There was also a time when people would get pay to press an elevator button for you. But we don’t do that anymore because those things are super easy and having someone doing it for you won’t make the process faster.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off the most about the self-checkout is that people take forever to scan their stuff. When I was working as a cashier I would have an average of 50 clients/hour. There ain’t no way those self checkout are more efficient considering the time people take.
From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.
Someone who isn’t experienced with doing this scanning regularly takes longer. Especially if you have to put in codes for produce or something else with label or scanning problems.
The majority of these self checkouts also rate limit you intentionally or otherwise (likely due to weight checking on the bagging area). I know I can scan a lot faster than they let me given a proper setup
That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.
I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.
The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.
Ooh, that’s just one of my pet peeves. Such a stupid fucking phrase. The only way to know if you “can’t compare” two things is to do a comparison between them and come to the conclusion that the two things are very different. I can compare self checkout to a kumquat if I want to.
Now for some actually useful conversation, let’s compare number of steps for vending machine vs self checkout (since that’s the closer of my two examples).
Vending machine:
insert payment
push button to select items
pick up item
repeat all steps until you have the number of items desired
Self checkout:
scan item or place item on scanner/scale and push buttons for item type. This only counts as one step, because you are never doing both to the same item
repeat first step until you have all items desired
Imo, they’re only there for the company to promote ad programs and discourage stealing by being there. Otherwise, they just make the store experience worse? Unless they give me a discount for using a cashier, I ain’t doing in.
I’m also not an employee of the vending machine company. I’m also not an employee of the gas station.
I don’t really see what added value a cashier checking out my items for me has.
There was also a time when people would get pay to press an elevator button for you. But we don’t do that anymore because those things are super easy and having someone doing it for you won’t make the process faster.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off the most about the self-checkout is that people take forever to scan their stuff. When I was working as a cashier I would have an average of 50 clients/hour. There ain’t no way those self checkout are more efficient considering the time people take.
From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.
And this answers the question.
Someone who isn’t experienced with doing this scanning regularly takes longer. Especially if you have to put in codes for produce or something else with label or scanning problems.
The majority of these self checkouts also rate limit you intentionally or otherwise (likely due to weight checking on the bagging area). I know I can scan a lot faster than they let me given a proper setup
That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.
I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.
The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.
scan as you cart and self checkout is like the others.
Ooh, that’s just one of my pet peeves. Such a stupid fucking phrase. The only way to know if you “can’t compare” two things is to do a comparison between them and come to the conclusion that the two things are very different. I can compare self checkout to a kumquat if I want to.
Now for some actually useful conversation, let’s compare number of steps for vending machine vs self checkout (since that’s the closer of my two examples).
Vending machine:
Self checkout:
It’s the same steps in a different order.
Imo, they’re only there for the company to promote ad programs and discourage stealing by being there. Otherwise, they just make the store experience worse? Unless they give me a discount for using a cashier, I ain’t doing in.