Are Self-Checkout Registers On Their Way Out In Utah?
The complaints are numerous when it comes to self checkout lanes in stores.
"It's too impersonal."
"It always glitches out."
"I hate having to scan things myself."
"Why is it telling me that I have to bag my gallon of milk?"
It won't take my discount/coupon."
And the list could go on and on.
Finally, some stores are listening. Led by the British supermarket chain Booths, retailers worldwide are starting to rethink the idea of self checkout.
Along with our complaints, many retail stores are finding the incidents of theft on the rise, or more accurately, the incidents of undercharging. Basically, some customers are getting more expensive items than they are paying for by purposely scanning the wrong bar codes.
Slowness has also been a problem, especially when it comes to buying items like alcohol or tobacco that require age verification by a store associate.
In the United States, Walmart, Costco, Wegmans and other chains are revising their self-checkout strategies.
Walmart has removed self checkout lines in many of its New Mexico stores and promises more nationwide in the future. Costco is adding more employees in the "self checkout area" to expedite the process and Shoprite stores are also making moves to take out self checkouts.
The Atlantic sums it up nicely.
You know how this process actually goes by now: You still have to wait in line. The checkout kiosks bleat and flash when you fail to set a purchase down in the right spot. Scanning those items is sometimes a crapshoot—wave a barcode too vigorously in front of an uncooperative machine, and suddenly you’ve scanned it two or three times. Then you need to locate the usually lone employee charged with supervising all of the finicky kiosks, who will radiate exasperation at you while scanning her ID badge and tapping the kiosk’s touch screen from pure muscle memory. If you want to buy something that even might carry some kind of arbitrary purchase restriction—not just obvious things such as alcohol, but also products as seemingly innocuous as a generic antihistamine—well, maybe don’t do that.
All these moves do not signal the end of self checkout, but at least retailers are recognizing that the system as it is does not work. It is broken and needs fixing.
What that will take is anyone's guess, but at least they're acknowledging there is a problem.
NBC News recently reported: "While some stores are moving away from self-checkout, the option doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. An estimated 44% of transactions at grocery stores took place in self-checkout lanes last year, according to the Food Industry Association, up from 29% in 2022."
Some common (and funny) memes about self checkout:
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