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Comment by loosetypes | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, there's something really discouraging about any sort of inversion of work that businesses push onto customers.

Self checkout lines. Dealing with interactive voice menus. Waiting on hold. Whatever.

It's like any time support doesn't fall neatly into one of several predefined buckets the burden of dealing with any ambiguity falls onto the consumer.

Maybe it increases their profits. Maybe it decreases our quantifiable costs. But it's exhausting.

It's not directly analogous but software folks often talk about the merit in using external libraries for anything that's not a core business concern. But I'm curious what grocery stores or airlines would consider their primary business. Are they in the service industry or are they trying to just be food or airplane logistics players who lament their current requirement for a customer-facing physical presence.

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I love self-checkout lines. I love self-service being available on my terms.

This shouldn't be the only option; "self-service or no service" is not my goal, but I appreciate the fact that 8 self-service lanes can allow a lot of customers to check out without waiting and in an affordable fashion. (Customers are paying for all the labor in any enduring company.)

The checkout-free store (like Amazon Go) is of course even better than a self-checkout in terms of customer experience.

I love self service in European grocery stores because I hate the stress of the cashier basically expecting me to put away groceries at the speed they are scanning them.

Here in southern Germany the checkouts are always very slow and crowded and always understaffed. Basically a normal situation is to have 20ppl wait for a single checkout. Then they begrudgingly open another, take 5 customers and close it again only to have the same thing repeat. I'd be happy to even pay extra just to have access to a speedier checkout self serviced or not and not have to waste half of my day waiting for this world's worst service.

I don’t know how it’s in Germany but Lidl in Spain basically have no grocery packing area at the end of the checkout so they are more or less throwing the groceries at you.

Dpends a lot on where you are. In France self scanners are far worse and slower than in the Netherlands. Also, cashiers are superslow in France compared to the Netherlands. I saw an Auchan once boast an average customer handling time of 2 mins (may have actually been 3). Meanwhile, Dutch Albert Heijn are proud the brought it down from 30 to 25 seconds.

Sounds like these may be multiple startup opportunities - one for each industry or mode of dealing with businesses.

Of course, those businesses that are reasonable or customer-centric are less likely to make these kinds of choices.

I fear that it will get really bad in our lifetime. Customer-facing businesses are getting bigger and bigger, and with that growth comes the need to scale customer service and to diffuse responsibility.

Worst of all, more and more systems are built by a small segment of like-minded middle-class workers. They are blind to the peculiarities and the struggles of other cultures.

With those firmly established factors, I expect this to get much worse.

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