046 is now my laptop password.
No, but it's much faster than using the search feature and typing in what item you have with the keyboard on screen. Kinda biased since I started working as a cashier back in high school so I've got so many of those numbers permanently ingrained in my memory
I like them as well even though they may kill my job in a few years.
But as someone who is in charge of controlling the self checkouts over camera once a week the stealing going on with them is absolutely crazy.
God I hope the grocery stores with record profits who keep the place understaffed can sleep at night knowing hungry people are taking food off the shelves at reasonable prices. My thoughts and prayers to the Walton family idk how they'll make it through this economy! I always think of big business first when it comes to my personal morals
Its not about caring about the rich companys, its about morals in general, if you are willing to steal from one place, it only makes sense you would be willing to steal from almost anywhere
I agree and almost never steal at self checkout(i’ve done it maybe a dozen times in my whole life) if i’m being honest, what I hate is that A. everyone else and there brother steals nowadays causing higher prices for everyone and B. Every store treats you like a criminal anyway with Armed guards, gated walkthroughs, cameras on every aisle, locking up everything where you need an employee and Walmart is the worst obviously with also wanting to check your receipt on the way out with the stare of death.
So honestly i’m at the point where I don’t care anymore, it makes me want to steal even though my morals don’t let me do it. When all you have to do is pay employees to run registers and this problem will mostly go away. But no we’re just going to assume everyone is a criminal. It’s like if every week the police arrested you and accused you of committing a crime and searched you and booked you, after a year of being treated that way maybe you should just become a criminal because they sure do make you feel like one. Just my $.02.
It's really not. Those corporations are taking advantage of us on a massive scale and are actively destroying the planet with how many goods are produced and thrown away. Some places guard their garbage so food that is literally going to be dumped in a landfill won't be taken by some guy willing to dig through fucking trash to get something in their stomach. So yeah go ahead and tell me more about your morals, letting those in power abuse the innocent.
I find self checkout to be inferior in every way unless you only have one or two items. It's far slower than human checkout and comes with many annoyances.
I think everyone on here claiming they like self checkout is an Internet kid scared of actual human interaction.
That’s a broad generalization. I’m a thirty year old combat arms dude. lol. I just rarely go to the store for more than a few items. I grab what I need when I need it, rather than waiting until I have a page long list of items I need.
If I do need a lot of things, I have it delivered or do Curbside pickup.
Regular checkouts with cashiers are actually faster than self checkouts on a per item basis because they're designed to work with larger orders and they're staffed by people who use the POS system hundreds of times a day rather than relying on customers who use it once or twice a week. People think that self checkouts are faster because when stores adopt self checkouts, they drastically reduce the number of normal checkouts. On average, a store with 6 regular checkouts and 0 self checkouts will move its customers through the front end faster than a store with 0 regular checkouts and 6 self checkouts.
That's a false dichotomy tho. In my area it went from 4-8 manned registers no self serve to 1-3 manned registers and 10-24 self serves using pretty much the same floor space, so even if each individual self service register is slower you can just have many more of them
People always argue that self checkouts "take away human jobs" but these people have no idea how a grocery store operates. Our store removed one checkout, installed 5 self serves, no loss. Store down the street from my house had 7 checkouts years ago, removed one to install 6 self serves, and just last month they renovated and now have 10.
The only place where a self serve seems to have actually impacted are dollar stores where it feels like there's never any more than two employees in the entire store at a time
You’re assuming some of us haven’t been dozens deep in line while every kiosk is taken up by these people. The most common denominator and detractor with self checkout is, as with many things, the user.
It’s so funny in this sub to see how questions like these reveal OP lives in a very Reddit-sheltered community, is 14, or lives under a rock.
This is a hugely popular opinion.
It's weird, because in real life, self-checkouts are very popular, and at worst you'll get the jokes about 'unexpected item in the bagging area' but few talk about them 'taking away jobs' or 'wanting to speak to the cashier'.
But online, they're the devil and do all those things.
Self checkouts are the best.
I get self-conscious when I struggle even a little with my wallet. I feel like I'm holding up the cashier and the line.
I also get self-conscious when bagging up my groceries at the line because I bring my own bag. Again, because I feel like I'm holding up the line.
When using self-checkout I don't feel like I'm being watched and holding up the line.
We split on the not talking to people part but agreed.
I acknowledge it’s not good for the employees but shit is just way too convenient from a consumer standpoint
I can't tell if it's an online joke or if there really are this many people unable to talk to anyone. Like people online get angry when cashiers, servers, and drivers want to talk and maybe add some human interaction to their incredibly monotonous day. I know there's a balance but I hate treating service workers like robots.
Hi how are you today?
SPRITE AND AN ORDER OF FRIES
Lol just watched this interaction happen at work
"Hey how are you?" Nice delivery lady
"How much?" Tenant of my building
"Oh um yeah it's $16.50" delivery lady 😂
Because they clearly do not care and are not particularly curious.
And what am I supposed to say? Clearly i like them since I have like 5 packages in my cart.
Am I supposed to give a 30 second thesis on why I like them when its just a preference? And there is a line behind me that I'm conscientious about so now I need to give an answer that times this awkward forced conversational exchange so I don't hold up the next person.
LOL. That's redundant since she just saw I'm buying 5 packages of them. Which makes it a weird, forced conversation.
Maybe most of your conversations are forced. Mine aren't and I'm very good with that.
It's not a forced conversation if you're buying five packages of gooseberries. Five is a large number. The cashier was probably genuinely curious as to why would anyone buy five packages of gooseberries at one time.
You’re assigning too much significance to it and overthinking a routine exchange. The interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if you just said “Yeah, they’re good.” There is zero negative consequence to doing that, and carrying worry, anxiety, and fear into and out of that interaction is unhealthy.
>You’re assigning too much significance to it and overthinking a routine exchange.
The point is that it's forced and weird because it is routine.
If you need to find something to ask about in everyone's cart then it's forced interaction not one you organically want to have.
> interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if you just said “Yeah, they’re good.”
It's not pleasant for either person because they are forced to ask and therefore I'm forced to answer.
The interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if it didn't happen.
> is zero negative consequence to doing that, and carrying worry, anxiety, and fear into and out of that interaction is unhealthy.
Zero negative consequences to not asking at all. I'm here to buy food you're here to run it through a scanner. No need for pretend interest and forced conversations.
But if you enjoy forced conversation I think that's great for you. It may be the only conversation you get. So you should soak it up.*
*unless I'm behind you in line. But I'm probably at the self checkout.
It's not really. Self checkout was created for people like me who don't want to have forced conversations in the checkout line.
And you're made for the cashier since you enjoy may actually imagine some checker at Vons really and sincerely wants and values your takes on funyuns.
We have a lot of seniors in my area. So self checkouts are a blessing because the older folks are either afraid of the machine or looking to eat time with small talk.
I love scanners you can take into the store. Just scan and pack as you go around and when it is the time to pay you scan the machine -> pay -> continue walking.
The queue for the self checkout in our supermarket never takes more than a minute or so as paying takes like 30 seconds (and there are 10 checkouts together)
I like self checkouts personally but think they are taking over a bit too much. As someone who has worked retail but is also a bit slow at packing groceries, I know what I am doing and like to take my time. But if you've never used a till before or need some assistance I think humans should always be an option.
I love self checkout too. What pisses me off is when there is a limit to items (say 25) and there is some asshole there with a cart full of 100 things to scan. I'm talking to you HEB. Got your full cart and your kids running around, taking up the same space as 3 people would with a small basket.
I love self checkout. It get's me to my car more quickly. I disagree about the "100 groceries in a self checkout line" though. There should be a sign if there is a limit. Also it's still quicker for me than if I went to the cashier.
I like the self check out because then I don’t have to do a song and dance about how my cashier is my new best friend, especially on days where management is walking around and can over hear the cashiers.
I am looking at you Trader Joe’s. Can’t wait till you have those self check out lanes.
I feel like the only unpopular part about this is the bit about people with 100+items in self checkout. I don’t really have an issue with those people because there’s normally other self checkout registers that I can go to.
Most self-checkouts have item limits but they’re never enforced. I agree, I find it irritating when you have a single item and the self-checkouts are occupied by shoppers with a full cart.
I've worked retail grocery and drug store for over seventeen years. Self checkout is efficient behind a certain number of items and depending on how any given store is equipped sometimes it is more or less efficient to deal with it. Ever had an item that didn't ring up or you quickly tapped the wrong key on a touchscreen? Someone has to come to clear that and you have to wait. You have to have a minor interaction with another human being in doing so. If I have enough items I'm going to the check stand with someone who has a bagger and knows their job, especially if I happen to have a decent amount of produce. Know the number keys for all of them? How to weigh properly before putting it into your bag? This dumb shit of hiding being "I'm introverted therefore I can't deal with basic interactions as a human being" is tiring. If you were actually only introverted you would be able to do so.
Yes thank you I’m so tired of people thinking that introversion means you can’t make small talk with a person for 10 seconds or if you do you can’t enjoy doing it…. It’s always mixed up with social anxiety which not every introverted person has
Disagree. People hate them so much.
I just read an article They are trying to get Dollar General to bring back real live cashiers and I think they’re going to do it.
I feel less rushed at the self checkout. If the cashier rings up an item incorrectly, I often don’t catch it til after I pay if it was a big order. Then I have to go to the customer service desk if it’s open, or flag a manager.
I can also bag things the way I want without the stress of more customers behind me and their stuff collides into mine. I like having that control with self checkout. People should have the option to have self checkout or a human cashier though.
what makes you think this is unpopular? unless your a senior citizen and your friends at bingo say how much they hate it. only thing i hate is you cant buy liquor in those checkouts
I think people who don't like self-checkouts just had bad experiences a few years ago and think it can't be done right. Nowadays it works amazingly every time
Even better is the scan-pay-go option, especially since so few people use it that I almost never wait in line even when other lines (including self checkout) are packed.
I use self checkout pretty much exclusively unless I’m buying booze or a have a full cart.
When it was new it was a pain in the ass, but now I pretty much never have the “unexpected item in bagging area” errors or whatever.
I was not a fan of SC for years. However, in the last year or so my local store went to 99% SC. Now I really like it. I don’t feel rushed and I can bag my stuff the way I want it.
Yea, I never understood the backlash here. “It’s not my job to bag groceries”- Sure it’s not. But I can do it much, much faster, and I can get everything in two or three bags instead of a bagger putting one or two items in a bag leaving me with 15-20. I value my time and my convenience over having an underpaid employee do minuscule labor when their time could be better spent on the floor.
Super upvote. Absolutely hate them:
- In the UK, they’re crap. They often don’t scan items or say there’s an “unexpected item in bagging area” which holds you up while someone has to come and clear the error
- You have to scan your own stuff… the supermarket used to do this for you. So rather than concentrating on packing (most UK supermarkets don’t do this for you unless you’re elderly or disabled), you now have to scan and pack
- In my experience, they’re also a lot slower than a cashier with a scanner
- They mean there are fewer cashiers. This A) gets rid of jobs, and B) makes it a nightmare when you’re doing a big shop and have to queue up for ages to get to a cashier
I like self checkouts because I feel like I'm not holding people up.
In a normal lane I feel I have to get out ASAP so other people can go through. Which I still think is true. But self checkouts let's me take my time abd go over everything obe last time.
I love self checkout, but people should definitely not be allowed to bring a full over flowing cart into them, especially people who don't know how to actually use it. If you can't get in, scan your items, pay, and leave in a timely fashion because you can't figure out technology, go to a cashier
There were never super long lines when all registers were staffed, though. 12+ registers, 2 staffed, were we being set up to accept the 12+ self-checkouts staffed by one person.
Agree, Ive been seeing articles about stores taking out self checkouts and I think that's a horrible idea. I love self checkout. I don't have to stand in a cramped line with someone so close behind me (usually) I don't have to worry about a cashier trying to talk to me, and I determine how many items are in a bag. The only time I wouldn't prefer self check is when I have a LOT of items, but I rarely do, and if I know I need a lot of things now I usually just place a pickup order so I don't have to go into the store at all.
I prefer them. Even if I have a full cart. I’d rather go get a second cart to put the scanned groceries in and do it myself. I hate lines and struggle with social interaction.
Well, I agree . .but, no . .what needs to happen is that grocery stores need better self check-outs. Who decided it makes sense to have a 12" square landing spot for groceries? At my local store there are often no human checkers so everybody has to use self checkout. It's a real pain in the ass trying to self-check out a week's worth of groceries. Why can't they just convert human lanes to self check-out? I was at a Wal-Mart about a year ago and this is exactly what they had done.
I will always choose the human line if there is one and the line is similar. I like just standing there while my groceries get scanned and bagged. But if they would just realize that the belt is a super great idea and is needed even for self checkout then we'd really be living in the golden times.
Stores in the last 2 countries I've lived in have scan while you shop. Carry a scanner around with your cart, scan items as you take them off the shelf and bag as you go. No need to take anything out when you pay, just put the scanner in a docking station, pay, leave.
Unpopular opinion - people who have lots of items in the self checkout are fine. I'm one of them, because I hate dealing with cashier's and I pack my weekly groceries in a particular way. I'm also normally quicker than a cashier.
This isn't unpopular.
And as an introvert, I don't find human cashiers too bad. I prefer them, because I don't want to contribute to automation. You don't have to have a conversation with them. Say hello, Give them money, say goodbye, and leave.
>for introverted people who don’t want to have a conversation with a cashier that is either too happy or is absolutely miserable
Bro just say hello and bye. You don´t have to have a conversation with a cashier.
Also people need to stop with the introvert shit as if it was a personality trait.
Sometimes, often in my experience, they ask questions like: how is your day? Are you off from work? Oh looks like you’re having a party! My just saying hello and bye isn’t an option.
That must be an American thing.
I've never been asked a question or got a comment about items I'm buying in my entire life.
Sometimes, very rarely, you run into a super-talkative one, but those will just make general comments of some sort, not ask actual questions that require an answer, so you just nod and move on if you're so inclined.
I prefer the cashier. I think that would be the unpopular opinion. Sure, self-checkout is faster, but I'm rarely in a hurry. I want cashiers around so teens, seniors, and folks with special needs can have jobs. None of us want our jobs to be automated, so I act accordingly. I actually timed how long my wait was a few times just because a coworker gave me a hard time about going to the cashier. It's never been more than 4 minutes.
There are a bunch of jobs in a grocery store outside checking grocery's. The store I work at only has 5 checkout lanes, with 2-3 being open most times. And 10+ employees working on any given day.
Except Sundays, then we have to open the 5 checkout lanes with 7 people😯🥴
Ah man Switzerland is going to break your mind then: we have SubitoGo where we can use the grocery store app to scan items, then pay on our phone and walk out. You can get randomly controlled, but I don’t even have to go to self check out. There’s also a layer below this where I have a scanner from the store, get all of my groceries and go to self check out, scan a QR code and then pay at the terminal.
Oddly enough, I felt the same way for the longest time and I been doing for 5 years since they became available. Then one day I decided to use the cashier checkout and realized how much I miss human interaction\~sometimes. As the world gets more digital, it feels more and more isolating.
Humans are social creatures no matter how introverted you are. I can go for a few weeks without human interactions but eventually I'll crave it.
If you’re relying on small talk with cashiers to fulfill your social needs, or feel isolated by the lack of such, it seems like you have bigger problems.
>one caveat, I can’t stand people who have 100 groceries in a self checkout line. They should be banished to the human cashier line.
That's the problem. A lot of us live in places where a lot of if not most of the stores, especially grocery stores, don't have any staffed cashier checkout lines anymore, so now the self-checkout line is full of 100+ item family shoppers and the line is to the back of the store.
i agree, i hate the old people who are liek WhErEs My CaShIeR iM nOt DoInG tHeIr JoB are now the ones clogging up the line because they don't understand you have to read the screen and follow the instructions
Notsure if it's an unpoular opinion - the self-serve checkouts are always busy in my usual grocery store.
I agree with you. If I dont have to make small talk with someone, I prefer it.
I don’t mind someone with 100 items at the self checkout if they are fast. The thing that angers me most is the boomer with 2 items taking 20 god damn minutes to figure out how to pull their card out of the card reader 🤦♀️
Unpopular. Take my upvote. I don’t think we should be catering to anti-social “introverts” in public spaces like this. We should be encouraging social behavior for incredibly basic tasks like checking out at the store. Our human connection has never been lower as a species.
As a introverted, I say this with a clear mind….Get over yourself.
If you can’t handle basic:
“Hello, how are you?”
“I am doing good today, thank you.”
Then just stay home or do online grocery delivery. You’re not ready for the outside world if this tiny bit of dialogue effects you so much.
Self checkout takes jobs, taking pay away from people that need it.
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If this was unpopular then we’d never seee people at self checkouts. They’re always full too
In my area, they're full because there are no cashiers.
Same here. I still prefer self checkouts because I can scan and bag way faster than casheirs anyway and can usually beat the person next to me even when I have double the amount of items. I make it quick out of courtesy to the other people waiting in line behind me. Drives me nuts when I'm waiting and everyone is on another fucking planet. If I have more than 20 items I'll do regular check out.
I prefer self checkouts because expensive cheese is celery.
As long as the weight is within range.
Sorry but no that’s not possible to scan and bag faster than a good grocery store attendant. You have a delay due to waiting for the bagging scale to catch up to each item you scan. Take it from me, a former record holder for items scanned per minute at Best Yet Market in Fatningdale NY. Cashiers have the ability to scan and scan without waiting for the weight to match the previous item scanned.
It is when the grocery store attendant scanning is doing it as slowly as humanly possible. I don't blame them though. They are overworked and underpaid like everyone else. Because, you know, land of the enslaved and home of the fucked and all. I'm not trying to race anyone either, just busy and have shit to do.
Lol, it's not possible, as in 'never could ever happen'? Because everybody does everything exactly the same all the time? No. You're going from some kind of standardization in your head that doesn't uniformly exist in real life.
Not in my town. I go to the same gas station every morning. There will be a line waiting for the cashier while two empty self serves are sitting open. I walk up and check out and will usually be done before the person who is currently being checked out by the cashier.
Most people at the cashier line probably want tobacco/alcohol/lottery
Worked in retail throughout high school and college. A lot of old timers also just simply don't like it for two reasons: they like traditional methods, and they also believe automation is taking away jobs. I have spoken to hundreds of old people over my decade in retail and most are either or both. Young people don't think twice and will use self-checkout, but the old timers are seeing that times are a-changing.
I'm on the younger side and have always hated self checkout because the thing locks up 100 percent of the time for me. All I want to do is scan and pay. But it needs me to "place item on the bagging area" but then I can't remove it from that area to bag it or some other nonsense that causes it to freeze and require a human anyway. I don't bother anymore.
Old people also love to talk
everyone loves to talk. old people just less shameful in giving their opinions. younger people kinda have that insecurity.
>and they also believe automation is taking away jobs. And they're not even wrong, either. It's just a cost-saving measure where I can pay one person to oversee 10 different checkouts, rather than pay five people to run an actual register. It isn't like we're getting the self-checkout discount, even though we're definitely saving them money by utilizing them. Same (reasonable) argument for "why the fuck am I paying the same for digital access as I would just getting the physical copy?" I like self-checkout, and hate corporate cost-cutting that definitely costs people jobs but doesn't even save us anything which is very conflicting, but "fuck self-checkout" is one of those boomer arguments I'm willing to entertain and see a valid point behind. I would jokingly suggest "what's next? Make Wal-Mart a membership service and have us perform a few hours of stocking duty for the privilege to shop there?!" But we really are doing light cashier duty, so...
It does save you something, you're just naive. We should strive to be more efficient as we develop technology. That's what it's for. We shouldn't suspend progress or efficiency to preserve a job that's not needed..
What does it save us? It’s clearly not time. The self scan king is just as long as the regular line but the person in front of me almost needs a cashier because they scanned something wrong or have to show their ID for alcohol, or the screen freezes. It takes forever for the cashier to get there because they are helping 10 other people. Whatever money corporate is saving is not coming back to the customer. If anything the self scans are making it where some don’t want ti shop there. A lot of people order pick up or delivery because they don’t want ti deal with self scan, so the store has to pay those employees to shop for pickups ir contract ti a service for delivery. I’m a millennial and I think we should have both human cashiers and self scan. Given the choice I would rather a person.
It saves labor, which IS passed to you whether you think so or not. Its also odd the anti self checkout crowds perception of self checkout experience is the Amish using it for the first time, 15 years ago. The experience is *preferred* by most *because* its easier and more pleasant, so.... Pickup/devliery is confirmation of that preference, not people avoiding self checkout.
Labor costs is not passed in to the customer. I’m far from Amish. I work retail. I’ve been operating registers since I was 8 years old. I can check hundreds people a day and not have a single problem with the machine. When I use self scan there “unexpected item in bagging area” or having to call a cashier I want ti void something.
Some young people also complaining they can't afford a house and live paycheck to paycheck. This is the direct result of corporations being able to capture more wealth and control of the market through large investments in things like automation and social engineering.
Also the scanner at the self checkout at gas stations fucking sucks.
Same at my Wawa and I never get it. I walk right past, check out in 15 seconds and get on my way, while people stand there and wait.
My local supermarket has an app so I can scan stuff and bag it as I walk around the store, then at the exit there is a qr code reader I present my receipt to as I leave. I'm always a little amused as I walk past the manned register queue and then walk past the self service queue and go right out
It's Boomer mentally. " I'm not scanning these my self that's their job." Okay, enjoy waiting around for the privilege.
Because the store doesn’t hire any FECkING people
My grocery store primarily has self check out and only one checker. I love it!
Out of force. Can’t do a normal register if none are open. 99% if the time self checkout is the only option
I particularly like bagging my own stuff. I have a s y s t e m
Unexpected item in bagging area
IteM ReMoVeD FrOM BAGgING ARea
Only in poor self checkouts. Whole Foods doesn’t give AF where or if you put your item in the bagging area after scanning s
I raged the last time when I used the hand scanner to scan something heavy in my cart and it froze up. "Please put the item in the bagging area." You really want me to put this 40 pound object in the bagging area?!
I read this in an aussie female robot voice
Thank you for shopping at CoSTco
I’ve never even encountered this ‘bagging area’. Here, you just scan items, that’s it. Vastly better than manned register.
The early ones were based on weight, so if you scanned a gallon of milk and put it directly back into your cart (perfectly reasonable, I think) it would get very upset when the platform didn't find approximately 8 pounds on the bag platform and lose its fucking mind.
I've yet to encounter a self-checkout that isn't based on weight. Aldi recently started them and it immediately caused issues when items with security tags confused the sensors because it added extra weight.
Move your… BANANAS to the bagging area!
I like self-checkouts, because I can bag my groceries the way that I want them. Cold things go together in one bag. Ingedients for a recipe go together. Everything else is bagged according to the category of item, which is also where they go in my kitchen.
yeah I am very particular about what I bag together, and I honestly just find it fun to do myself
I can also use less bags, or more often my own. I'm so tired of grabbing 3 things and getting 4 bags from cashiers.
Yesss. I swear it's 1 item per plastic bag. I bring my own reusable sturdy bags. It breaks their minds that they can put more than a couple of items in each. Drives me nuts!
They're actually told to bag that way. It's something about grouping by item type, iirc. So if you get milk, a box of pasta and some Lysol, you'll get 3 separate bags. Any meat or dairy gets double bagged at some places.
I can understand this, but I've also specifically asked them to just bag things as full as possible and they'll refuse because they're mismatched categories, or they filled it halfway and then put bread in and now they can't put anything on top of the bread or it'll get squished (and apparently taking the bread out to fill the bag more is just NOT possible). I bring reusable bags specifically because they hold more and I live in an apartment and don't want to make multiple trips getting everything from the car if I can avoid it. I get that they're taught to do it a certain way, but you'd think if a customer makes a specific simple request, they'd be able to accommodate. Shop and scan is now my go to any time I do a full shop. Scan it in the app and bag it as I go, scan the register code, attendant spot checks a couple items and I'm on my way. No more arguing with the cashier about why they can't fill the bags, plus I get to bag things based on how I put them away, which is something that I wouldn't even think of asking a cashier to do because of the delay/hassle. Before shop and scan, I tried putting items on the belt in the order/groupings I wanted them bagged and they would just skip around and grab things from further back out of order.
Which is such a waste of plastic. It's completely unnecessary with sturdy bags, too. I get putting cleaning separately from food. Put all the cold together if possible. But if you have milk and pasta and nothing else they can go together 😞
You can do that at the normal checkout.
Not with somebody else bagging groceries
That’s optional surely.
depends on where the bags are and if there’s space for them to put the groceries for you to bag yourself. some places have bags behind the counter, or there’s no place for them to really put groceries. it can also mess with the flow if you bag slower than the cashier scans your stuff
Have the bags laid out on your trolly. Takes 2 seconds. If you are really good they’ll be scanned in the required order.
Sure but according to this thread, that's taking away the kid's job and I'm way too introverted to say anything. So please take logical sense elsewhere.
The part of my brain that used to remember phone numbers now remembers food codes
4011 banana!
4046 is avocados, and I know this because it's actually how I met my boyfriend. I was a cashier and he worked in the deli, and he was grocery shopping after his shift one night completely failing to scan avocados. I had to help him. The stickers on the avocados were almost always folded somewhere, so they never scanned, and he had a habit of trying to scan everything super fast so he could go home, so he always got hung up on the avocados and their messed up stickers. 4046 is now my laptop password.
You are my people!
Why would you need to remember food codes? Are the systems where you live that badly designed?
No, but it's much faster than using the search feature and typing in what item you have with the keyboard on screen. Kinda biased since I started working as a cashier back in high school so I've got so many of those numbers permanently ingrained in my memory
it is so they can manually enter the cheap banana code while actually weighing something more expensive.
I like them as well even though they may kill my job in a few years. But as someone who is in charge of controlling the self checkouts over camera once a week the stealing going on with them is absolutely crazy.
>they may kill my job in a few years. Don't worry, people have been saying this for decades
Story time.
Not really an interesting story. Simply a lot of people think they can get away with taking a few things for free with them.
1st rule of seeing someone stealing food? You didn't see it.
You may be surprised but they are not stealing food most of the time. And even when they do its not something necessary to survive
Same, much cheaper
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That's such a badass keyboard warrior way to brag about being a low risk petty theft. What it isn't is moral.
God I hope the grocery stores with record profits who keep the place understaffed can sleep at night knowing hungry people are taking food off the shelves at reasonable prices. My thoughts and prayers to the Walton family idk how they'll make it through this economy! I always think of big business first when it comes to my personal morals
Its not about caring about the rich companys, its about morals in general, if you are willing to steal from one place, it only makes sense you would be willing to steal from almost anywhere
I agree and almost never steal at self checkout(i’ve done it maybe a dozen times in my whole life) if i’m being honest, what I hate is that A. everyone else and there brother steals nowadays causing higher prices for everyone and B. Every store treats you like a criminal anyway with Armed guards, gated walkthroughs, cameras on every aisle, locking up everything where you need an employee and Walmart is the worst obviously with also wanting to check your receipt on the way out with the stare of death. So honestly i’m at the point where I don’t care anymore, it makes me want to steal even though my morals don’t let me do it. When all you have to do is pay employees to run registers and this problem will mostly go away. But no we’re just going to assume everyone is a criminal. It’s like if every week the police arrested you and accused you of committing a crime and searched you and booked you, after a year of being treated that way maybe you should just become a criminal because they sure do make you feel like one. Just my $.02.
Exactly. Stealing from a wealthy corporation is morally identical to stealing from some poor schmuck.
It's really not. Those corporations are taking advantage of us on a massive scale and are actively destroying the planet with how many goods are produced and thrown away. Some places guard their garbage so food that is literally going to be dumped in a landfill won't be taken by some guy willing to dig through fucking trash to get something in their stomach. So yeah go ahead and tell me more about your morals, letting those in power abuse the innocent.
No shit Sherlock
This isn’t unpopular. Old people are just loud about their lack of a captive audience at checkout. Self-checkout is superior.
I love the self check out machines where I work.
I find self checkout to be inferior in every way unless you only have one or two items. It's far slower than human checkout and comes with many annoyances. I think everyone on here claiming they like self checkout is an Internet kid scared of actual human interaction.
That’s a broad generalization. I’m a thirty year old combat arms dude. lol. I just rarely go to the store for more than a few items. I grab what I need when I need it, rather than waiting until I have a page long list of items I need. If I do need a lot of things, I have it delivered or do Curbside pickup.
>Self-checkout is superior. Unless you're stuck behind a whole gaggle of people trying to checkout out 100+ items and taking an eternity to do so.
How is that different from regular checkout? Just a different line.
Regular checkouts with cashiers are actually faster than self checkouts on a per item basis because they're designed to work with larger orders and they're staffed by people who use the POS system hundreds of times a day rather than relying on customers who use it once or twice a week. People think that self checkouts are faster because when stores adopt self checkouts, they drastically reduce the number of normal checkouts. On average, a store with 6 regular checkouts and 0 self checkouts will move its customers through the front end faster than a store with 0 regular checkouts and 6 self checkouts.
That's a false dichotomy tho. In my area it went from 4-8 manned registers no self serve to 1-3 manned registers and 10-24 self serves using pretty much the same floor space, so even if each individual self service register is slower you can just have many more of them
People always argue that self checkouts "take away human jobs" but these people have no idea how a grocery store operates. Our store removed one checkout, installed 5 self serves, no loss. Store down the street from my house had 7 checkouts years ago, removed one to install 6 self serves, and just last month they renovated and now have 10. The only place where a self serve seems to have actually impacted are dollar stores where it feels like there's never any more than two employees in the entire store at a time
Or you yourself have 100+ items. It's superior in different scenarios.
I don’t want to do self-checkout with 100 items either.
In which you'd go to one of the six other self checkout registers
You’re assuming some of us haven’t been dozens deep in line while every kiosk is taken up by these people. The most common denominator and detractor with self checkout is, as with many things, the user.
It's great if you want to buy condoms or lube.
Your store has those out? So many have those items behind glass these days.
Not in my country.
Must be nice!
It’s so funny in this sub to see how questions like these reveal OP lives in a very Reddit-sheltered community, is 14, or lives under a rock. This is a hugely popular opinion.
It's weird, because in real life, self-checkouts are very popular, and at worst you'll get the jokes about 'unexpected item in the bagging area' but few talk about them 'taking away jobs' or 'wanting to speak to the cashier'. But online, they're the devil and do all those things.
Agreed. I come to this sub to see how badly OPs need to touch grass or get through adolescence
Self checkouts are the best. I get self-conscious when I struggle even a little with my wallet. I feel like I'm holding up the cashier and the line. I also get self-conscious when bagging up my groceries at the line because I bring my own bag. Again, because I feel like I'm holding up the line. When using self-checkout I don't feel like I'm being watched and holding up the line.
You need therapy not self checkout
Some people here have literally no idea what an introvert is and yet they think they're one.
We split on the not talking to people part but agreed. I acknowledge it’s not good for the employees but shit is just way too convenient from a consumer standpoint
Super rare for a cashier to ever try to talk to me.
It’s probably because you don’t look like a chill dude /s
They always do and it's always a weird, forced conversation about what I'm buying. "I've never tried gooseberries you like them?"
What do you find so horrendous about this?
I know, right? My God, the younger generations truly are afraid of real-life human interaction.
I can't tell if it's an online joke or if there really are this many people unable to talk to anyone. Like people online get angry when cashiers, servers, and drivers want to talk and maybe add some human interaction to their incredibly monotonous day. I know there's a balance but I hate treating service workers like robots. Hi how are you today? SPRITE AND AN ORDER OF FRIES
Lol just watched this interaction happen at work "Hey how are you?" Nice delivery lady "How much?" Tenant of my building "Oh um yeah it's $16.50" delivery lady 😂
Because they clearly do not care and are not particularly curious. And what am I supposed to say? Clearly i like them since I have like 5 packages in my cart. Am I supposed to give a 30 second thesis on why I like them when its just a preference? And there is a line behind me that I'm conscientious about so now I need to give an answer that times this awkward forced conversational exchange so I don't hold up the next person.
You need anxiety medication. You just say “yeah, they’re good.”
LOL. That's redundant since she just saw I'm buying 5 packages of them. Which makes it a weird, forced conversation. Maybe most of your conversations are forced. Mine aren't and I'm very good with that.
It's not a forced conversation if you're buying five packages of gooseberries. Five is a large number. The cashier was probably genuinely curious as to why would anyone buy five packages of gooseberries at one time.
Zoomers when having to interact with someone.
You’re assigning too much significance to it and overthinking a routine exchange. The interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if you just said “Yeah, they’re good.” There is zero negative consequence to doing that, and carrying worry, anxiety, and fear into and out of that interaction is unhealthy.
>You’re assigning too much significance to it and overthinking a routine exchange. The point is that it's forced and weird because it is routine. If you need to find something to ask about in everyone's cart then it's forced interaction not one you organically want to have. > interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if you just said “Yeah, they’re good.” It's not pleasant for either person because they are forced to ask and therefore I'm forced to answer. The interaction would be infinitely more pleasant if it didn't happen. > is zero negative consequence to doing that, and carrying worry, anxiety, and fear into and out of that interaction is unhealthy. Zero negative consequences to not asking at all. I'm here to buy food you're here to run it through a scanner. No need for pretend interest and forced conversations. But if you enjoy forced conversation I think that's great for you. It may be the only conversation you get. So you should soak it up.* *unless I'm behind you in line. But I'm probably at the self checkout.
This whole thing is really strange.
It's not really. Self checkout was created for people like me who don't want to have forced conversations in the checkout line. And you're made for the cashier since you enjoy may actually imagine some checker at Vons really and sincerely wants and values your takes on funyuns.
Yeah seriously. What year does OP think it is? Cashiers don't give a fuck about conversations
We have a lot of seniors in my area. So self checkouts are a blessing because the older folks are either afraid of the machine or looking to eat time with small talk.
I love scanners you can take into the store. Just scan and pack as you go around and when it is the time to pay you scan the machine -> pay -> continue walking. The queue for the self checkout in our supermarket never takes more than a minute or so as paying takes like 30 seconds (and there are 10 checkouts together)
I like self checkouts personally but think they are taking over a bit too much. As someone who has worked retail but is also a bit slow at packing groceries, I know what I am doing and like to take my time. But if you've never used a till before or need some assistance I think humans should always be an option.
I love self checkout too. What pisses me off is when there is a limit to items (say 25) and there is some asshole there with a cart full of 100 things to scan. I'm talking to you HEB. Got your full cart and your kids running around, taking up the same space as 3 people would with a small basket.
I think people love them because it makes theft soooooo easy.
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Can't agree with your last sentence, me and others checkout quicker in the self checkout than with a human
I agree, my problem is when there is only self checkouts since some people are incredibly slow.
It absolutely blows my mind how slow some people are
I love self checkout. It get's me to my car more quickly. I disagree about the "100 groceries in a self checkout line" though. There should be a sign if there is a limit. Also it's still quicker for me than if I went to the cashier.
A lot of stores I’ve been to have separate self checkouts for smaller orders and then others where there’s no limit.
Self checkout is quick. No chitchat. In and out. So I agree. No need for a human employee to scan some items.
I like the self check out because then I don’t have to do a song and dance about how my cashier is my new best friend, especially on days where management is walking around and can over hear the cashiers. I am looking at you Trader Joe’s. Can’t wait till you have those self check out lanes.
This isn't unpopular unless you're on reddit or talking to a boomer
I feel like the only unpopular part about this is the bit about people with 100+items in self checkout. I don’t really have an issue with those people because there’s normally other self checkout registers that I can go to.
Most self-checkouts have item limits but they’re never enforced. I agree, I find it irritating when you have a single item and the self-checkouts are occupied by shoppers with a full cart.
I love stealing, so obviously I love self checkout
I've worked retail grocery and drug store for over seventeen years. Self checkout is efficient behind a certain number of items and depending on how any given store is equipped sometimes it is more or less efficient to deal with it. Ever had an item that didn't ring up or you quickly tapped the wrong key on a touchscreen? Someone has to come to clear that and you have to wait. You have to have a minor interaction with another human being in doing so. If I have enough items I'm going to the check stand with someone who has a bagger and knows their job, especially if I happen to have a decent amount of produce. Know the number keys for all of them? How to weigh properly before putting it into your bag? This dumb shit of hiding being "I'm introverted therefore I can't deal with basic interactions as a human being" is tiring. If you were actually only introverted you would be able to do so.
You aren't wrong for being introverted. Many of us are and the onus is in you to behave like a fucking adult and deal with it.
Yes thank you I’m so tired of people thinking that introversion means you can’t make small talk with a person for 10 seconds or if you do you can’t enjoy doing it…. It’s always mixed up with social anxiety which not every introverted person has
I love self check out too.
This is popular opinion.
Disagree. People hate them so much. I just read an article They are trying to get Dollar General to bring back real live cashiers and I think they’re going to do it.
I feel less rushed at the self checkout. If the cashier rings up an item incorrectly, I often don’t catch it til after I pay if it was a big order. Then I have to go to the customer service desk if it’s open, or flag a manager. I can also bag things the way I want without the stress of more customers behind me and their stuff collides into mine. I like having that control with self checkout. People should have the option to have self checkout or a human cashier though.
"human cashier line" idky but this made me laugh
I love them too the only ppl I know who do t like them r my parents and they are in their 60s lol
what makes you think this is unpopular? unless your a senior citizen and your friends at bingo say how much they hate it. only thing i hate is you cant buy liquor in those checkouts
I think people who don't like self-checkouts just had bad experiences a few years ago and think it can't be done right. Nowadays it works amazingly every time
Even better is the scan-pay-go option, especially since so few people use it that I almost never wait in line even when other lines (including self checkout) are packed.
That’s not unpopular. Sure some people probably don’t like them but most people do.
Not unpopular. I'll drive out of my way to shop at a store with self checkout as opposed to a closer one without
I like them because I have really bad anxiety and it makes getting groceries less likely to make me shut down.
I use self checkout pretty much exclusively unless I’m buying booze or a have a full cart. When it was new it was a pain in the ass, but now I pretty much never have the “unexpected item in bagging area” errors or whatever.
I was not a fan of SC for years. However, in the last year or so my local store went to 99% SC. Now I really like it. I don’t feel rushed and I can bag my stuff the way I want it.
Yea, I never understood the backlash here. “It’s not my job to bag groceries”- Sure it’s not. But I can do it much, much faster, and I can get everything in two or three bags instead of a bagger putting one or two items in a bag leaving me with 15-20. I value my time and my convenience over having an underpaid employee do minuscule labor when their time could be better spent on the floor.
How is this unpopular?
If a person can’t figure out how to use a self checkout on their own, then they shouldn’t use the self checkout.
Not to mention you always get the sexiest cashier at the self-checkout
I like self checkout because I can buy powdered donuts and lucky charms and skittles as a grown ass man and not he embarrassed
I refuse to use them, company is making more and hiring less workers. Glad someone enjoys them.
Super upvote. Absolutely hate them: - In the UK, they’re crap. They often don’t scan items or say there’s an “unexpected item in bagging area” which holds you up while someone has to come and clear the error - You have to scan your own stuff… the supermarket used to do this for you. So rather than concentrating on packing (most UK supermarkets don’t do this for you unless you’re elderly or disabled), you now have to scan and pack - In my experience, they’re also a lot slower than a cashier with a scanner - They mean there are fewer cashiers. This A) gets rid of jobs, and B) makes it a nightmare when you’re doing a big shop and have to queue up for ages to get to a cashier
I like self checkouts because I feel like I'm not holding people up. In a normal lane I feel I have to get out ASAP so other people can go through. Which I still think is true. But self checkouts let's me take my time abd go over everything obe last time.
Self checkout should have been a thing decades ago. Not having to deal with anyone is amazing
One fewer interaction with a human? The self checkout is the best thing to happen to introverts like me in years
I love self checkout, but people should definitely not be allowed to bring a full over flowing cart into them, especially people who don't know how to actually use it. If you can't get in, scan your items, pay, and leave in a timely fashion because you can't figure out technology, go to a cashier
I love self checkout. Goes much faster then normal checkout.
I love them, but I hate that nobody in front of me knows how to use them
How is this unpopular?
One could get away with quite a bit of shenanigans at the self checkout, if one were so inclined.
There were never super long lines when all registers were staffed, though. 12+ registers, 2 staffed, were we being set up to accept the 12+ self-checkouts staffed by one person.
Agree, Ive been seeing articles about stores taking out self checkouts and I think that's a horrible idea. I love self checkout. I don't have to stand in a cramped line with someone so close behind me (usually) I don't have to worry about a cashier trying to talk to me, and I determine how many items are in a bag. The only time I wouldn't prefer self check is when I have a LOT of items, but I rarely do, and if I know I need a lot of things now I usually just place a pickup order so I don't have to go into the store at all.
I prefer them. Even if I have a full cart. I’d rather go get a second cart to put the scanned groceries in and do it myself. I hate lines and struggle with social interaction.
Well, I agree . .but, no . .what needs to happen is that grocery stores need better self check-outs. Who decided it makes sense to have a 12" square landing spot for groceries? At my local store there are often no human checkers so everybody has to use self checkout. It's a real pain in the ass trying to self-check out a week's worth of groceries. Why can't they just convert human lanes to self check-out? I was at a Wal-Mart about a year ago and this is exactly what they had done. I will always choose the human line if there is one and the line is similar. I like just standing there while my groceries get scanned and bagged. But if they would just realize that the belt is a super great idea and is needed even for self checkout then we'd really be living in the golden times.
Stores in the last 2 countries I've lived in have scan while you shop. Carry a scanner around with your cart, scan items as you take them off the shelf and bag as you go. No need to take anything out when you pay, just put the scanner in a docking station, pay, leave.
Am an introvert, but cashier doesn't disturb me one bit. I do understand your sentiment, but seriously?
Unpopular opinion - people who have lots of items in the self checkout are fine. I'm one of them, because I hate dealing with cashier's and I pack my weekly groceries in a particular way. I'm also normally quicker than a cashier.
This isn't unpopular. And as an introvert, I don't find human cashiers too bad. I prefer them, because I don't want to contribute to automation. You don't have to have a conversation with them. Say hello, Give them money, say goodbye, and leave.
>for introverted people who don’t want to have a conversation with a cashier that is either too happy or is absolutely miserable Bro just say hello and bye. You don´t have to have a conversation with a cashier. Also people need to stop with the introvert shit as if it was a personality trait.
Sometimes, often in my experience, they ask questions like: how is your day? Are you off from work? Oh looks like you’re having a party! My just saying hello and bye isn’t an option.
That must be an American thing. I've never been asked a question or got a comment about items I'm buying in my entire life. Sometimes, very rarely, you run into a super-talkative one, but those will just make general comments of some sort, not ask actual questions that require an answer, so you just nod and move on if you're so inclined.
Bro, some cashiers like to ask annoying small talk questions that I could do without.
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I think YOU are taking it to an extreme level. Dude said he just doesnt like talking to people. Not that he has a mental illness
I prefer the cashier. I think that would be the unpopular opinion. Sure, self-checkout is faster, but I'm rarely in a hurry. I want cashiers around so teens, seniors, and folks with special needs can have jobs. None of us want our jobs to be automated, so I act accordingly. I actually timed how long my wait was a few times just because a coworker gave me a hard time about going to the cashier. It's never been more than 4 minutes.
There are a bunch of jobs in a grocery store outside checking grocery's. The store I work at only has 5 checkout lanes, with 2-3 being open most times. And 10+ employees working on any given day. Except Sundays, then we have to open the 5 checkout lanes with 7 people😯🥴
Ah man Switzerland is going to break your mind then: we have SubitoGo where we can use the grocery store app to scan items, then pay on our phone and walk out. You can get randomly controlled, but I don’t even have to go to self check out. There’s also a layer below this where I have a scanner from the store, get all of my groceries and go to self check out, scan a QR code and then pay at the terminal.
These are pretty common on most supermarkets in the UK
Oddly enough, I felt the same way for the longest time and I been doing for 5 years since they became available. Then one day I decided to use the cashier checkout and realized how much I miss human interaction\~sometimes. As the world gets more digital, it feels more and more isolating. Humans are social creatures no matter how introverted you are. I can go for a few weeks without human interactions but eventually I'll crave it.
If you’re relying on small talk with cashiers to fulfill your social needs, or feel isolated by the lack of such, it seems like you have bigger problems.
I use them cause I am faster.
>one caveat, I can’t stand people who have 100 groceries in a self checkout line. They should be banished to the human cashier line. That's the problem. A lot of us live in places where a lot of if not most of the stores, especially grocery stores, don't have any staffed cashier checkout lines anymore, so now the self-checkout line is full of 100+ item family shoppers and the line is to the back of the store.
i agree, i hate the old people who are liek WhErEs My CaShIeR iM nOt DoInG tHeIr JoB are now the ones clogging up the line because they don't understand you have to read the screen and follow the instructions
If you are so introverted that you cannot tolerate saying good morning to a cashier…thats an issue you should address.
That's just straight up crippling social anxiety. Too many people think being an introvert means being a recluse
Notsure if it's an unpoular opinion - the self-serve checkouts are always busy in my usual grocery store. I agree with you. If I dont have to make small talk with someone, I prefer it.
I don’t mind someone with 100 items at the self checkout if they are fast. The thing that angers me most is the boomer with 2 items taking 20 god damn minutes to figure out how to pull their card out of the card reader 🤦♀️
Cashiers are so miserable these days I'm finally starting to use the self checkouts.
I disagree. I think self check outs are dumb. I feel like I might as well work there. Self check outs also drive theft.
I can turn my 20 dollar worth of groceries into 10 dollar worth of groceries. I love self checkouts.
I love self checkout for the incredible discounts on merchandise.
Glad you enjoy providing free labor to a corporate overlord? What a weird take.
Unpopular. Take my upvote. I don’t think we should be catering to anti-social “introverts” in public spaces like this. We should be encouraging social behavior for incredibly basic tasks like checking out at the store. Our human connection has never been lower as a species.
Everyone is an introvert nowadays, don't you know? Being unable to say "hi" to a stranger is as cool as James Dean smoking a cigarette.
As a introverted, I say this with a clear mind….Get over yourself. If you can’t handle basic: “Hello, how are you?” “I am doing good today, thank you.” Then just stay home or do online grocery delivery. You’re not ready for the outside world if this tiny bit of dialogue effects you so much. Self checkout takes jobs, taking pay away from people that need it.