POV From The Atlantic: Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment

 

Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment

Please, not another “unexpected item in the bagging area.”

By Amanda Mull

The Atlantic

Self-Checkout Is a Failed Experiment - The Atlantic

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When self-checkout kiosks began to pop up in American grocery stores, the sales pitch to shoppers was impressive: 

• Scan your stuff, plunk it in a bag, and you’re done. 
• Long checkout lines would disappear. 
• Waits would dwindle. 
• Small talk with cashiers would be a thing of the past. 
• Need help? Store associates, freed from the drudgery of scanning barcodes, would be close at hand to answer your questions.

You know how this process actually goes by now: 

• You still have to wait in line. 
• The checkout kiosks bleat and flash when you fail to set a purchase down in the right spot. 
• Scanning those items is sometimes a crapshoot—wave a barcode too vigorously in front of an uncooperative machine, and suddenly you’ve scanned it two or three times. 
• Then you need to locate the usually lone employee charged with supervising all of the finicky kiosks, . ."

Read more > The Atlantic 

First this earlier article from Tasting Table

The Self-Checkout Experiment Failed - It's Time To Move On

BY DAVE MCQUILLING/AUG. 19, 2023 6:15 PM EST

It's a global problem, and like many other worldwide issues it's spreading fast. You'll notice them in stores and supermarkets around the world, blinking at you, judging you, and placing an unnecessary burden on your shopping trip. 

I'm talking about self-service checkouts — a dystopian innovation that costs jobs, shifts responsibility onto the consumer, and serves as a startling example of how companies are happy to inconvenience people if it serves their bottom line.
Not all self-checkout solutions are terrible. A "just walk out" system pioneered by Amazon allows customers to scan items as they pick them off the shelves and walk straight out the door afterwards. This shares some issues with self-checkout, but the benefits outweigh the extra burden. 

• As for the standard self-checkout systems, there's an argument that they are also streamlined and efficient compared to a traditional till. 
• The machines take up less space, and require fewer staff, but various factors mean they aren't as efficient for the customer as they may seem at first.

I'm not the only one with a grievance.

 A recent Tasting Table survey indicated that a good number of our readers agree with me — citing constant errors, issues with the payment system, and bagging woes amongst their biggest gripes with self-checkouts. The reasons to hate these things go beyond the ones our readers identified with, and these days I avoid them at all costs. 

Here's why:

They make life more difficult

Self-checkout machines don't do any labor themselves. 

• They're essentially a barcode scanner, a payment machine, and a scale stuck together to allow customers to scan and pay for their own groceries while not stealing anything. 

So what happens to the labor usually provided by the cashier? 

• That burden shifts to you, the customer. 
• You have to remove everything from your cart, scan it, and place it in a weighted area before finally paying and bagging it up. 
• It's a tedious process that people paying for groceries used to be able to avoid. 
• Then, there are the inevitable issues with scanning and bugs with the machines themselves, which make the whole process a huge pain.

While it may save you a little time if you only have one or two items, putting an entire weekly shop through one of these contraptions is a major inconvenience. You can pitch in and help on a traditional checkout, splitting the load with an employee. At self-checkout, you are responsible for unpacking, scanning, and bagging it all up again. 
A high amount of scanning almost always guarantees some problems. Then, when the items are scanned, there's the issue of space. The weighted anti-theft platform, on the other side, isn't particularly big and fills up all too soon. Add in any potential payment problems, like the machine not taking cash, and there's even more of an issue. So, life is a lot easier if you stick to traditional checkouts.

Self-checkouts put people out of work . . .

Read More: https://www.tastingtable.com/1366529/reasons-self-checkout-failed-time-to-move-on/

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