An AP story that showed up in the Lafayette Journal & Courier with a contribution from Max Showalter suggests that self-serve grocery lanes might be diminishing.
The articles says that studies are showing that most people prefer checking out with a live cashier and, therefore, some chains are phasing out the self-serve lines.
Market studies cited by the Arlington, Va.-based Food Marketing Institute found only 16 percent of supermarket transactions in 2010 were done at self-checkout lanes in stores that provided the option. That’s down from a high of 22 percent three years ago.
Overall, people reported being much more satisfied with their supermarket experience when they used traditional cashier-staffed lanes.
I’m definitely with the folks in the story who prefer the self-serve checkout lanes. It’s quick, easy, and I don’t have to deal with people.
Update Patton Oswalt has a bit:
1) they’re usually closed at the stores i frequent, except during peak hours. The only place this isn’t necessarily true is Home Depot, primarily because the traffic is such that one person can lazily run 4 registers.
2) So many of them were set up and configured by idiots its beyond belief. This goes for the PIN Pads at almost every regular cash register too. When i swipe my card, you ask for my PIN. Then you ask if I want cash back. Then you confirm my amount. How that order of events can be screwed up so readily, I’m not sure, but it seems that no two stores do its quite the same.
3) Those checkouts rarely see maintenance, and people are too stupid/lazy/conceited/egomaniacal to wipe the glass screen off themselves, or they struggle with unresponsive scales, broken screens, worn-out PIN Pads, etc. Probably the biggest problem I regularly encounter is dirty scanning surfaces though. Somebody spills something on the register and it gets lazily mopped up, but not truly cleaned for untold amounts of time. Lasers can’t see through dirty glass. That’s combined with the fact that most people are woefully ignorant to how barcodes work in general, or that they are there at all, and that they are what “makes the checkout-thingie beep”. Having stood behind many a’ person, male, female, young old, at these checkouts, and watched them dumbly wave an item repeatedly in front of the scanner, when the barcode is plainly pointed at them, instead of the scanner, I am completely convinced most people thing this shit is all accomplished purely by some form of magic, and that geeks like myself represent some form of Harry Potter / wizard-walking-among-you type delusion, when we kindly, with as much patience as we can muster, ask if we may intercede, turn the item around, and have the scanner magically BEEP immediately.
4) the bag weighing / measuring thing is almost always broken and even when its not, its frustrating beyond all acceptable parameters. No, my 24-pack of Dr Pepper isn’t going in your damned bagging area. Neither is the 35-Gallon garbage can, etc. Where is the intelligence that should be built into these kinds of systems? Have a sticker dispenser. You scan a big item, instead of prompting to bag, it spits out a sticker. You attach sticker to said goods, and put it in your damned cart. The semi-conscious door attendant looks to make sure anything not in a bag has a sticker. The cashiers already do this, so this isn’t some revolutionary new process.
People like my mother hate self-checkouts. Anybody who is technology-adverse isn’t going to like them. They provide too many stupid caveats, and frankly, some people are just too ignorant and/or conceited to do that work themselves (“work” includes paying attention and learning how the system works, what it expects, and REMEMBERING that information from visit to visit, building upon it with each successive use until something resembling fluency can emerge).
Ok, i’ll shut up now.
“It’s quick, easy, and I don’t have to deal with people”
I’ll bet you have an interesting client base! But if they don’t ask, I won’t tell!
But count me in with you as to prefering the automated checkouts when the flesh-and-blood kinds are busy. Except there ARE times when I don’t act fast enough and want to slap the hell out of that voice that endlessly goads me to “PLEASE PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG” or “DO YOU HAVE ANY COUPONS?” (I don’t collect them…ever) until I either compy or throw the item at the human cashier they’ve assigned to look over the self-check area.
I am not technology averse, but I dislike the self-check out lanes for all the qualities cited already. But my main reason for not using them is this: they displace real people from real jobs that they may need in these hard economic times. If I can (help) give someone a job, while it costs me nothing whatsoever to do so (don’t start with the overhead stuff), I’ll do it. Plus, I don’t mind trading pleasantries — usually makes my day better.
If I can (help) give someone a job, while it costs me nothing whatsoever to do so (don’t start with the overhead stuff), I’ll do it.
Make-work fallacy. The point of self-checkout is that it’s cheaper for the store. That eventually translates into lower prices for you.
Not to mention the jobs of all the nice engineers that design the self checkout systems.
I don’t go to the stores because they’re cheaper; I go because I prefer scanning and bagging myself. (On the rare occasions where I do the week’s grocery shopping, I might use the line with the check out person.) Maybe it’s a control thing; maybe it’s a Protestant work ethic thing. I don’t like valet parking either.
Buzz,
I got your point before you made it. I still think I’ll help give a person a job when it’s in my power to do so.
I like them from a convenience standpoint, especially as an express lane, but dislike them when parents let their kids scan whole orders and make people wait in line for ages because ‘it’s cute.’ It’s not. There’s also a part of me that dislikes the fact that supermarkets are making their customer do even more of what used to be considered their work for free. I know that it’s not a high-profit-margin business but I honestly believe that if they could get away with it they’d get rid of Deli clerks and shelf stockers and have us slicing our own cold cuts and wandering around the stock room.
I’ll tell you what I’d rather the stores fix – the payment method. It asks if I’m using a credit card or debit card. I push the “credit” button and then it STILL asks me for my PIN. They do their best to get you to use your card as a debit card so the fees go on you instead of them.
As far as the self-checkout, I’ve never experienced any of the problems listed above myself. Yes, there are slow people in front of me, but I’ve never had a scanning surface not work, I’ve never had the bagging area scale not work. Plus, most of the places I’ve got DO have an option to say you aren’t bagging a certain item – so it doesn’t try to find the weight.
One local big box store has the following customer service strategy: “If you can find it on our shelves, we will let you pay for it yourself and leave the store with it, and encourage you to return your shopping cart.” The prices are competitive but not much different from the others. The only factors to get me to this store are location and available time. More knowledgeable and helpful staff would attract me to the store more often.