Hate the self-checkouts?

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rusty

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The local Walmart manager hates the self-checkouts. He says they average 9% loss through them. Remember, the bonus check the manager gets at the end of the year is based on his store's profit. My cousin managed one for a few years and said that her bonus check was usually more than she had made all year. I have sat over on a bench across from the self-checks while waiting for my wife and watched stuff go through that was never rung up.
 
Just yesterday my wife wanted to do self checkout. I asked if hell had frozen over? Apparently she does it when she is by herself to save time. I told her if she wants to get done sooner she should leave home earlier. I work 50 hours a week and still manage. The ride home was refreshingly quiet.
 
I prefer it. I can bag my stuff the way I want it
And the walmart I go to the employees who are in "charge" of that area are always fast to come when theres a problem if they're not helping another customer
 
I figure the store is not paying me to do their work so why would I do it?
They were sold on the idea that it would save them the cost of checkers salary, insurance and vacation pay...
It was a failure and they have to pay a "checker" to stand by to watch for customers having problems.
 
I figure the store is not paying me to do their work so why would I do it?
They were sold on the idea that it would save them the cost of checkers salary, insurance and vacation pay...
It was a failure and they have to pay a "checker" to stand by to watch for customers having problems.
And to try to hold down loss from theft.
Our local Walmart is having a labor shortage. Many of the people they would have hired were staying home for the enhanced unemployment. My stepson was fired from Walmart after 4 years because he would not get vaccinated. Every time he has been vaccinated in the past, he has had a seizure. They did not care.
 
I might use one if I got a good discount. Otherwise, a real person that works there can ring up my stuff. I left a cartload of stuff at Target a couple weeks ago, all they had open was" Self Checkout". I hope they got the Ice Cream back in the freezer before it melted on everything else.
 
On one of the rare occasions, I went to Walmart I had to use self-check.
When I got to my truck I realized I had not rung up a 40-pound box of cat litter. So I pushed the cart back in and explained to the woman at the door what I had done. She was so amazed someone would come back she had to go tell her coworkers.
My wife hates the self-check and now they have changed most of the payment options to cards only no cash.
I predict in the not too distant future they will have a system that rings up everything as you push your cart past a scanner. No unloading and scanning individual items just mass scanning. I saw one of those systems demoed years ago. Not sure why it's not been implemented yet.
The system I saw was accurate and it did not miss a single item. One of our guys snuck a can out of the cart and said do it again. It did not ring up the missing can.
We will never see savings because they go all self-check. The stores will keep that money.
 
If stores are losing money because of dishonest customers not scanning items, then devise a means to scan all of the items in a cart all at once, present a bill and a manifest at payment. Boom. Problem solved. That tech can and should be invented/perfected by stores like Wally Whirled.

Now, my beef is with some of the brain-donors passing themselves off as checkout clerks. They're unbelievably slow, inattentive, and could not give less of a **** about their customers or, by extension, their employer if their lives depended on it. If this is the new normal then let's do away with humans handling checking out and relegate it to automation (see above).
 
Our local Walmart Superstore only had one cashier after 11 pm when they were open 24 hours and the self-checks were closed. They always had several cartloads of stuff to put back because people got tired of waiting. This store is always busy and only has two registers open in the day time. I have walked out myself and left stuff sitting,
 
I might use one if I got a good discount. Otherwise, a real person that works there can ring up my stuff. I left a cartload of stuff at Target a couple weeks ago, all they had open was" Self Checkout". I hope they got the Ice Cream back in the freezer before it melted on everything else.
Where are all the damrobots and AI that we were supposed to fear were going to take over everything?
My groceries are bagged by a 16-y/o that doesn't even know yet what our state capitol is ☹.
Can that job be done by a $200K robot?
Sure, but not for $8 per hour.
I never go to squalmart.
I did enough work for them 'back in the day' to see how they operate.
If you don't think 'lumpers' still exist, go in the back of any Walmart store after 6pm.
(After the Great Depression, lumpers were homeless people that showed up at the back of stores at night to unload trucks by hand).
Today at every WM:
3.jpg


Edit: If you want to support illegal immigrants, spend your money at Wal-Mart:
this-is-how-the-people-unloading-truck-throw-one-touch-break-packs-to.jpg
 
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I'll pump my own gas, but don't use self checkouts at stores. Recently at Home Depot that's all that they had open. So I had an employee do it for me. I'm that stubborn. And she was just standing around. No choice in pumping my own in our little town, it's not manned at all. Just a pump and a swipe card.
 
Self check out machines function better than a few years ago but still have major issues with certain items. The “No Cash” machines drive me nuts. If my total is less than $80 (which it usually is) I pay cash. More often than not… out of 8-10 machines only 1 accepts cash and there is 15 people waiting for that one machine. I find myself paying with a debit card when I really didn’t want too.

Size of items… this one drives me nuts!!!@!!! The machine should know the item you just scanned is too big for a bag or to big to fit on the scale. But Nooooo! Just because the 50lb sack of dog food won’t fit on the scale (an item I just scanned) the machine shuts down… the red light on pole starts flashing and I have to stand and wait for a non-existent employee to show up, enter their code before I can resume check-out. If the machines are busy I’ve waited 5+ minutes before! For no other reason than the machine doesn’t know the size of a sack of dog food or jumbo pkg of paper towels.

Then there is produce @#$%. I’ve noticed about 15% of the time the produce item I purchased isn’t in the computer screen I can see… I have to press the button and stand like an idiot waiting for an employee to enter their code then manually enter the barcode number if there is one! Want to see something so sad it’s funny? Buy produce who’s barcode isn’t in the computer!!! Soon there will be a crew of employees trying to figure out how to enter a price! It seems I almost always buy one of these items.

So no – I avoid the annoying self check out machines.
 
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self-check is what I prefer since frequently the cashiers don't know what various produce items are and will ring them up as something else. I trust the self-check over the cashier. They are usually pretty quick to attend to the blinking red light since they just replaced a lot of cash registers with self checks. They usually didn't have enough cash registers open before the change so it seems like there are more people working that area than before. ? Before the new self-checks, I stopped in on a Saturday evening around 7 and was 7th person back at one of 2 manned registers. I called the store and asked if they could open another register. They did.
:ghostly:

@backlash I also overlooked an item in my cart and it wasn't rung up, when I went back in with it I got the same kind of response you did. She was surprised I came back in to pay for it. "Most people wouldn't," she said. :rolleyes:
 
I like having a real person at checkout, my wife usually has a running tab on how much she's buying so if there is a discrepancy of end price she'll let them know. The only problem I've run across is the lack of service people in stores when I need help in finding something, I spend half my time looking for help in stores like Home Depot and last week I walked all over Harbor Freight looking for a hammer drill and bits, the one checkout clerk was not all that helpful, finally a guy came and helped me saying, "Sorry for the wait.", every business is short handed. My feeling is were coming close to the end of anything being normal anymore, so get important supplies while you can. As it is right now I'm in the process of changing out a bathtub valve, because years ago when we bought it, I should have gotten extra valve cartridges, Chicago Brass no longer makes them, I'm installing a Delta single control valve and may try to get extra valves for it, I really wish I had more foresight at the time I got the Chicago Brass valve, I thought it would last a life time because they were ceramic valves and up to the point that the cold water valve stem froze, it had worked wonderfully, I hate being this old to learn such a lesson.
 
I use them when the store is crowded.
Long ago, in a far way town, I shopped at Walmart & I always went when I got off work, at 4.00am, no a soul in the store, who was not on the clock.
 
I will use self checkout if I only have four or five items, but that's pretty rare. A couple things don't work well at self checkout - beer and medicines. You gotta get the employee over there to put their all powerful little card in the scanner when you buy those, and usually the employee is tied up with the illiterate trailer trash clowns and it takes ten minutes to get any help...
 
Other than pumping my own gas I never use self check. I don't get a price break for doing work at a given store.
I see your point, but time is money, so when it saves me time & make it easy to get away from stupid & ignorant people, then I am well paid.
 
I refuse to contribute to people losing their jobs. If they could replace them all with machines they would. At the Wal Mart I use/frequent you cannot scan produce. That has to go through a staffed checkout. I hate them but I expect there will be more of them in the future. Unless you live in Commiefornia where you can steal up to $950.00 with no penalty.
 
While I see your point, there are more openings then people here, at this time.
It is the push to raise minimum wage & unemployment cost that is driving this self service movement.
The cost of purchasing + the cost of trained labor to maintain it + replacement of said machine is high.
However it does not lay out of work, quit without notice, slow production because it is lazy or for spite.
Japan started using Robots in 1970's & their unemployment is 2.97% in 2020.
The problem is more in depth than rich greedy men.


 
I neer did the self checkout. I want a store employee to verify everything was rung up. Besides I get a veteran discount at Lowe's and am not interested in learning yet another interface to get to the screen for the discount.

Not long ago Lowe's added an automated kiosk to copy keys. It gave me fits and just got someone to cut the keys while did other shopping. Afterwards I realized it was cheaper to not use the kiosk.

Ben
 
I neer did the self checkout. I want a store employee to verify everything was rung up. Besides I get a veteran discount at Lowe's and am not interested in learning yet another interface to get to the screen for the discount.

Not long ago Lowe's added an automated kiosk to copy keys. It gave me fits and just got someone to cut the keys while did other shopping. Afterwards I realized it was cheaper to not use the kiosk.

Ben
Like my brother always says, "I don't work here"🤔😀👎😳
 
I don't generally hit the self checkout, but I appreciate the option of them being there IF they take cash. Every single one of them at WM take plastic only. Grrrr!!!!!! So, the next time I go there, I'm going to put some money (cash) on a gift card so that I can go thru that line if I only have a couple of items and still bascially pay cash. I asked the attendent what the deal was as to why they won't take cash. He said corporate didn't really tell them why. :rolleyes:
 
One afternoon a couple few years ago I saw a younger guy with a cart full of groceries at self-check, he scanned all his stuff and walked out pushing his cart. I didn't realize he hadn't paid until I walked past the self-check he had used and the amount owed was on the screen and he was gone. Not that they would have cared.
 

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