this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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This seems to be an implementation issue. In my neighbourhood discounter, in Germany, there's three self-checkouts and while they're a bit small they also don't do any of that weighing and whatnot bullshit: You scan your stuff, pay, done. The only thing they can't do is apply best-before rebates.
There's also always a manned till open (or at the very least, when things are slow, a worker hanging out in the vicinity). In practice if the queue is empty you go there, if you have lots of stuff you go there (because it's bound to be faster as you can focus on packing while things get scanned), otherwise you have the choice to use self-checkout. Never had to stand in line for self-checkout, before that happens they open another manned till. What the self-checkouts do is keep small purchases away from the manned tills when they're busy which is exactly what they're good for. I
It is 100% implementation. In other countries there's either a staff member watching over all the self checkouts to make everything go smoothly, or a kind of electronic gate that only let's you leave after scanning a receipt. Usually the scanners are much more reliable and theres a usable UI. Plus a modicum of trust. Also thise hand scanners you can carry around the shop so you don't have to do it at the end (although I think if seen some of them around now).
In the UK there's usually the weight detection mechanic that slows things down 10x and no interactivity with the machine other than it loudly telling you you're doing it wrong. You often need to ask for help anyway.
If it was a quick and easy experience the scheme wouldn't fail.
There's no extra gate or dedicated staff member in my store only whoever's at the till and if the self-checkout is busy they're too busy to watch them.
What I did notice though is that they now put anti-theft tags on more stuff, e.g. the ones on big packages of sausages are new. But it's still the same open beep gate at the end, which I actually triggered exactly once and that was when using the manned checkout, they're older and cashiers need to deactivate the tags manually (and they missed my coffee), the self-checkout ones apparently do it reliably when you're scanning the item.
Over time I think that's probably where this is heading. The store still uses those very old EM fuses/amplifiers as anti-theft tags and of course ordinary barcodes, at some point the larger industry is going to switch to RFID for everything and every item will know whether it's been paid for.
My grocery store recently added these locks on the cart wheels, I'm not really sure how they work since i've only ran into them once so far but it went off as I was going through the detectors at the door and locked up the wheels so it wouldn't roll. Idk what triggered it because I went through the manned checkout and they scanned everything. The girl at the self checkouts just ran over and unlocked it without even checking anything. It was pretty embarrassing though because it was busy and I was blocking the exit door with a bunch of people behind me for like 30 seconds because of that.
At least around here, the wheel locks are activated by a big antenna loop around (usually) the parking lot, to prevent them from being rolled off by homeless people. Unfortunately they also fail "safe", so when the locking gizmo's batteries run dry they lock the wheels. You may have just been the lucky winner of it locking itself at coincidentally the worst moment! Don't you feel special!
The difference is other countries have much larger stores... probably because we have a more car centric culture.
My local store has about 40 checkouts - half of them self checkout. And there's a competing store literally door (in the same building, with ain internal wall separating them), which sells all the same stuff and is the same size. In the middle of the day about half the checkouts are open and in the evenings all of them are open.
We do have smaller stores like yours, but almost nobody shops at those and even at peak hour a single checkout is enough.
Sales so slow at my local small store the checkout staff will literally check your bread for mould when they scan the barcode... They're more expensive and the food is worse.