Self checkout is a blessing when you have, like, six items in your cart. Any more than that, and it’s a punishment. Have you ever tried to be fast with those torture kiosks? They’ve added cameras and shitty AI so that they complain if you’re holding the next item in hand while putting the first item in your bag. It forces you to pick something up, scan it, put it in the bag, wait for the scale to register it, and only then pick up the next item - and heaven help you if you have a second person helping you. Having worked at grocery stores in the distant past, it’s agony.
The actual checkers can scan an item with one hand while picking up the next item, passing each item to the bagger behind them in a steady stream without having to wait for anything. It’s not quite an order of magnitude faster, but it’s close. The only reason self-checkout is ‘faster’ is because one cashier can watch six kiosks at a time, and payment takes the same amount of time no matter how many items you have.
I’ve used self-checkouts in Canada and in The Netherlands. The ones here in Canada are just like the miserable experience you describe. Especially the weight sensor and the machine complaining. In The Netherlands I never had that issue (even with a second person helping me). I’m convinced companies have just turned the anti-theft settings up to aggravating false-positive levels over here.
Yep, that’s exactly it and why no-one understands each other on these threads.
North America is three months away from Boston Dynamic Replicants gruesomly executing and dismembering single mothers in public because a little bit of flour fell out of the bag at the counter and Peter Thiel’s AI decided it was Space Fentanyl.
Self checkout is a blessing when you have, like, six items in your cart. Any more than that, and it’s a punishment. Have you ever tried to be fast with those torture kiosks? They’ve added cameras and shitty AI so that they complain if you’re holding the next item in hand while putting the first item in your bag. It forces you to pick something up, scan it, put it in the bag, wait for the scale to register it, and only then pick up the next item - and heaven help you if you have a second person helping you. Having worked at grocery stores in the distant past, it’s agony.
The actual checkers can scan an item with one hand while picking up the next item, passing each item to the bagger behind them in a steady stream without having to wait for anything. It’s not quite an order of magnitude faster, but it’s close. The only reason self-checkout is ‘faster’ is because one cashier can watch six kiosks at a time, and payment takes the same amount of time no matter how many items you have.
I’ve used self-checkouts in Canada and in The Netherlands. The ones here in Canada are just like the miserable experience you describe. Especially the weight sensor and the machine complaining. In The Netherlands I never had that issue (even with a second person helping me). I’m convinced companies have just turned the anti-theft settings up to aggravating false-positive levels over here.
Yep, that’s exactly it and why no-one understands each other on these threads.
North America is three months away from Boston Dynamic Replicants gruesomly executing and dismembering single mothers in public because a little bit of flour fell out of the bag at the counter and Peter Thiel’s AI decided it was Space Fentanyl.