this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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I'm faster than anyone who works there, and I don't need to worry about long lines (usually the self checkout is the faster option). The time saved is my payment.
I would be faster, if the tills didn't have a bloody delay after placing the item in the bag, before it will scan the next one.
"Please place the item in the bagging area!!!"
"Unexpected item in the bagging area." "Please place the item in the bagging area." "Unexpected item in the bagging area." "Please wait for assistance."
Assert dominance and just use a different machine for the rest of the items. It's not like an employee is showing up for a while anyway.
This was funny like a decade ago when it was commonplace.
Stores in my area solved that at least 6 years ago, maybe even earlier than that.
Stores near me first put in self checkouts around a decade ago and still have the original, problematic machines. It's the newer stores or ones recently renovated that have upgraded, but that is rare.
Yeah, even in South Central area of LA where I am, the system is quite responsive at the Food 4 Less.
I didnt realize places still did that, I haven't heard that annoying line in a few years.
Yeah I'm not actually talking about the "Please place the item in bagging area" part, I'm talking about the second or two after I place it before the system registers the weight and re-activates the scanner.
Sometimes I've seen this disabled, on certain tills at certain supermarkets, and I can scan breezily. Not sure if the weight check feature was disabled completely or what.
Oh gotcha
Same answer though, none of them by me do that anymore, I guess they all disabled the scale here. I can just rapid fire scan and out the door.
Hot tip: you can go at the same speed as before, and you'll even get a discount for saving everyone's time
This point seems to get missed on all these "I don't work here" arguments. Yeah, I don't work here, so I'd like to be in and out quickly so I can spend my precious free time for things I actually like to do. If "time is money" anyway, then what's the difference? I'd rather scan my own things, skip the chitchat, and reclaim the personal time I would've spent waiting.
I'm split on this. On the one hand if they didn't have self checkout, they'd need more checkout people. On the other hand, before self checkout they didn't really give a fuck if you had to wait in line (especially Walmart holy shit that was one of the biggest reasons I never went there, the fucking checkout line).
They would certainly need more checkout people, but speaking from grocery cashier experience they wouldn’t necessarily have them. I remember my manager’s indifference as I was the only one to show up on Thanksgiving and there were literally 30 people in my line.
That's a perennial problem. How do you connect the responsibility to the authority? The cashiers are the ones who have to face 30 angry customers, (face the responsibility) not the manager. (the one who has the authority to change things) Customers can complain to the cashier, but they have no authority. They can complain to the manager, but the manager is getting a portion of the money not spent on hiring full staff in the form of a bonus, so they're encouraged to ignore the complaint. It takes a certain critical mass of customers all spending less at the store before there's even a possibility of someone noticing a revenue drop, and no guarantee the blame will be put where it belongs if it happens.
I think that’s one of the things that bothered me most. My manager was standing right there about 30 feet away, but the customers were directing all of their anger at me, by choice. One would think a rational person would understand where to direct that anger, but I’m increasingly convinced every year that rational people don’t exist.
I remember checking groceries at frankly unprecedented speed while being a polite as possible, but one guy started yelling names at me from five or so people back. I decided to ignore him and continue serving my current customer with a smile and he yelled “Stop smiling!”. This was so shocking to me that I looked at the other customers in line to share a “Can you believe this guy?” moment to find them all nodding along in angry agreement.
I didn’t even need that job. I’m so angry at my naive younger self for not quitting on the spot and making sure all of them knew exactly why.
In my area, short lines are a priority for most retailers. If a lane has more than 3 people, they'll be ringing for another cashier.
I lose all saved time when trying to get through the exit gate that needs to see my receipt from all angles before letting me through.
where is this that you are made to stop? I just keep walking and say ‘if you wanted to see my receipt then open another cashier lane and scan items yourself. It’s my property now.”
Pretty common in german supermarkets in my experience, at least those that only introduced self-checkout recently (so most of who even got one). The gates need to scan the barcode on your receipt. Not really a noteworthy timeloss in my experience though.
It's still a very uncommon thing in general, my local supermarket even got rid of automated coin counters on normal checkouts again because they worked so bad (refused even slightly dirty coins) and made things slower.
ahh ok. in the US there are some private membership stores that do that. the public ones can try to stop you but you do not need to obey.
I never stop for them. I'll say "no thanks" or "I'm good, thank you anyway."
Definitely helps to have headphones in.
Policy depends on location, but for some places offering your receipt is 100% voluntary. I wouldn't deny showing my receipt at Costco (where it's been standard practice long before self-checkout came around and, though I don't have a copy of the agreement handy, I wouldn't be surprised if it were part of the agreement when you sign up for a club card.) But when I worked at a certain home improvement store, they hired outside security to check receipts. When one of the security guards was ignored by a customer and they asked him again, the customer complained. Subsequently, the security guard got fired. That's how I learned that the policy is "ask once, and let them go if they don't respond the first time." AKA security theater.
I mean, it's security theatre what actually does save the store money. Hence why walmart had greeters all those years ago. They found people were less likely to shoplift if they just knew that someone was watching them.
I always just call the bluff. Offer them the receipt before they ask and they're totally ok with you walking off with half the items unbought.
My favorite is "Thanks, you too 😊" and just keep walking
That's a lot of words to say while not breaking stride. I just hand them my reciept and thank them for taking my garbage.
ha fair point!
How can you be faster when you have to both scan and bag everything, whereas at the human checkout you only have to bag?
Because I care about leaving, so I do everything I can to be faster. In economics, this is known as the principle-agent problem. At my local walmart, it is known as "I'm not a septuagenarian who's been hitting a vape pen for the last 5 hours."
I have maybe once checked out at an in-person check-out where the person scanning was twice as slow as me on my own at a self-service checkout.
Normally at an in-person checkout, I am in fact the bottleneck placing stuff in bags. I'm already motivated to do that as quickly as possible, and the person scanning is still faster than that. Are you like the other person and just standing around while the cashier bags your groceries? If you "really care about leaving" you could do something about that.
Hint, they're probably not. They perceive themselves as faster, but on average the employees are.
You must have some speedy cashiers at your local store!
At my local shop, some of the cashiers are extremely slow at bagging… Often I end up when bags that are way too heavy, and sometimes my bread is all smushed. I don’t fault them, I can’t imagine they’re being paid a reasonable wage.
I am absolutely faster doing it myself.
So... you can bag while the cashier scans, right? Splitting the work, making it quicker.
Nope, not the way my store is laid out. Unless I wanna snuggle up next to them behind the counter. Which both they, and I, absolutely do not want.
Amusing that you think the employees scanning shit aren't also the ones bagging it.
But to answer your question, I'm faster because I have an incentive to get shit scanned and bagged, vs just riding the till for 8 hours.
OK, so the reason is because in the situation with two people, you fail to make use of both to make it go faster, and instead just stand around.
So if speed were the priority, I have a suggestion for you.
Because I worked as a package clerk as a kid, some 30 years ago. They spent a week training us to be cashiers and how to pack groceries as optimally and quickly as possible. And most places around here, the timing of the cashier is not good, especially since we usually have to pack our own groceries anyway.
Y'know that grocery stores could simply staff enough checkout registers and then all this self-checkout time-savings goes away, right? The stores - following the airline model - created a problem for the consumer (long checkout lines due to understaffing) and then effectively sold the customer the solution (you do your own labor, but grocery prices stay the same).
? Are you talking about, like, baggage prices?
Iirc, airline margins are super thin, and their customers are extremely price sensitive. In order to stay competitive, airlines need to be able to sell their customers on the lowest possible flight price, while still not losing money on every single flight. The solution is to charge the customer more directly for the scarce resources they use on a flight. Extra weight on the plane means more fuel used to reach the destination. Charging for each checked bag rewards people for travelling light, while giving everyone a free bag punishes the light traveller with higher fares. Sure, the byzantine fee structure in the booking process is annoying - but at the end of the day, flights are now extremely cheap historically speaking, and a pay-for-what-you-use model makes sense.
Of course, the actual solution is to have a better system of busses and trains. And the airline industry is always lobbying against that. But I'm not sure what the comparable action in the grocery industry would be.
Back in the day, I shopped at the one grocery store in a bit of a food desert. They'd have all...I don't remember 10? 12?...checkout lines open all day, and you're still guaranteed to spend half an hour in line. If they could have replaced 2 checkout lines with 6 self-check kiosks, or 4 & 12, it would have helped a lot, but they hadn't been invented yet.
Now, I shop in a better neighborhood where they have 6 kiosks, one staffed checkout, and 8 lanes closed. Start with a technical solution to a real problem, and some MBA is going to come in and figure out how to turn it back into a problem.
Until you get stuck between Ethel (who is trying to fill out a paper check and make small talk because she's lonely) and Bob (who has no sense of personal space and smells like he doesn't know how to wipe).
Non-self-checkout sucks.
"If" in one hand, shit in the other. Which fills up first?
You should change place then??