How would you feel if all shops become self-checkout?

28 comments

1. I would hate it.

2. I feel pity for the One person who has the job of monitoring half a dozen self service tills, the lady in the local sainsburys always looks stressed out and harrassed by this job.

   They recently put these spy cameras and screens over every till as well, which give me the creeps.

3. I’d hate having to do the shopping for my elderly in-laws (or risk them starving). For me personally, I wouldn’t care because I go through self checkout most of the time anyway

4. I’d like it if more shops had the *option* for self checkout, especially scan as you shop or till-less checkout (rather than self scan at the end) in supermarkets.

   That said, I don’t think some shops would work as well as self checkout and could be worse if they were. Eg, sewing/craft shops. I’d rather not have fabric cut badly by previous customers if fabric cutting wasn’t part of the service any more, and being able to talk to someone helpful is half the reason I’d shop locally instead of online.

   TL,Dr. Supermarkets yes, little independent shops probably not.

5. I’d be against it.

   Supermarket checkouts are a very good thing for a lot of people. They provide easy and accessible jobs which have very flexible hours, making them ideal for young people, old people, people with commitments, people with disabilities, and people who are content to just work a job. As a customer, they’re generally less hassle than using self-checkout, and typically mean not having a camera in your face as you scan your shit through. They do cost the businesses more than self checkout, but as I don’t own shares in the likes of Tesco, I don’t care about that.

6. All shops won’t go self checkout. Shops targeting low margin copy and paste products may, bespoke and higher quality shops won’t.

   I don’t get the reverence for the high street as it is, rammed to the teeth with the same 5 crap warehouse shops. They are exactly the places that should be online.

   Bring back the local grocers, bakers, butchers, boutique shops etc that are worth walking to.

7. I’d feel sorry for all those people made redundant (checkout staff) with families to support and bills to pay… Your partner, your mother,…you. They needed the job and didn’t just do it for fun. The company would make more profit as machines work 24/7, don’t need breaks, time off, and God forbid wages too !
   People are also more helpful than machines when there’s a problem. The self service checkout assistant you see today looks after 6 to 12 machines, replacing probably six colleagues. Oh, and you’re actually paying to do their old job!

   Also, when the till server crashes ( glitches, bugs or a hack) everything stops… it happens today and still will in the future.

8. I’d love it (I work in retail)

9. Not for me, I think as a society we need these jobs and the human contact it brings

   The Lidl near work doesn’t have the regular tills open and the desk is just a dumping ground for stock and packaging

10. unexpected item in bagging area

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    …

    terrible

11. I’ll go one step further. All supermarkets should be like Amazon fresh. Scan your phone/card on the way in. Fill your bag. Walk out.

12. They’re unlikely to given many retailers are testing technology where you don’t even need a checkout at all. Amazon Fresh have a few locations in London which are like this. Literally grab and go.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58951984

    They also have a handy side effect of making it pretty impossible to steal things.

13. Half of Reddit would love it and then, months later, ask for therapy recommendations to fix their chronic loneliness and social anxiety.

14. Bitter and angry. Same as always.

15. Annoyed, but there’s a (formerly co-op) small shop near me that removed the self checkouts.

    Totally infuriating. Spent 10 minutes queuing to the checkout just to buy a drink in my lunch break.

    They used to have 3 self checkouts. I would have spent 30 seconds in that shop before.

    Not going there again.

16. Only if they all agree for the bagging area to be always on the same side.

17. I run a catering business… when there is only self scan it is a huge pain in the cunt when I’m buying 80 of the same product. My local tesco likes to have one or 2 real checkouts open and a fuck tonne of self scan, it’s mental, but I’m not spending an hour scanning the same thing over and over, yes the checkout attendants at self serve can enter a number and let you scan that way, but 9 times out of 10 they don’t know how to and in tesco it only goes upto 10.

18. I like the option of self checkout, but I’m one of the few that love my job in retail (what having a great manager and great coworkers does) so I would hate to see all shops become solely self checkout.

19. I wouldn’t mind at all, but I worked in a shop a few years ago and a lot of elderly people struggle to use self-checkouts and some of them are quite lonely so they enjoy the interaction.

20. Self checkout? Hell no. Scan as you go? Yes please! Totally changes the shopping experience to something almost pleasant.

21. I must have used them 100s of times and maybe 2 or 3 times that I didn’t need the assistance of someone who works there. They’re shit.

22. Well, since they’re not going to pass the savings onto the customers, they can fuck off.

23. I worked as a cashier it’s an awful job and I’m really surprised by how many comments seem to think that getting people to do a shit job that doesn’t need doing just so they can be paid is somehow a good thing. Might as well just pay the Poors to dig trenches or jog in circles and cut out the supermarket middle man. Same with providing interaction for the elderly, how messed up is it that talking to a cashier in a shop is seen an indispensable part of elderly care.

    I much prefer self checkouts as I always found retails customer service very jarring and fake. I know the lady on Tesco’s checkout scanning my shopping couldn’t give a fuck about my day or if I have a bonus card and despite all the smiles and pleasantries she would probably rather be just about anywhere else and talking to just about anybody else so why pretend otherwise. Would rather businesses operate efficiently and pay tax to address the other issues.

24. It’s baffling that so many of the top comments are basically “what about the jobs?” Ignoring just about every technological advancement ever since the industrial revolution.

    There will come a time, potentially in the not too distant future, when the model of our society is unsustainable due to the lack of jobs. For example, when lorry driving becomes automated there will be a huge chunk of the late middle aged male population left without transferable skills or obvious alternative opportunities.

    The truth is, we don’t live to work. We work to live. We really should be doing something radical now to make the transition to an efficient, healthy, fulfilling society that benefits from automation and all of the potential that it has to allow us to enjoy our lives rather than spend it working in retail.

25. Highly annoyed. How are disabled people and the elderly meant to cope with that? Plus, the general public are too stupid or selfish to do it with any speed. I always go to a regular till because I get through them much more quickly. Can you imagine everyone in ALDI self checking their overflowing trollies?

26. Annoying, booze, redbulls, ciggie stuff.
    Nightmare trying to authorize 5 of them at once, how can IDs be checked in a timely manner?

27. A key part of my job (butcher) is engaging with customers. Spend a good bit of money? Here try some of these new flavour sausages. Want a pound of stir fry? Here, have the last of the try since its almost finished. You dont get those nice little extras from a robot till. Never mind about cooking times/instructions, substitutes for things we may not have etc.

28. I would hate this to happen. There are already too many idiots who don’t know how to use the self-checkout that doing this would just slow down the shopping experience for everyone.

    Every time I go to my local Co op there is a queue of 5/6 people waiting to be served, while both self-checkouts are ALWAYS free. This saves me a lot of time and I’d hate to get stuck behind Doris and Ethel because they don’t know what “please place your item on the bagging scale” means.