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Comment by tanakachen | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I’m an isolated case but I NEVER use self-checkout at Home Depot. The reason is simple: if Home Depot believes it can lower costs by not hiring as many cashiers, then I should get a discount by using the self-checkout. Without such a discount I always insist a human cashier checks me out. Why should I do extra work for Home Depot?

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I consider the checkout stands to be the modern equivalent of elevators. Elevators used to require an operator to ask you for your floor, to manage the queue of calls, and determine an optimal order of trips up and down the shaft.

Then elevators got smarter and people now directly interface with the system.

With checkouts, it looks the same. I have a few pieces of hardware I want to buy. I can either stand in line and wait until someone scans them for me and tells me the total, or I can just scan them myself and pay.

It usually much faster to go through the self-checkout (especially with Home Depot's new set up. Just a handheld scanner and a huge touchscreen). For those times that it isn't (either a line of people, or unusual items that need special handling), then I'll go with the regular checkout.

To me, the extra work is in waiting for someone else to do what I can do faster and easier. This is similar to how gas pumping works in Oregon and New Jersey. No thanks, I'll pump my own gas please.

In all fairness, not having to get out and pump your own gas when it's either a) super cold outside or b) super hot outside is very convenient. also, as a former new jerseyian, the attendants are usually pretty fast and waiting for gas to be filled is not much slower than it has been pumping it by myself in other states.

That being said, I do agree that direct interface is a lot faster in most scenarios (like elevators, self-checkout). I think the most important factor is, does it reduce inconvenience or does it add "nice-to-haves". The former will always guarantee a fast adoption

> In all fairness, not having to get out and pump your own gas when it's either a) super cold outside or b) super hot outside is very convenient.

During the gradual demise of full service gas stations in the other states, there was a period when one or two of the pumps were designated full service and if you pulled up in front of them the attendant would pump your gas, in exchange for a premium of around $0.20/gallon to cover the extra wages and benefits and insurance risk etc.

The reason they discontinued it wasn't that the gas stations minded selling the service, it was that approximately nobody opted to pay extra when given the choice. Which is why they only really survive today where it's required by law -- there is no law in the other states prohibiting it, there just aren't enough people who actually want it to justify having it.

But elevator operators also served as security - they knew the occupants and could spot trouble. CCTV can be forwarded to the police after a crime but it can't say "Hey, I haven't seen you before, what unit are you in again?"

There’s a good parallel there. In a modern building, there may be a single guard in the lobby checking for badges, as well as RFID access control in each car. Similarly, most self-checkout arrangements have one cashier monitoring 4 or more self-service stations.

Self checkouts benefit you too. At least in supermarkets I always go for the self checkouts because the line moves way faster than a regular one.

I used to feel the same way until I began focusing on my diet and purchased more produce. Self checkout is a nightmare for produce. They rarely have a bar code which leads to a mystical hunt through the usually horribly slow UI. Compare that to a person who has done it so many times they have the code memorized for your apples and they can just punch it in quickly and keep going. And don’t even get me started with how excruciatingly painful it is when suddenly all of the machines need assistance and the one attendant can’t be in 6 places at once.

This is a solved problem.

Our grocery store (Wegmans) has labelmaker scales in the produce department, and the four or five digit code right next to the produce items. You bag it, weigh it, and label it yourself.

Speeds up the human checkouts, too.

This sounds like an excellent solution and perhaps I should let someone know at my local Kroger. Maybe its just something I've overlooked while shopping. Either way, I have a young child now so we mostly just use ClickList.

My grocery store has smart scales that let you print a barcode for produce that you can scan at the self checkout line. At the scale you can just search for the product by name (e.g. “apples” will suggest “honey crisp apples”).

There are definitely still issues if you need assistance. The ratio of self checkout lines to attendants is 8/1 when the store is busy.

Searching for the product by name is the exact same UI/UX at the self checkout and it becomes an exercise in frustration IMHO. The typical staples quickly come up but for apples for example there's such variety that you're often paging through a page or two. Meanwhile, the human powered checkout the operator usually just knows the 4 digit code and away they go.

As someone who's worked at a grocery store - the 4-digit code is also printed on those little produce stickers, and will generally also be on the labels with the prices on the shelves. Use this to avoid searching by name!

If you use the codes for your most common items this gets quick, some stores even post a sheet with a list of common produce codes, with stuff like apples and bananas they're often labeled even.

Produce at self checkout takes max 5-10 seconds per item once you know what you are doing

That works until there's ~only self-checkouts, then it gets slow again.

There's a knack to using them, and unless you have a generous number of them (I know of only two local stores that do), you end up getting stuck while the single staff member assigned to the self-checkouts assists customers having issues.

Plus it's not unusual for a significant number of them to be out of order, not accepting credit cards, only accepting credit cards, or just being generally temperamental.

> That works until there's ~only self-checkouts, then it gets slow again.

I don't know about that - self checkouts are both more space-dense and require far less staff to support so each individual store could support way more customers.

Replacing human workers with robots should be considered a good thing, it's a problem with our system of economics, not with the companies increasing their level of automation.

That is true it saves time

By that logic you should litter because nobody pays you to use trash bins. The exact argument you use, I use as an example of American stupidity (or perhaps you'd call it an American viewpoint). You want faster self check out or not? You want them to be able to lower prices across the board? No? Alrighty, keep ruining it for everyone out of some misguided righteousness that you should be paid for it.

It's one line feeding 4-6 self-serve registers instead of one line feeding one register. I think most people would prefer shorter time in checkout vs. having someone else scan their goods for them. It's not like the checkout process is some herculean task that is only doable by trained professionals.

I agree. I never use self check out. For the reasons you state, plus I don't want to contribute to some low skill person losing the only job they'll ever be able to hold.

I'm not so self-important to think that I can't stand in line at a checkout for three minutes.

Do you also litter to support low skilled people to be able to pick up your trash in service of the municipality (or whoever pays for that in the USA)?

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