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Comment by csmattryder | Hacker News Reader

As retail stores started to die, some smart cookie said:

"Hey, remember those people who follow you around the store and intruded as you were just browsing? Those sucked! Let's bring that to the web". And lo, chatbots were born.

The worst ones are the embeds that open a small window within the page. Hope you didn't want that content in the bottom-right.

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This is an American disease. In most European countries staff might great you, but they will try to discreetly shadow you and once you act like you need a help they will step in to assist.

I absolutely hated the US diners with multiple 'are you ok? do you need anything?' interruptions during single meal. I know why it happens, I just find it really annoying.

It’s not just annoying but they EXPECT you to stop whatever conversation you’re talking, at ANY moment, like they’re the pre emptive multitasking kernel. And then proceed to offer “specials” well into the meal. Dude I don’t know you. You want a good tip? I would rather use an app to order whatever I need. I came to talk to a friend, family member or about a business deal. There is a time to interrupt and that’s ONCE, when you’re taking the order, and then when you’re bringing food MAYBE.

I would LOVE to have a restaurant where I can order from my phone at the table, signal waiters etc. And get a notification when food is ready so we can both choose when they will bring it out.

There’s a Japanese restaurant in Boulder, CO that does something similar. There’s a little cube shaped dongle on the table and depending on the orientation it notifies the server of “I’m ready to order”, “Table service needed”, “check please”, etc. It worked surprising well.

Here’s a link if you’re ever visiting and want to check it out: https://goo.gl/maps/5tiXvJDC9DBXoHYt8

That's a nice idea! I found a picture of the dongle you describe in the restaurant's photos: https://goo.gl/maps/H3C9HVxtpfihCntv6

That's the one!

Bubba Gump shrimp has signs on the table that say run Forrest run or stop Forrest stop. Simple solution.

brazillian churrascaria rodízios[1] tend to have that too, for when you want more meat, and when you're "taking a break".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod%C3%ADzio

America is way behind the curve here. It's typical for a South Korean restaurant to have a button on the table. The staff will only come over if you press the button.

It's a much more pleasant experience overall.

I was at a restaurant where each table had a QR code printed on it, containing the URL of a webpage where you could order food and drinks for that table. I was there with some friends who didn't notice the QR code. They were quite confused when the waiter came over to give them menus and me my first drink. :)

all the restaurants in LA's koreatown (and little tokyo, incidentally, because many are korean-owned) have those buttons too.

i'm of mixed opinion--it's good when you want to be left alone to chat with your tablemates, but when you need lots of service, it can be annoying (and make you a little self-conscious). the nice thing is that you can usually still just flag down one of the usually abundant servers (back before lockdown).

Actually, many chain restaurants in the US (Chili's, TGIFridays, etc.) now have a tablet at the table. You can do things like order drinks, dessert, etc. without flagging someone down. You can pay with credit cards. There are games for bored kids to play (for a fee, usually, though). I found it rather annoying because of course it has to advertise throughout your whole meal. Luckily there's no sound, but it displays other things you could be ordering. But it is really convenient for getting service more quickly and checking out without hassle.

I feel like those are way over-engineered though. I don't need a whole tablet with games and videos of the specials and the full menu. I just need the equivalent of a flight attendant button. That's it.

Every time I go to a restaurant with one of these ad tablets, I just turn it so that it’s facing away from the rest of the table. I can use it when I want to pay or something, but I don’t have to see all the ads.

I forget the name, but when I was in college there was a Mexican buffet chain that had a flag on the table if you needed refills, etc. I used to go there with my friends and the flag went up 5 minutes in and never came down.

We ate a lot then. Me and my friends were the terrors of buffet lines all across town ...

Thanks to Covid, I have been to multiple restaurants where you are assigned a table number and order from your phone (generally via the app they already have set up for take out). It’s not as good as Michelin star service, but it’s way better than bad service. And you never have to wait for a check.

> In most European countries staff might great you, but they will try to discreetly shadow you and once you act like you need a help they will step in to assist.

This is even worse (to me) because most of the time there's nothing discreet about it.

I'd rather have someone ask up front if I need help - at which point I can politely say no - than just follow me around the store, silently watching, like a hyena stalking a wounded gazelle.

He's being a bit hyperbolic. As I'm also European, I can tell you employees are off doing their own thing. If you do need help, you have to go find one.

In my experience, this is a global phenomenon that's probably driven more by management philosophy than by geography. It's endemic to e.g. luxury retailers and trickles down from there.

The stalking thing seems hyperbolic. In my experience as both shopper and employee, many seek to have as few conversations as possible.

The other nice thing about being asked up front is the ability to say yes, but I will ask for help when I need it. The staff are usually much easier to find when you do have a question or need something to be retrieved, yet you don't have to deal with them if you don't need them.

Maybe a bit harsh, but it's still really interesting. I'm super glad some American supermarkets now have self-checkouts, and will use them where I can. Not only are the cashiers often unreasonably cheerful, but having someone bagging your stuff feels super weird. To be fair, it's possible having a bagger (?) is more efficient, because it increases throughput. But it still creeps me out to stand there passively doing fuck-all.

Maybe chat bubbles are similar? Taking away someone's initiative might work well for things they don't want to do, but for people who know what they want or just doing research, it doesn't seem like a good plan.

I work in Grocery IT. We generally assume you have to have two self checkouts in order to meet the customer/item throughput of one staffed checkout. And even then, I'd tend to put my money on the staffed checkout.

Some of it is just the limitations of a SCO, in that store staff don't have to wait for each item to be weighed by the lane before moving to the next item, but a lot of is that most people are not nearly as fast as they think they are.

A lot of it depends on how hands-on the staff manning the SCOs are as well. The Costco near me implemented SCOs in the past year, but those might as well be full checkouts with the number of staff that are around them looking to help out.

Part of the problem is that the self checkouts are super paranoid about preventing theft. If you put your bag on the output you get in trouble, your child puts their hand on the scale you need cashier assistance, you don't wait long enough after the last item for it to be weighed and you need to start . It's literally impossible to go fast! I don't know if it is justified. But it seems surprising as I could easily just put something in my bag if I wanted to steal it, I don't know why I would bother putting it into the scale.

Of course the cashier will always be faster, they are familiar with the interface, know where most of the barcodes are and have the codes of most non-barcoded items memorized.

But self-checkout could be much faster by removing some anti-features (from the customer POV). I have seen a couple of stores with a better solution where you pick up a scanner at the start and scan your items as you go. This has the advantage of parallelizing most of the process instead of clogging up on big expensive machines. In fact with the ability to check out on that device you could probably get by with just a "Customer Service" desk for when something goes wrong.

In the Netherlands, self-checkout doesn't use scales. I simply scan all the items in my basket, and put them in my backpack immediately. Once in a while, you are flagged, and a sample of your items are scanned to make the probability low that you are stealing something. Scanning the loyalty card helps to prevent too many checks over time. All in all, the total overhead next to scanning your items is a mere few seconds.

This is a huge contrast with my experience in the UK. Those scanners are talking, are slow to move between states, require you to put everything from one to another scale. This is indeed often slower than a human worker, and amazes me to no end.

That sounds way better, and quite possibly more effective at actually catching shoplifting. My experience in the UK, Ireland US and Canada has been the bad example as you have described.

It seems to be a classic case of bureaucratic risk aversion without proper cost analysis.

Some items like fresh fruits & vegetables are usually loose & sold by weight. How are things like this handled without scales?

There is/are scale(s) in the vegatable/fruit corner, and one next to the self checkout corner.

I much prefer self-checkouts because of the forced conversations cashiers are forced to have and cashiers just being bad at bagging, but they really do slow down the process. The scanner locks for a couple seconds after an item is scanned (even if there is no weight check or other delay screen), presumably to prevent double scanning for slower customers, but it just becomes a giant PITA when I have small items I could scan and toss into my bag in 10 seconds if they'd just remove the delay and it ends up being closer to a minute since it'll probably pause to reweigh a couple times in addition to the normal delay.

Purposefully slowing down every step of the checkout process is the biggest reason I refuse to use self checkout.

I avoid self-checkout at most stores because of this. Just too much a pain in the butt, never mind if I have a lot of items and they can't even fit in the baggage area!

Walmart has this figured out. You just scan the item. Done. No scales, no anti-theft I can tell aside from a person watching.

Walmart just launched a terrible AI self checkout monitor that everyone hates.

I remember Food 4 Less back in the day (maybe twenty years ago) having a sort of hybrid system where the cashier scanned your items and rang then up, but you bagged your own groceries.

Are you familiar with any similar systems today? How do they rate on throughput?

Any grocery store that’s understaffed/busy ATM. As awesome as H-E-B is, I’ve had to bag my own stuff once in a while. It usually feels a bit rushed and seems to annoy the checker if you’re not super-quick about it.

This is the it's always been done in Sweden. With space for two different customers to bag per cashier. A metal divider is put diagonally on the conveyor belt to feed items either left or right.

I'm in Canada, and we have all varieties of this.

The 'metal divider, self bag' is a discount / bulk store I go to. Old-style 'casher + bagger' is another. And I've gone to stores with self-checkout, both with and without scales in them.

Seems quite varied here, with of course that variance mostly along franchise lines...

I only use self checkout in a pinch, in large part as an act of Luddism. Self checkouts take away entry level work. I have a choice to support the workers, so I take it. Not to mention how awful the interfaces are when you're buying fresh veg -- I find that it's usually faster to wait for an available checker. In a lot of grocery stores near me, I do my own bagging and some even have a second conveyer for that purpose.

If you want to support the workers and actually make a difference in someone’s life, get someone to take your bags to your car and tip that person. They get to take a break and walk outside, and make some extra cash under the table.

I don’t think opting-out of self checkout counts as “supporting the workers”.

The more that people use self checkout, the fewer employees the store can get away with. Opting out slows the process of automating jobs away.

As for my car... most often I'm either by transit or walking. Anyway, I could be wrong but I don't think stores offer help out where I live. I've never heard it in the decade that I've lived here.

And I absolutely love the extra care and attention. Dining out in other countries can be a complete hassle as you wait for the waiter to show up... whenever he feels like.

Those people followed you around because it led to higher sales overall. Or at least that's the idea. Pushy salesmen tend to move more product than laid back cashiers, even if the former tends to be more annoying.

I worked at a Best Buy back in the day and the name of the game was upselling. My most annoying coworkers were quite successful.

It's interesting that this apparently actually works, because I've never once been upsold anytime by one of these employees. Is it a specific type of person that it works on?

Speaking from experience, you're most likely to be upsold if you don't know what you're looking for. For example, I've been upsold when I was buying a printer. I know nothing about printers, so much of the purpose of going to Best Buy was to see what they had and what the salesperson recommended.

Most HN members are unlikely to be upsold due to high technical knowledge. You are probably more likely to have done research ahead of time and know exactly what you're looking for.

it's like online ads, if they manage to upsale to 5% customers it's still a huge win.

Do you do a bit of research on your purchase before heading into a store? If yes, then that might be a big reason.

I'm sure it works for conversions of people already there. I do wonder how it affects traffic long-term because the store feels annoying. That's harder to measure.

Customers who leave don't show in either salesperson group's KPIs.

Ha, that's actually no longer the case. Stores like Best Buy do track foot traffic and it's accounted for in KPIs. My manager would have us enter and leave around the security sensors so we wouldn't inflate that number.

Are you finding all your news articles alright? Let me know if you want a different size comment thread and I'll check the database.

I think some believe this was the reason why Wal-Mart failed in Germany. They brought this "can I help you" with them and German customers rather went to Aldi & co where they could shop in peace.

> "can I help you"

Walmart? Are you sure? They are not known for being helpful, let alone solicitous.

Ironically, the only grocery chain that I can think of where employees actively ask if they can help is Trader Joe's. I can't help but giggle at the fact that they're German-owned, even if this part of the culture came from the American founder.

I read an analysis about Wal-Mart it was mentioned that employees are required to ask every customer within 3 feet. Maybe that has changed in the last 16 years.

Oh I would also be very confused since Aldi is the pioneer when it comes to shopping in peace and w/o frills in Germany.

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