Your that Lidl has a separate shelf is fair enough, they are a bad example. However, you still are rushing to put things back in the basket and, like you mention, depending on scan order making sure things don't get broken is annoying. Also, other supermarkets do not have that separate space so you still are rushing to put your stuff in bags.

Ultimately, you still can't take your time like you can with the self checkout. You just go up, scan stuff, then put everything away.

Exactly this, it's just more convenient even if you are doing more of the work youself

No need to be snarky at people who are not making the decisions.

Almost always unless it’s an outlier situation. Stop and shop self-checkouts have a special place in hell.

I don't go to stores without self-checkout. I have no interest in talking with anyone.

Pretty much every store around me other than Walmart has shut down their self checkout stations due to thefts. So I only use self checkout on the rare occasion I have to go to Walmart

Self-checkout always unless I have loads of stuff. I don't want to talk to someone and it's quicker.

This was a question for me in like 2012 when they started becoming more common here. Never did it occur to me that it was my responsibility to maintain a level of inefficiency in my life to keep someone else employed in a shit job. To me, that kind of calculus is absolutely wild.

Only if I have to, which is increasingly rare these days.

I use self checkout if it’s available. My time is valuable to me and I am able to go through self checkout faster and more efficiently than going to a cashier, so I get to keep more of my time.

It's not even more work. At a staffed checkout I still have to grab all the items and put it in my bag. The only extra work at the self checkout is making sure it beeps while I move everything to my bag.

I do. I got "randomly selected" at the self-checkout for a bag check four times in a row, each time the employee taking everything out of my bag. Got sick of that.

My preferred is self checkout, unfortunately The self checkout at every grocery store i go to is utter SHIT for a weekly trip. They are fine if you have a few items.

For a big shopping trip, The carts are not setup for it, the checkout area is way to small and the registers arent positioned/configured correctly.

One store has a scan option as you go that is awesome. You scan as you go down the isle and put your stuff on your bags, at the end you scan a bar code on the scanner and pay. Only problem.. it typically crashes halfway through the shopping. It is unusable.

Coincidently, I am at Bethany Beach in Delaware, rented a house for Ocean’s Calling, we went to Giant for stuff and AMAZINGLY the self checkout was excellent.

It was a typical chechout lane with a belt etc thar had a self checkout register.. it worked perfecly.

I always use cashiers. After I've been through the store doing the chore of picking out my items I don't feel like scanning and bagging them. Baggers are a luxury IMO.

And I don't mind talking to cashiers, they usually seem less interested in talking than me so it's not a long conversation just "Hey how's it going?" "Getting by!" and "Thank you" as I leave.

If there are long lines at the cashiers or I only have a few items, I'm using self-checkout.

Mostly, yes. I'll be standing in line while others are whipping through the self-checkouts. I'll still be waiting in line while customers unload semi trailers and stock the shelves before they can self-checkout, as that's where it seems to be heading.

I don't get the logic here. You can still say "hey there's some carts out there can I go get them" when the carts are neatly in the corral. There's no advantage to just leaving them wherever.

yeah, it's often faster

Have you thought of becoming a rich white male?

Cashier. I like to help people keep their jobs.

That's the only choice I get where I shop. I like it better, though.

I refuse to use self checkout even if an employee is doing it for me. I will not contribute to companies killing jobs off.

Cashier whenever it's available AND I answer the post shopping surveys and whine about the stupid self checkout.

Only if I have bought a lot of stuff. I've used self checkouts wherever possible for what feels like 15+ years

How does it work? Why don't supermarkets just ask a million for a loaf of bread? More money and profits, right?

Now, I am aware there are cartels and other anticompetitive practices, but no single supermarket chain has a monopoly. There is competition, the margins in the business really are not that high, and supermarkets can and do lower prices to attempt to increase their market share. In fact, for products like bread supermarkets often deliberately sell them at a loss.

Would supermarkets like to put the savings of self-checkout in their own pocket? Absolutely. Can and will they, on the long term? No. If businesses would always pocket such savings, then margins in the entire economy should tend upward over time, and they simply don't.

Well la dee da, Mr. Moneybags here still buys groceries. 🧐

When they were new I would use them on occasion. But now I can't justify it even if I'm only getting like 4 things. With all their cameras , you just know you are being used as training data for something.

Self-checkout reduces cost for the store, but they don't reduce the price of the products. So I'm gonna keep using cashiers since I'm paying for it

If I bought a lot of stuff or I bought something age restricted like alcohol. The person who watches the self checkouts is always really busy so if I need to wait for them to come look at my ID I'm going to be there a minute.

I worked as a cashier at a grocery store for several years, I generally refuse to self checkout. It seems it as a shifting of responsibility from the store to the shopper to ensure that everything is calculated correctly.

They used to pay and train people to do this, now they’ve decided that their shoppers can do it and if something goes wrong then they get to decide that you were stealing.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/24/us-news/olympian-former-valparaiso-university-softball-coach-meaggan-pettipiece/

Yes. Fuck ringing up my own groceries. I am not an employee and I do not labor for the grocery store. If I am forced to ring out my own groceries and do that labor, I will be getting paid via shoplifting an item as I check out.

1. handheld scanners
2. self service
3. human checkout

The best way to get me to sign up for your data gathering 'loyalty card' is to get handheld scanners.

Exactly. In Canada the grocery giants post a new record profit every quarter. They don’t need my unpaid labour.

I use the cashier, but still bag my own. Just kinda like bagging groceries

Yep. I don’t go to the store to work. Fuck that.

Y’all know this is just yet more transfer of wealth right?

Edit: Allow me to go further. You have heard of trickle down economics? Supporters say if you let billionaires keep more money, they will create jobs and the money trickles back down

Checkouts where you scan your own purchases is the perfect counter example. They charge the same, AND steal your productivity.

At my local Aldi (Ohio, USA), I just put boxes into the new cart (where they put everything after it's been scanned) before they start. Normally, they're happy to put things directly into those boxes. Boxes are free, durable, and (at least for me) a lot more convenient than bags. Even moreso for the million plastic bags I would get elsewhere.

There have been reports that some chains like target and Meijer are monitoring self-checkout errors like theft, and waiting until it adds up to become a criminal issue. All of the individual pieces are there and confirmed, it just becomes a question of how long until it becomes common.

IOW, if a cashier makes mistakes, I might get something for free. If I self-checkout and make mistakes, I might get arrested.

Just barely, groceries are absurdly expensive right now. I am at a high cost of living region (NE USA), but seems bad everywhere. I started getting produce from a CSA from a local farm, turned out to be a good value so far.

They've been experimenting with self-service checkouts for decades. I remember being a young teen in the 70s, and going to a store with my grandma, who was a vocal union supporter.

We were waiting in line, and a girl kept trying to get people to come over and try their new self-serve line. She asked my grandma a few times, before my grandmother, who worked in the fur department of a major department store, said sharply "Listen, young lady, I'm trying to save your JOB! I don't work for this store, I want an EMPLOYEE to ring me up."

That statement has been a huge influence on my life, and how I view the world.

Yeah, but at my grocery store there tend to be folks with disabilities doing the bagging, and I wouldn't want anyone to take it the wrong way if I told them not to do their job. Even if that's not a problem it still feels awkward having someone just standing there.

Where I shop there's only two in the center parking and you may as well take it all the way back into the store if you're not in the main parking area. I mean I'm not saying I don't put a cart away if the corral is nearby but I mean I'm not going to take 5 minutes to put a cart away. Also those magnetic wheel locks, nothing I can do about that, it's anchored to where it locks.

Head in the sand my dude. Canadian groceries were caught red handed colluding on bread price fixing. There was a massive class action lawsuit. Companies charge as much as they can get away with and will always push the numbers higher. They're not eating costs out of the goodness of their heart, loss-leaders lead to more spending.

Head in the sand my dude. Canadian groceries were caught red handed colluding on bread price fixing.

Yes, I am aware there are cartels and other anticompetitive practices. I said as much in a comment on Lemmy not long ago - with some detective work you may be able to find it.

Companies charge as much as they can get away with and will always push the numbers higher. They’re not eating costs outbid the goodness of their heart, loss-leaders lead to more spending.

Obviously. And what they can get away with is profit margins up to a certain limit (assuming no monopolies, and at least moderately effective anti-cartel measures), that limit being the point where it becomes easy to enter the market or undercut a competitor, gain massive market share, and still make a lot of money.

They cannot get away with just endlessly taking all profits from productivity gains. These gains have been enormous since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and in most markets profits are on the order of a few percent of turnover, if that.

I do when I have alcohol or an item with a security tag.

I use the Self-Checkout, cos it's usually way faster, since there are a lot less people standing in line there. I don't mind having to do the scanning myself if it means I can leave the store more quickly. Y'all be basically wasting your free time standing in line lol.

You paid them and then did the work for them.

So what? It's not back-breaking work. And since I live alone, the amount of groceries I buy isn't that much. I rather have the additional free time than having to stand in the queue.

I would use the cashier almost exclusively, but I'm usually checking out with something else who cares a lot more about just getting out the door sooner. Thing is that I think many people at this point just assume that the self checkout will be faster so they simply default to waiting in the self checkout queue when I've seen cashier lanes completely empty.

Unless I've got a lot of produce, I use self checkout. I don't like the human interaction.

I wish more places were like Uniqlo where you can toss everything into a bin and it reads the RFID tags instead of having to scan individual items.

I usually have a full cart and value someone else keeping track of what's been scanned already

Everyone in this thread: I avoid self checkout like the plague, I don't want to replace employees

My mom: works for a grocery store, never uses the regular checkout if possible

There will always be employees at grocery stores and the scan while walking type of self checkout is more convenient than any other type of checkout.