this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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I went to the US for a few days. Their self checkouts seem to be universally awful, compared to the UK or German equivalent.
While the hardware is far less reliable, and more convoluted, it's the users that seem the main issue. Self checkout is generally intended (over here) to shift the fast, small shops out of the main queues. 1 big line and a dozen or more tills. In the states they treat it as just another till. Built for trollies, and 1 queue per till. Combined with a slow user and it becomes hell rapidly.
My local grocery store limits self checkout to 10 items or less. My guess is that people have a hard time counting to 10 and just assume that their cart full of groceries is probably 10 items or less.
To be fair, that's a fairly universal problem. In the UK it's a basket Vs trolley split. They do have trolley self checkouts, but it's separate, and mainly intended for scan as you shop.
On a side note, what's with American supermarkets not having baskets at all. Did I just have really weird luck?
Might've just been bad timing where baskets were piled up at the end of the checkout counters and the staff hadn't had the chance to bring them back near the entrances.
THIS is why I hate selfcheckout, it WILL be used to fire all retail checkout workers IRRESPECTIVE of whether self checkout is actually more efficient and useful as a full replacement.
Meanwhile introverts celebrate self checkout here in the US with a shallow understanding of the process of extreme enshittification that is happening that is functionally irreversible especially in a country as broken as the US.
In the UK, they've taken some tills out. About 4 tills become 16 self checkouts. They still have plenty of tills for normal checkout.
It definitely lets less staff get more people through, in less time. So far, it's not been excessively abused over here. It's also made my life significantly less annoying.