Yeah, that’s probably true. Remember how all the execs decided to replace cashiers with robots, then the stores started losing money because a. it made stealing a lot easier and b. people would avoid stores that only had self-checkout robots and never had anyone to help you because a robot doesn’t know where the flour is. Now the self checkouts are being decommissioned and we’re going back to regular human cashiers. It turns out cashiers do more than just scan barcodes. But, upper management didn’t get to where they are by being smart.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 14 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Now the self checkouts are being decommissioned and we’re going back to regular human cashiers.

Maybe this is North American thing because in Europe they never really got rid of human cashiers, they just had the automated systems alongside the human cashiers.

I don't know of any store that went over to 100% self-checkout

[–] Narauko@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I hate shopping at Lowe's now because they physically removed the regular checkouts and only have a square of self checkouts. They did this so one "cashier" can watch over everything, saving labor on multiple cashiers. They also paired down every other department so it's just as hard (or possibly harder) to get assistance in a department as at Home Depot. Feels like I'm watch the death spiral in full swing.

Less shoppers means less staff. Less staff means service suffers. Poor service means less shoppers. Rinse and repeat. This is happening at almost every brick and mortar retail business though, not just Lowe's. It's like the entire economy has turned into Circuit City trying to keep the lights on.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I live in California, so any place that sells alcohol needs at least one real cashier. A lot of places took that “at least one” to be an upper limit, not a lower one. For a while there, going into Albertsons was a nightmare. Twenty minutes shopping, another twenty waiting to check out because everybody had alcohol.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

I only know a single place with exactly two of them. The nearest Ikea. Other than those two it's human cashiers everywhere.

[–] Lyrl@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

My local grocery store has half the self checkouts they installed permanently disabled, and plans to remove them. They never got rid of human cashiers, but they misjudged the optimal ratio of selfcheck/cashier way too heavily on the self check side.

[–] TurtleTourParty@midwest.social 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They also underestimated how lazy people are. Personally I will never use a self checkout if a have a bunch of produce (which is most trips to the grocery store). I can't be bothered to slowly look up each item in their database.

[–] Honytawk@feddit.nl 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait, you guys don't have scanners to scan your items?

Never had to look anything up in a database while shopping.

[–] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago

Your produce has barcodes printed on it?

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yep. When I was a cashier in a grocery store, I had every code memorized except some of the less popular bulk nuts. A human cashier is way faster than a self checkout.