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I don't get the social interaction thing either. I'm a woman and have always hated small talk with people I know and even more so with people I don't know. Give me a self check out anytime!
I don't want the cashier for small talk, I want the professional cashier to ring up and bag my groceries quickly and efficiently. I do not enjoy the disembodied computer voice demanding that I place my item in the bagging area now. If you have a light item and toss it in the bag, it doesn't trip the scale so the voice demands again and again. It's not a time saver at all.
I don't want the cashier for small talk, I want the professional cashier to ring up and bag my groceries quickly and efficiently. I do not enjoy the disembodied computer voice demanding that I place my item in the bagging area now. If you have a light item and toss it in the bag, it doesn't trip the scale so the voice demands again and again. It's not a time saver at all.
Exactly. I don't care about the chit chat. Given the choice between two open lanes, one automated and one not. I'll choose the not automated if I have more than one or two things. By the time I can get the scanner to read my preferred shopper card, and I scan the item and put it in the bag I still need to wait for the scanner to determine if I'm "cheating" because the item in question doesn't weigh what the machine thinks it should. Then it calls the checkout monitor, who looks at what I have and just puts the key in and overrides the machine. More time. I can't scan the next item until it tells me to. With live clerks, they don't have to go through that so it's just faster. Thankfully, we don't have an automated voice. That would be a deal breaker for sure.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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I never go to the self-checkout. I can never get my stuff to scan easily AND I like the social interaction. I'm a chatter, what can I say?
My husband loves the self-checkout. I don't mind it when I'm with him. I go to the bagging area and laugh out loud when I hear the "voice" tell him, "Please remove your... BANANAS!" HA! Even writing it made me laugh.
At the national big box store I worked at, this is not true. A transaction started when the first item was scanned and the transaction ended once payment went through. There was a system to rate your speed of check out based on how many items the customer bought and their method of payment. This is part of the reason cashiers at this store don't like when people write checks, it always brought down our transaction speeds. We were rated on speed and how many people we could sign up for the store card. That was all they cared about.
Same here. For a short period of time I worked at a national big box store and we were definitely monitored on our speed of checkout. If our speed slowed too much, then our supervisor made sure we knew about it - and quickly.
Whew! As for sitting at the register, unacceptable!!! If by some chance we didn't have any customers, then we were expected to get out there in the register aisles and "front" the stock, tidy up the areas, etc. No sitting and keep smiling!
As to the self-checkout lanes, I used to like them. But they caused so many delays...
I didn't bag the item quick enough
I didn't scan fast enough
I had to call the cashier to come tell the silly machine that I was over 18 when I wanted to buy some cough medicine
It's just easier to wait in line with the other folks and take my turn through the regular checkout registers.
I like 'em, and honestly am puzzled by the posters saying checking out on them rarely goes by without a hitch. My experience is the opposite, the overwhelming majority of the times I just scan 'em and bag 'em no issues, way faster with a bank of 10 of those things instead of waiting in line at express aisle.
In fact after using 'em for a few years I'd say its faster than ever since I know the codes for all the common things like potatoes, yellow onions, green peppers, etc.
As for jobs, lots of people would be glad to accept lower food prices, whether it meant jobs or not. If that wasn't the case Wal-mart would have failed decades ago instead of gutting thousands of towns of better paying retail jobs. I wonder how many who cited jobs refuse to shop there or at other big box stores.
I will only use self-checkout if I have a handful of items. It's a rare event when I can scan everything without the machine giving me issues. I prefer regular lanes whenever possible.
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