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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

I wanted to checkout at a Home Depot but there were no employees to be seen and only self-checkout lanes open. I had some items I wanted help with and in frustration asked the customer next to me, "does anybody work here?"

He said "I guess we do."

I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.

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> it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.

One argument against that is that if people are willing to provide that labor freely, it's worth nothing.

Another argument: before supermarkets, you'd ask the clerk to get a list of things from the shelves (which customers couldn't access). Now this labor is done by customers. Self-checkout is just another change like that.

Extending this: there are services that will deliver your groceries to your house. If we go to a store and take things home ourselves, are we working for free?

There’s no correct balance between customer labor and employee labor. Choose what suits you. If your chose store forces you into an arrangement you don’t like, choose a different one.

That's not the same thing. Those services cost extra. If you go to the store and take home the things yourself, you're avoiding paying the extra fee for those services

And if you use self checkout you’re avoiding waiting in a longer line for a cashier.

Only in the beginning, when self checkout stations are being introduced and most of the customers go to cashiers, out of habit.

Thing is: even a person that does self-checkout quite often is still much slower than a cashier, who has 100x more practice. Also, when anything goes wrong with self-checkout you typically need to wait for someone to get to you and fix the issue - cashiers typically are able to fix their errors themselves.

So, in the end the lines will be longer, because of less skilled people doing the work.

Since self checkouts are cheaper to operate and take less space, it's compensated by there being more of them. Our supermarket replaced 2 checkout lanes with 6 self-checkouts in the same space with half the staff.

Then go to a cashier. If your store doesn’t have any, go to a different store that does.

GP's point is those things used to be a standard part of the service. They were done away in the name of convenience. Then later brought back for a fee.

Another example: self-service gas pumps.

The super market chain "Piggly Wiggly" was the first grocery store that gave customers baskets and let them wander around the aisles grabbing items off the shelves themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly

https://www.southernliving.com/culture/piggly-wiggly-history

>Before Clarence Saunders opened his shop, anyone who needed groceries would hand their shopping list over to a clerk who would pluck the groceries off the shelves and hand shoppers a bag full of their items. Piggly Wiggly turned that model on its head. Shoppers were invited into the store, handed a shopping basket, and left to wander the aisles of the grocery store, filling their cart with whatever products caught their eye. It’s hard to imagine now, but no one had ever thought of self-service grocery shopping before. According to TIME, who dug into Piggly Wiggly for the store’s centennial, Piggly Wiggly was the original grocery store, who not only introduced grocery carts, but also “price-marked items, employees in uniform, and the supermarket franchise model.”

Officially, the mysterious story behind the name is:

>According to the Piggly Wiggly website, the name's origin is truly a mystery. Saunders never fully explained where he got the idea that naming a supermarket after a squirmy porker was a good idea. Instead, he let stories circulate and, like a politician, neither confirmed nor denied them. One story claims that he came up with the name during a train ride where he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence. That made him think of the rhyme “piggly wiggly” and that apparently sounded like a good name for a grocery store. Another original story floating around is that when people asked Saunders why he gave his grocery store such a funny little name, he’s reported to have said, "So people will ask that very question." It seems to have worked, because here we are over 100 years later asking still asking the question. One thing for sure, though: It’s memorable.

But my mom, who grew up in the south, told me it was common knowledge that it was called "Piggly Wiggly" because the frantically shopping customers acted like pigs wiggling around all over the store in a mad feeding frenzy!

If that's the real reason, that they named their chain after how their customers behaved, then maybe Clarence Saunders and the Piggly Wiggly Office of Public Relations were so coy and mysterious because they didn't want people to know they thought of their customers as wiggly piggies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmzP49KU75U

Cute story. But it relies on Saunders having seen customers doing their own shopping prior to opening his store.

Or having an imagination.

I believe it's called lower prices – at least in theory.

(My apologies for coming across as pedantic.) Physical stores use them to remain competitive in pricing. The lower price is your incentive for doing it yourself (again in theory.)

I'm not aware of any major stores that provide a self-checkout discount.

I've never been to a store that gives a discount for self-checkout, but it probably does lower the overall cost of shopping there. there's very little that Walmart can do to differentiate itself from Target, so I would at least expect these kinds of businesses to be forced to pass a lot of the labor savings on to their customers.

if you really hate ringing up your own groceries, there are plenty of higher end grocery stores that have more cashiers (at least in my area). if you want better service, you might need to open up your wallet.

It doesn't. It just increases their profit. What they charge is determined by different people in those organizations. Most vendors have cashiers in Mid-South. Walmart and Kroger are the ones adding lots of self-checkouts with Walmart being about charging less with low service and Kroger charging more with a bit more service. Dollar General and Aldi are cheapest with no self-checkout, but less cashiers.

So, there's your data points. Meanwhile, a lot of companies are getting rid of their self-checkouts since there's tons of theft. They've probably lost more at some places than they saved on laid-off cashiers.

> It doesn't. It just increases their profit.

this isn't a self-evident claim. if you have other large competitors who operate in the same market space (for walmart and target, large stores selling a mix of well-known brands and discount store brands), and there is a cost-cutting technique that's available to all participants, it's really hard to employ it and keep all the surplus for yourself. this is especially true if the customers don't like it. I realize this is a naive econ 101 argument, but this particular market is about as close to "perfect competition" as it gets. I personally couldn't tell the difference between target and walmart if you removed all the signs, but if one were noticeably cheaper or more convenient, I would go to that one every time. cost comparisons between walmart and aldi is not particularly convincing; they sell different assortments of products. by not selling such a wide assortment of well-known brands, aldi probably has a significantly more efficient supply chain.

> Meanwhile, a lot of companies are getting rid of their self-checkouts since there's tons of theft. They've probably lost more at some places than they saved on laid-off cashiers.

well this is certainly a confounding factor to my argument. if true, there aren't really any savings to pass on in the first place. maybe it's just a lose-lose for everyone involved.

Your argument makes the common mistake to look at these companies as abstract entities competing based on economic theory instead of groups of humans doing what humans do in businesses. In most cases, the decisions come from middle management that operate based on a mix of competition and what gets them a bonus. Cutting costs or increasing profit within a manager's personal area of responsibility is often a bonus (or promotion) metric. So, many of them keep damaging their own companies to try to get their bonus or promotion. Such companies usually have endless discussions, meetings, and politicking where they explain away their bullshit hoping it will work.

This should be a factor in every discussion of why companies are doing what they're doing. Will the CEO or any managers doing it get an easier bonus or transition for it with minimal liability within whatever period they're working? Well, there you go. That's economic self-interest in the real world.

Source? Grocery stores are a notoriously low-margin business.

When only one uses self checkout, that one sees increase profit. When everyone uses self-checkout, they lower prices to compete with each other; and not using self checkout becomes economically unviable unless you have something else to distinguish you from your competition.

Do you have a source that retail companies follow economic theory versus profit maximization? In a capitalist system, companies try to maximize profit. They usually go into cartel or copycat mode doing the least they can to compete and increase profit. One thing many do is have a self-checkout to cut labor while otherwise running the same way. In the real world, that means the prices and level of service will be the same except for your bad, checkout experience you get so somebody might make a bonus for cutting staff or increasing profit. Capitalism 101.

The funny thing is you all come up with all this stuff that has no connection to what the companies offering self-checkout think. For them, it's much more local kind of reasoning featuring middle managers with incentives to think about.

These are publicly traded companies. We do not need to guess what they are doing.

Walmart has a profit margin of 1.62% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-pr...

Target: 3.96% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TGT/target/net-pro...

BJs: 1.13% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BJ/bjs-wholesale-c...

For reference:

Alphabet: 19.71% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

Microsoft: 31.18% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/net...

McDonalds: 28.19% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/net-...

Now McDonalds is a company which clearly is introducing self checkout to raise their margins, but I don't see any hand wringing about it on this thread.

If you're referring to the order kiosks, that's not really the same thing, since the staff is still preparing your order. In fact, I prefer those kiosks, as I can use them to remove a point of failure and ensure that my order goes into the system correctly.

That doesn't tell you anything for two reasons: missed profit by mismanagement and operating vs net profit. Especially those companies.

First one. I have friends that work at every retailer you named. Every one of them intentionally leaves stuff empty on the shelf to get workers to do side jobs, esp displays, reports, abd various meetings. Walmart and Target start throwing money away towards the afternoon after they're mostly stocked. Kroger starts leaving stuff empty in the morning to do scans or "walks" as employees describe them. None of these intentional losses are in their annual reports or the media. Latter being because they're big customers of media.

Second part. The percentages you quoted are whats left after all their big spending. For instance, both Walmart and Kroger in my area are doing million dollar remodels. Although some are welcome, many changes are just moving shit around. Customers wouldve kept shopping regardless. So, that easily couldve stayed in final profit. They often give executives raises in 6-7 digit range. They have way more managers in stores and offices than Publix which is more profitable. Also, local Kroger uninstalled some registers and added more self-checkouts despite their profit going up just before that. Obviously, the two weren't connected.

So, the operating profit vs justifiable expenses is what to look at along with management practices which you get surveying employees. When management is bullshitting, the employees are often more than happy to tell you about it if you seem sympathetic and esp have your own stories. Once I knew it was intentional, I almost entirely boycotted Walmart and Kroger with me going to companies like Costco, Aldi and Piggly Wiggly who still stock shelves. Piggly Wiggly and Trader Joe's also still have plenty of checkers/baggers despite "tough market conditions" others report. And that Piggly Wiggly is in one of most cut-throat areas price-wise. Talking $0.89-0.99 cent gallons of milk at all stores at times with Aldi dropping eggs to $0.28. Fresh Market straight-up canceled their store mid-construction seeing how rough it was.

Probably because the labor cost involved in paying minimum wage employees is low and the cost of goods sold is high.

If you buy a $500 TV maybe the store paid 300 or 400 for the TV 10-20c to check it out for you.

How much discount do you expect to receive?

I don't expect any discount. I was just stating that I don't know of any retailers who give you a self-checkout discount.

Higher profits, at least in theory.

Price is set by market. Two stores should charge the same for equivalent goods, all told.

Lower cost structure means greater profits at the same price.

> I won't be the guy who causes shrinkage but it seems reasonable for the seller to pay something for the buyers' labor as cashier.

If it's reasonable, there's nothing stopping anyone from asking the store if they'd like to make that deal.

I suspect they don't offer a discount for self-checkout because those lanes would be overwhelmed.

Home depot always has at least 3 people available to check you out no matter how late or dead it is.

A service desk associate. A cashier at the self check. A cashier at the exit opposite the service desk.

You ignored the actual cashier 30 seconds walk down towards either exit and didn't incline your head sufficiency to see the gal 30 feet away probably cleaning an adjacent checkout or stocking the adjacent cooler.

The labor cost of the 2 minutes scanning items is between 26c and 40c

Would you like that deducted from your bill?

You aren't paid to check yourself out because your labor isn't in service of the businesses needs its servicing your own needs to check out quicker rather than walk slightly further down.

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