Stealing is wrong.

I actually prefer being able to choose my own produce and meats.

Edit: I definitely get suckered in by the impulse purchasing though.

Which makes it even worse

The lines are usually minimal (1 or 2 people) during the time of day I typically go shopping, and I drive an electric that is charged in my garage.

These people being forced to stand all day in the USA is pure insanity looking from the outside.

I don’t think, nor did I say, they needed to do more. I’m also not particularly fond of small talk, so I dont typically chat with them. They’re paid to do a job, so why would I offer to do that job for free?

If it was up to me, they wouldn’t be forced to stand all shift or be underpaid, but since I’m not in charge of shit I can’t change their company’s policies.

barely fill one bag

Right? That’s another pet peeve of mine, the inefficiency. I bring up to 6 bags sometimes and somehow they manage to use all of them for a small haul of groceries, and randomly mixed too (bread smushed in with cans, raw meat mixed with hygiene products, etc.)

I get it, they’re not paid enough to be that meticulous; that’s why I’d rather do it myself.

check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different

Like a vending machine? Or the gas station? Or the grocery pickup, where I pay online?
What makes a human being present for me giving my money to a machine different if it’s a grocery store as opposed to one of those?

Sorry your experience sucks. Stores near me regularly have both open and the self checkout is invariably significantly faster. It’s not like I just didn’t notice that something I do several times a week actually sucks.

Yea the issue is the employer doing it to make more profit instead of spreading the more profit they make to the workers. There is nothing wrong with self check out. There is something wrong with people being paid shit when the company is sending dividends to stockholders instead.

It doesn’t, it’s because people shoplift at self checkout all the time and the big retailers can’t figure out how to stop it. Almost every shop in my town forces you to do self checkout, they don’t even have cashiers most of the time. Last time I was at my local walmart they had like 6 self checkouts and 4 cashiers just standing there staring at everyone trying to find shoplifters. They still can’t find them though lol.

I respect your preference, and for some people it could even be considered a “reasonable accommodation.”

But I prefer to have the person who does this all day whip through the scanning and bagging while I pay up. It may not be rocket surgery, but good cashiers have an efficiency of eye/brain/hand motion that I can’t match. Especially when there’s multiples of the same item, their machine trusts them to do it the efficient way rather than scanning and weighing each item. Or having the produce codes at their fingertips without stopping to read them. And since all machines have little quirks, it’s helpful to know exactly where to apply “percussive maintenance.”

I am comfortable speaking with strangers, so I always thank them and wish them a good day. And I don’t stand for entitled assholes giving them shit, either.

Having both options is best and should be part of ADA compliance.

so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.

Aren’t walmart employees also required to stand all day? Kinda insane to me that they’re not allowed to just sit down

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Walmart cashier without a line. Doesn’t matter how many cashier lanes and self checkouts are open. Find it hard to belief they are ever able to just stand around.

They have some new AI thing watching the cameras that will make that a lot harder. Like, it wouldn’t let me scan the same item twice instead of scanning both identical items.

Why would you need someone to bag your shit, lol?

That is nonexistent in my country except in the single Costco in the entire country and everyone feels pretty uncomfortable about it.

you’re eating that cost

Isn’t the bag fee usually a tax though? By not paying it you’re not screwing the store, you’re screwing whoever would get that tax (e.g. infrastructure, aid programs, etc)

I also don’t frequent you as often.

This might actually do something, if enough people are committed to it.

trader joes, cashier does it too

Krogers still have baggers.

You’re either the kind of person who reads their emails in real time and freaks if that little blue number ever reads “2” or you’re the kind of person who selects their entire inbox and marks it as read twice a decade.

My wife is the former. I am the latter. I get too much junk. I go through my inbox a few times a day, read what looks important, and ignore the rest. I have 2,174 unread emails in my inbox and a folder called “auto junk” with 5,116 in it.

As opposed to switching to proprietary messaging services.

I had an employee direct me to self checkout at a fucking gas station were I was the only customer in the store. Shits pathetic.

If the customer wanted to use the self checkout they’d be going to the self checkout …

I’ll give them a “partly right in spite of themselves” for sure.

I always go into stores to throw stuff from the racks onto the floor, to make sure the people whose job it is to clean that up stay employed.

I never buy anything of course, I don’t want stuff that’s been on the floor!

I’d book a flight through a travel agency if these still existed. Booking online is pure dread to me. I’m too young to have ever seen a travel agency but the concept of not having to deal with Ryanair and Wizzair is very luring.

Also, let’s not forget that you are doing someone’s job simply for using a shopping cart at all. Traditional grocers didn’t have anything like the aisles we wander through now. Rather, there would basically be a warehouse with a counter at the front. You walked up with your list of items, gave it to the grocer, and they would grab the items for you. Customers gathering goods themselves didn’t come about until the age of the supermarket starting in the mid 20th century.

This is also why I have zero sympathy for stores that complain about theft and shrinkage. They’re the ones choosing to operate in a business model that makes theft easier. Traditional grocers didn’t have to worry about shoplifting, as everything was kept behind the counter. Sure, armed robbery was a concern then as it is now, but shoplifting wasn’t a concern.

When the grocery stores abandoned the traditional model, they realized the money they saved on labor would more than make up for the increased losses due to shoplifting. And that was simply a choice they made. And it’s the same with self-checkout. They made a business decision that would inevitably result in increased theft, and they have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they don’t like the increased theft, they can go back to cashiers. Or hell, there’s nothing stopping Walmart from going all the way back to the traditional dry goods store model even. That would work really well with online orders as well. You don’t even let customers wander through most of the store. You just have a very long counter at the front of the store that customers walk up and tell the workers what they want. And the workers gather the order. You either wait for them to gather it, or you place the order in advance and have it ready when you pick it up. If Walmart did this, shoplifting would become virtually impossible. Their labor costs would skyrocket, but Walmart has it in its power to completely eliminate shoplifting if they really want to.