“They” Hate “Us”
November 27th, 2007Worth reading especially for the embedded The Hills video. Yes, I am forced to watch it. I do not claim to understand MTV’s version of reality. Never have, really. If I ran a music label, I’d be all about starting a better music channel. With music. Sorry. Off the rails.
Nothing says that a company has given up more than forcing people to check themselves out. o
I stopped shopping at the Smiths in the Aves for this exact reason. Pisses me off every time.
I have this happen to me frequently when my four sons are with me in the grocery store. Between wanting to “help” me scan the stuff, or just leaning on the scale under the bags, I usually have a nightmarish time getting through the self checkout. If I’m by myself, it usually goes faster, but you never know when you’ll do something minor that cocks up the entire system and you have to stand in shame while you wait for the person fifty feet away to come over with the key card and make you feel like an idiot.
Okay, that is simultaneously the best and worst looped clip of The Hills EVER. Whenever Spencer is on screen, I want to punch him in the fake teeth; which is exactly what I want to do to those self check-out lanes at the grocery store.
Jules
[redundant URL deleted.]
Self check outs would be a great idea if they actually worked. Two things need to change however, the voice that screams “PLEASE PLACE ITEM ON SCALE!” has to go and the machines have to stop sucking.
Apparently I’m in the minority because I actually like the self-checkout lanes. At the grocery store I frequent they aren’t mandatory. In fact, there are only a couple of self-service lanes vs dozens of full-service lanes. This seems to attract only the “minimal item” shoppers, so the lines are usually short and have become the de facto express-express lanes.
I don’t mind the self-checkout lanes when I have so few items that I can carry them without a cart or basket. What makes me INSANE is when I have those four items and the person in front of me has ignored the three open people-lanes to check her TWO CARTS worth of groceries out by herself.
That makes me crazy.
There’s part of me that hates the self-checkout because it’s not like they give me an extra discount for helping the company reduce staffing costs.
However, the part of me that loves them usually wins. I get so tired of the inane conversation and general idiocy of the cashiers. Yes, I realize that cashiers are people, not robots.
Plus, I can usually go faster on those things and get out quicker than going through a human cashier.
I like the self-checkout because they don’t put my plastic wrapped chicken in a plastic bag. Then put my plastic wrapped beef in a plastic bag, then wrap those two plastic bags in a plastic bag which they then put in a plastic bag with the rest of my food. They do this even when I bring my own bags.
I don’t want to be an anal retentive hippy. But they force my hand.
i’m with tim. i like the self check-out lines because the staff at my store enjoy giving me plastic plastic plastic and look at my like i’m a complete moron when i say it’s ok to put my heavy plastic wrapped chicken in the same bag as a can of beans…without an additional protective layer of plastic! they must know i’m going to go home and lick the can, hoping for illness and disease.
but i also don’t have kids so i’m never dealing with being a rodeo clown at the same time…..
Most self-checkouts are the suck.
This is the case mainly for the reasons that Heather describes… you touch an item in the bag or anywhere near the bag and the machine goes haywire. Or the self-checkout machines are closed, or are blue-screened, or require the annoyed cashier to actually do something so that you can complete your order. And walk over to the cashier to prove that you are 21 and can legally purchase that alcohol, please.
I’ve found one local grocery store that has a functional self-checkout system that doesn’t frustrate me and has a belt-driven system that moves the items to the end of the counter. A customer bags groceries AFTER the transaction is complete (or while the transaction is being completed, if there are at least two of you there to work both ends). Works perfectly every time (at least in my experience).
The corporate hoohas should get a clue about how most of us really feel about the reality of self-checkout.
I occasionally use the self check-out only if there is no wait and I only have a couple of things. Otherwise I do get a mild anxiety attack having to deal with finding the produce, weighing it, why aren’t the red seedless grapes listed on the screen??!?
It seems to me it’s more about people thinking they don’t have to be personable with the cashier. If they can just do it themselves and get it out of the way it is quicker. It’s why people shop online sometimes instead of going to the store…get rid of the middle man. (I know that e-commerce and self-checkout are a bit of a stretch of comparison, but you get what I’m saying..)
I do love the self check-out and use it whenever possible, maybe a little anti-social. I also agree with Tim, the underneath of my kitchen sick is so full of those plastic bag because I can’t throw them away and seem never seem to remember then when I am headed to the grocery store.
The only reason I truly hate the self checkouts is when you get an old couple standing up there trying to check out their groceries. They can’t even figure out how to use their home phone, yet they’re supposed to figure out how to use these machines? They don’t have distractions like KIDS — they just can’t figure out touch screens. Grr….
ok .. so I guess I am the only one that doesn’t see this link .. says page not found. I have not seen posts on dooce since sunday. Not sure .. I have refreshed everything.. any ideas?
@Sarah, time to empty your cache. I fixed the link. WordPress doesn’t like special characters in links, like trademarks. GRRRRR. Just wondering, are you referring to a feed or a browser when you say you” have not seen posts on dooce since sunday”?
I love self check-out, mainly because I’m a big old introvert and it’s an excuse to not have to interact with another human being. But I have never been to a store where it was the only available option. Seems like the inevitable evolution, but I had no idea until Heather’s post that some stores had already made the leap.
I am with Sarah. I don’t see this post at dooce.com. Lucky for me I check here too! The last post that shows up is the one about youtube.
Hum…….
That would be the same reason why so many are losing jobs, going bankrupt, losing their homes, etc.
Freaking GREED!
Our dollar wouldn’t be so high now if it weren’t for all the government-sanctioned greed (aka a licence to steal)
in the US of A.
The only self-checkout I use is the one at the library when things are really busy there. I much prefer the interaction.
But then I don’t get out much
While I like the idea of self-check-out, I refuse to use these systems. They’re over-engineered counter-intuitive pieces of crap. And the voice recordings seem intentionally designed to inflict embarrassment and shame on end users.
Waiting for the next generation…
We don’t have the sort of self-checkout you seem to have in the US here in the UK. (And I have to say I’m quite glad, from the comments I’ve read here and on ‘Dooce’!) Where we have a self-checkout system, you take a hand-held scanner round the shop with you and scan each item before you put it straight into the bags in your trolley (that’s ‘cart’ to you). Then we hand the scanner to an assistant and just pay them what the scanner tells us to! (I sincerely hope the US system doesn’t come to the UK!)
And I’m also quite concerned that, while we in the UK are being encouraged to bring our own bags to the store to ’save the world’s resources’ by not over-using plastics or filling land-fill sites with non-bio-degradeable waste, you in the US seem to be getting things that are already wrapped in plastic bagged and double bagged! Given the number of you compared with the number of us, I wonder why we are bothering? Sheesh!
Love the new Dooce layout by the way, but I do wonder about the large empty column on the righthand side of the page!
Elaine
I saw this post at Dooce - her sarcastic humor makes me laugh so hard I need to wear diapers! ha ha ha.
I’ll have to post just to up the number of people who like automated. It’s probably mostly because I’m single and used to life in a big city. Now I’ve moved back to my smallish hometown where the collective IQ runs somewhere around 90 and between the fact that most cashiers can’t make correct change even with the display telling them the amount & the fact that I never buy enough to even remotely fill a grocery cart, it’s just faster.
Plus, it’s just a computer–they’re tempermental pieces of sh** anyway, so why let them embarrass me?
I agree with Melinda. Living in a very small town where the cashiers take longer than dealing with a sometimes fussy automated checkout makes it worth it.
I’ve learned that you have to immediately throw the item in the bag and keep all sorts of items and body limbs away from the machine and it works fine. Although I have had similar experiences, I still like it better than the direct human contact of a cashier.
be sure to never put a very big magnet near any of the check out computer equipment as it could make a big mess
I’m not seeing this post at Dooce either.
A bit OT and incredibly niggling, but what’s with the timestamps on the dooce.comments? Or is it just the done thing that everyone who posts a comment does it at 11 minutes past the hour?
I’ve heard of that UK shopping system before and hope it comes to America. Would make things much faster and simpler.
I agree with etherdust that I can get out of the supermarket faster if I self-checkout. It always seems I get the cashier that started last week and doesn’t know where the UPC codes are on anything and have to survey each item on every side before scanning it.
And I agree with Tim with the bagging thing! It drives me up a damn wall! They bag things and then re-bag them. Who does this?! I get a bag for my chicken or beef in the butcher section. I don’t need them re-bagged AGAIN! And why don’t they ever bag a gallon of milk. They just assume you are going to carry it. But what if you have 15 bags of groceries? You have to use one hand to carry that milk all by itself. I bring my own bags now too. But RI also has an excellent recycling program (http://tiny.cc/wysMf) for plastic shopping bags, so at least there is that.
And in response to Elaine in the UK, our Stop & Shop here is soon going to implement that very method of self checkout. You take the scanner around and scan your items and they they check it and you pay on the way out. I am curious how it will work out - and how they will prevent massive amounts of shoplifting, aside from actually counting the items in your basket (which would kind of negate the convenience factor.)