Are you sick of self serve check out being crammed down your throat?

I'm an early bird. My wife and I needed a dozen items so I thought I'd run out to Kroger and get them before she rose. There were no humans available to check me out and bag. I was already reeling from their corned beef price ($9.75 for .75#), steering around all the dang cardboard displays, and don't even get me started on memberships. Oh, and the loudspeaker constantly reminding you of CDC guidelines, like any of that bull hockey matters. What happened to the music?

I left the full cart sitting at register 15 and came home.

While I did just take a moment to email corporate my displeasure (I've talked to managers but they say they have little if any say in matters), I sincerely doubt they care what a 57 year old white male thinks.

 

Kinda, i'm not sure which way to vote. It's nice if you only have a few items and there are some workers able to unlock a error code at the self scan which these errors happen all the time. This kinda deletes the purpose of them
My local Stop an Shop won't even open the doors till a worker that is stationed up front isn't there yet but the self serve lights are on.

What upsets me more is the two "Family Dollars" near me only uses debit or credit cards or maby or exact change. Why does this one chain have a hard time getting cash on hand.
As people are using debit to pay even later in the day they still have no money to give change..

 

Family Dollar probably does that to keep from getting robbed. No cash, no robberies.

 

May I suggest a coin toss?

 

I don't mind doing it myself but when they only have one regular check out open with a long line that's just not right.....

 

Oops: I was reaching for a penny but saw that,
I missed the 'Big" lettering of them being crammed down your throat..
Oh thats a easy yes!

 

Could be, one is located at a not so good area but one is smack in the middle of a strip mall at a way better location.
Although most robber don't care where.

 

Yes, at the grocery store I go to, which is locally owned, they put in 6 self check out registers to compete with the WinCo that just went in across the street in the old Shopko building that closed 2 years ago. They've got one person standing in the middle of the 6 self checkouts more or less trying to force you to go to them. I try to be polite when I tell them I'd rather use the human at the express lane because I want them to keep their job....it's amazing they don't realize that they are helping eliminate their own position, but then again they can't get anybody to go to work anyway, so I can see the point. Hell, Taco Bell is paying $17/hr to start here, and they've got their hours down to 2 p.m. opening and closing at 7 p.m. (yeah, the 3 Taco Bells un town are open a total of 5 hours each day) because people would rather sit on the couch all day and collect free money. Every business in this city that has more than 3 employees is trying to hire, and can't even get anyone to come in, and the lowest I know is $15/hr to start. We get ghosted probably 20 times a week at work for scheduled job interviews, and when they do get hired, they straight up say they're going to do a s****y job until they get fired and go back on unemployment. We've trained a country of no ambition losers with absolutely no desire to be a contributing member of society.

 

I have a totally different take on this..

First off, this is how business deals with government intrusion.. to the point, the $15/hr minimum wage that is coming.. Ironically, they have now figured out that to get the minimum wage they want, all they have to do is pay folks to stay home. The labor market will dictate wages, based on supply and demand, as it should in a properly functioning economy.. Unfortunately, our government has now hooked an entire generation on free money.. and it's going to be hell to get them to go back to work again. You will see a lot of these people go right to welfare, is my prediction.

Anyway, back to the checkouts..

I love self check, because, to be polite, many of the cashiers are not rocket scientists.. some are great, but some are totally clueless.

And generally speaking, the fewer idiots I have to deal with in a given day, the happier I am.

Plus self check on average gets me out of the store considerably faster. Can't recall the last time I waited behind more than one person..

JW

 

Simply a way to reduce costs by not hiring workers... you don't have to pay health insurance on machines, just get that extended warranty. We will all be replaced by machines eventually.

 

I love self check out. Like JW said it gets me out of the store faster. I use it everywhere that I can.

 

I can go either way on the self checkout. If I use it at Lowes I still have to wait for a casher to OK my Military Discount so that takes up the time saved. At the grocery store its nearly always a live person behind the register. Was at a McDonalds awhile back and after waiting in line to get to the counter the kid pointed at the kiosk and said I had to go there and order then wait in line again to pay for the food with cash. We walked out.

Theres a new Popeyes Chicken being built near the highway. The place is really small. I dont think they built a dining room or if they did its just a few tables. Most of the fast food places in that area have had the dining rooms closed for over a yr. My thought is is they've discovered they make more profit by having it closed and less staff to man it. When I go "out to eat" I dont wanna drive through and pick up my food to eat in the car or take it home.. sort of defeats the purpose of going out.

 

My wife and I speculate all the time about how much product is probably going out the door un-scanned at the self checkers.

As far as speed, when this particular grocery store opened about 15 years ago, you never waited. There were a lot of registers / baggers and you'd be out in no time. I was there early in the morning today and avoided a crowd, but if you go when its busy and there are generally 3 registers open - the line for the self serve check out gets lengthy.

 

Those machines are the result of minimum wage laws. When the cost of labor exceeds the value generated by that labor, I get to design another machine

It is a reminder that it is our responsibility to acquire marketable skills. Filling bags at a grocery store is not meant to be a career.

I had shitty jobs as a teenager and the first thing I learned is that I needed to gain new skills ASAP.

 

I like having the option of self check out; it’s great if all I need is a deli sandwich, chips and a coke, but I can’t stand being forced into self check out if I have a cart full (and wine or beer). Self check out doesn’t have room to unload and keep track of more than a few bags full, and often they don’t have help nearby for ID check or problems.
I too have abandoned a full cart at Kroger; ours had just doubled its U scans and was refusing to open regular lanes while lines backed up into the aisles. The clerks said the manager wouldn’t let them open any. I called and bitched at the manager, told her the cart I’d abandoned had ice cream and frozen foods in it, and went to Ingles.
Patrick

(The Kroger manager told me that ‘corporate’ was using some computer monitor and motion sensors to dictate the number of registers open, and she wasn’t allowed overrule it. I told her that was stupid. I told the Ingles manager about it and he laughed, agreed Kroger sounded stupid, and said ‘I decide what happens in this store.’)

 

I do not believe self check is a result of a $15 minimum wage. I believe it is businesses response to not being able to attract and retain qualified workers. People I have spoken with tell me it is virtually impossible to get people to apply for a job. If they do apply, they can not pass the drug screening and background search. If they do pass the background and drug tests they won't show up for work. The community I live in has to import workers on H2B visas to staff the facility. Remember when people pumped your gas and washed your windows? I bet many of us worked at a gas station as kids to get some cash. We need to stop the handouts and make people go back to work.

Jim

 

The same Kroger has an unmanned floor scrubber now, the manager said they really gutted the manpower when that showed up.

 

https://ir.kroger.com/CorporateProf...d-Raises-Full-Year-2021-Guidance/default.aspx

805 million in first quarter profit, announcing a 1 billion stock buy back. Thats great for them, but what about that corned beef price? The machines don't help that, just the profit margin.

 

The unwillingness of an entire generation of "entitled" children now entering the work force, to actually work, certainly plays a role in what businesses have to do, no doubt..

But the bigger driver is the mandated minimum wage, IMHO.. The technology for self check has been there for going on 30 years, now granted, the machines 30 years ago would have been a bit more clunky than what we have now, but ever since they went to the bar code/scanner system, it put the "cashier" into a different category. I recall watching the ladies at the grocery store run the registers by hand, many of them were amazingly skilled at it.

Only when these "liveable wage" arguments started to get traction, did the companies invest in the technology.

 

Kroger is headquartered in Cincinnati and this particular store is always an experiment. For a while they had these 11 foot elevated coffin kiosks that you loaded one end and everything supposedly was scanned...didn't work out. My buddy says at Sams he scans stuff with his phone and pays with his phone. Is that true?