Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZanyProgrammer | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I worked for several years as a cashier as an adult.

I don’t think they do take away jobs, or if they do, its less than supposed. The real problem is that grocery is a low margin business to begin with, and for so many chains it’s a race to the bottom. That means cutting down on the number of cashiers, but that doesn’t exactly mean that self checkouts are taking over.

Almost every store that has self checkouts in addition to staffed checkouts has at least one person normally helping watch the self checkout registers. Thats basically why they aren’t taking a lot of jobs yet. Under normal circumstances, if you got rid of the self checkouts, at most you’d only get one extra register open on average.

View on HN

The self checkout machines are great(ish) for small purchases, but I would hate to do a real grocery run on one. All of the ones I've used insist on me keeping the products in the 'bagging area' during the transaction, and there wouldn't be any room. You also can't get any sort of speed going, because it gets grumpy when you scan more items while it's announcing your items and their prices and the savings. No way to tell it you have 6 of whatever either.

> I would hate to do a real grocery run on one

When we do a full shop we take the barcode scanner with us around the shop, and scan as we take things off the shelf, so we don't need to unload anything at the till.

What stores have those?

All the stores in the UK. You just grab a device like a big phone, scan, put in your bag or pocket, sync at the checkout, and go. No need to re-pack or speak to anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-checkout#Scanning_while_s...

Kroger's at least.

Ah! Are those the things on the blue and white stands? I saw something pop up out front last week but didn't look too closely.

This. The closest grocery store to me opens at 6:00am and only the self-checkout machines are available. The manned registers don't open until 7:00am or sometimes later. The self-checkout is not designed for a cart or even a week's worth of groceries. The only way to do it, is to continually have the clerk come over and override the system, as you put a bag on the floor or back in the cart.

Upon moving here, I endured this twice, before switching stores. I still use this one on occasion; but, only if I can put everything in a hand basket.

I’ve actually noticed the opposite-stores with self checkout have them closed in the very early morning AM. Probably don’t have the staffing to stock them with tills.

> All of the ones I've used insist on me keeping the products in the 'bagging area' during the transaction, and there wouldn't be any room.

There’s a button to skip the bagging area. I think it’s intended for large items that wouldn’t fit, but you could also go straight to the cart with smaller items. Usually the machine doesn’t like if you remove something that was previously placed in the bagging area though, so that’s an annoyance for large orders that could be accumulated into bags.

Yeah, it's fine for a few barcoded items. Unfortunately, my observation is that once places put in self-checkout, they really cut back on the cashiers because most people would just keep using cashiers all other things being equal. So they basically need to discourage cashier use.

I think the problem is that self checkouts or no self checkouts, stores are cutting back on the number of cashiers. It happens even in stores without self checkout.

They had this at the walmart I frequent and at some point they've loosened this restriction by turning it off, as too many people probably complained.

The Edeka (german brand run by a cooperative (sic!)) at the Munich railway station switched to this system some time ago. It is not very usual in Germany, because you need security personnel anyway in the shop, so what gives. In the end they switched back because long queues were building up because it took so long and they needed extra personnel to help people with the interface. It was a nice try but didn't work. I know from other cities (e.g. Zurich) that it works fine, but they also need about the same number of people as before because someone has to fight off the shoplifters anyway.

> they also need about the same number of people as before because some one has to fight off the swindlers.

Pretty sure that's not generally the case. In Migros (Swiss supermarket chain), where I shop, they have one or two people monitoring 10-15 self-checkout stations. Even though the customers might be a bit slower scanning than full time cashiers, that's still a lot less people than an equivalent amount of old-school checkout lanes.

I think it depends on the surroundings and the level of trust in the customers. Anecdote: when I was a child we had a small groceries shop in our street where I would go and get my sweets of stuff that my mum needed for cooking. So when the owner of the shop was not inside the shop I would just leave the money on the counter. Can you imagine this today in a big city at the main station?

I dunno, even the Migros at Zürich HB doesn't have that many people minding the self-checkouts that I remember.

But yeah, there will probably be shops where self-checkout will never be feasible, like electronics stores or pharmacies.

Zeynep Ton’s research: https://www.zeynepton.com/book finds that several supermarkets appear to have found ways to overcome low margins to provide good jobs by making several strategic choices differently, thereby suggesting that low margins cannot be the essential problem (but leaving open the possibility that the “race to the bottom” behavior you describe could be contributing).

Thoughts?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com