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Comment by johnwalkr | Hacker News Reader

I live in Western Europe and the self checkouts don’t have scales, except for weighing produce, and even for buying alcohol, they trust you to say you’re over 16. It’s always fast because you wait in one line for 4-8 self checkouts and take the first free one.

On the other hand, using the cashier is often frustrating. You have to self-bag anyway and the cashier won’t start scanning your items until the person in front of you has bagged all of their stuff, had a chat about the weather and counted their change. The bagging area is always way too small, making all of this take a while. A few times I’ve even waited while one cashier counts their float, leaves, and a new one comes and counts their float.

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I travel extensively, and I think attitudes towards self-checkout vary heavily depending on what preceded it where you are.

In some places, you had smoke-stained cashiers throwing your groceries to their side without so much as looking at you, except to complain you're not bagging fast enough. I think it's fair to say that in those places, self-checkout is a huge improvement.

In other places though, where cashiers have traditionally been more friendly and expected to bag your groceries, it feels like a less obvious improvement. Whereas before you had chipper high school kids working their first job bagging your groceries, now you have menacing terminals accusing you of being a criminal every time their scales misalign.

Self-checkout is a convergence on mediocrity: some places are going to get dragged up, and others down.

Great point, I’m from Canada and lived in Japan for a decade, in those two places I would say it’s a downgrade. Especially Canada where there is usually a scale.

> the cashier won’t start scanning your items until the person in front of you has bagged all of their stuff

What happens every now and then to me is that the person in front watches open mouthed as their shopping gets scanned and piles up in the bagging area, then they pay and fuck around with their purse (honestly idk what they’re doing) then take forever to pack, while the cashier starts scanning my stuff and mixes it into theirs.

I don’t love self-checkout, it can be annoying when something doesn’t scan and I don’t have the ability to manually input the bar code like a normal cashier does. And sometimes there can be errors (“place the item into the bagging area” - when I already did), but I’m overall glad to have the option for self-checkout.

> the person in front watches open mouthed as their shopping gets scanned and piles up in the bagging area

I feel this. It makes my blood boil. I wish I could flutter through life with such child like absent mindedness.

Honestly I think we’ve all been there at some point - just switching off for a few seconds when we’re stressed or distracted by other things in life. If not at the checkout then somewhere else.

But yeah when you’re the other person in this scenario it’s irritating as hell :-D

I've been to quite a few supermarkets where they have like a plank that separates the new shopping from the previous shoppers. Maybe advanced plank technology will spread and deal with this issue.

Damn I’m in Southern California and y’all have really bizarre checkout experiences to me

- I never have to weigh anything except produce

- I rarely have to wait on an attendant except for something like spray paint

- I rarely have been to a store with absolutely zero cashiers, especially for a grocery store

- Usually the cashier will bag for me

I’ve had similar experiences whether I’m in an urban part of LA or some rich Orange County suburb.

My only two complaints are (1) finding parking at like a Trader’s Joes or Tokyo Central and (2) when the store is super busy, there are a bunch of cashiers, and yet there are still long lines

FYI Austria and sometimes Italy have weighted self checkouts.

In Switzerland the age check is done by any cashier nearby. Sometimes so fast that you don't even notice that there was a check.

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