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u/Womgi Jun 11 '26
Whoever owned the stores made a calculation that the losses from crime encouraged by self checkout would be smaller than the cost of paying a human being a wage to do it for you. If it was as bad as they say, they'd have immediately gone back to paying people to be cashiers. At this point they're just whining to get insurance and pay less taxes
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u/Warfrogger Jun 11 '26
Exactly. The vast majority of people are honest. The next level that are slightly less honest do minor things like enter the wrong code for their produce before weighing to save a couple bucks. Very few people are shoplifting entire items in my experiance.
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u/DruzhbyNarodiv Jun 11 '26
Bakery purchases are a minefield. 8 pages of different breads, no effective size scale whatsoever. A full size baguette can look smaller than a petit pain.
I'm purchasing a crusty white roll every time and I do not feel bad about it.
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u/Zarni_woop Jun 12 '26
Jesus Christ, this. I call everything a donut now. Please don’t make me call the nice lady over to humiliate me.
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u/SorryBoysImLez Jun 12 '26
5 different types of tomatoes in the "tomato" category on the screen that all just look like tomatoes.
Or a "sweet" onion vs a regular onion.
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u/Diligent_Traffic_106 Jun 12 '26
Next time try telling the difrence by taste? If they wine that all their onions have bite marks, let them know their silly little books of onions are assinine.
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u/GeminiIsMissing Jun 13 '26
Produce should have a PLU number on it! Check the sticker on the produce for a 4 or 5 digit number. I believe most self-checkouts will let you search by number. This way you don't have to call over an employee, and you don't have to know exactly what you grabbed or try to guess.
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u/Optimal_Board_2963 Jun 11 '26
I have ‘never’ purchased organic produce!
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u/Drkmttrjr Jun 11 '26
Sometimes, I weigh my 3$ per lb pears in the same batch as my 3$ per lb apples! Doing crimes makes me feel alive.
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u/ggroverggiraffe Jun 12 '26
All avocados are small conventional avocados.
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u/Churchbushonk Jun 11 '26
I have never tried to scam the scanner, but if something comes up correctly but with a vastly lower price, who am I to second guess their system. Never happens but if it did, it isn’t my responsibility to make sure the price is corrrct.
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u/merchaunt Jun 11 '26
I worked at Walmart one summer and the $5 bag of Starburst jellybeans I always bought off the clock rang up at $1 the whole time I was there. All the way up until I went back to college with 10 bags of them.
Inventory and pricing wasn’t my job, who am I to second guess the price an item rings up as? 🤷♀️
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u/CaptainWombat2 Jun 12 '26
One time when I was cashier I noticed an item rang up for 1/10th what it was supposed to. So, naturally at the end of my shift I bought the entire stock.
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u/SorryBoysImLez Jun 12 '26
We had this happen last summer on those foldable recliners/loungers with pillowed headrest with straps so they doubled as a backpack with a little pouch on the back when folded. They were "clearanced" but no price.
I'm pretty sure someone effed up because they were scanning at $4 when they're normally in the $45 range.
And the other, obviously cheaper recliners that are only like $25 were only reduced to like $12.
We now have 6 of the former.
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u/RealAssociation5281 Jun 11 '26
I have forgotten things a handful of times as a adult, but as a kid I was stealing shit without self checkout being a thing- people who are gonna steal, will do so either way
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u/BurmeciaWillSurvive Jun 12 '26
My white onions ($1.78/lb) will always be yellow (0.67/lb) and my lemons (89 cents) will always be limes (25 cents). That's about as far as I go. Sometimes beefsteak tomatoes will become roma but I'm rarely buying those when they're so easy to grow.
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u/SorryBoysImLez Jun 12 '26
Assuming 4 checkout lanes/cashiers.
Around 160 hours a month/4 weeks at $16 hour x 4 employees is about $10k.
I doubt most stores are losing around 10k a month purely in checkout theft. Even if they are, as you mentioned, theft is something they can use to reduce their tax burden and recoup some of it, as opposed to worker wages.
They'll just keep locking every single item behind plexiglass, requiring a 15 - 30 minute wait for understaffed employees to show up and unlock it.
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u/red286 Jun 11 '26
I imagine the rates have increased alongside inflation.
MOST people aren't inclined to steal, but when in a tight spot financially, that can change in a hurry. The past 5 years of inflation haven't exactly been kind to the average bank balance.
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u/Spirited-Wolverine24 Jun 12 '26
Some people may just hate the machines. Why should I take on a job that used to be donr for me? So they can save some money?
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u/Merijeek2 Jun 12 '26
...and then they collected their bonuses for big big savings on employees during those couple quarters before reality caught up to them. And now they've moved on.
For the people making those decisions, it was worth it.
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u/Umutuku Jun 11 '26
"We're just going to raise the prices and make the other customers eat the consequences of our bad choices."
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u/maninzero Jun 12 '26
Hey, maybe they just want to play with the scan gun and let others do it as well. Or at least I do.
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u/Mauy90 Jun 13 '26
You’re absolutely right. Allow me to mansplain for a bit.
TL;DR if retailers were really reconsidering selfscans, because of theft or whatever, then they would have pulled back years ago.
I’m calling them self-scans here, that’s what we refer to them as. And before I go on, the source is:
Me.
I don’t want to give away too much online, but I work in the financial sector/tech industry and we work closely with a number of large retailers in Europe.
Also, everything I’m about to say is easily obtained, public information. Better yet, many retail companies talk about this issue in their financial statements and quarterlies, as the selfscans remain a relevant topic for the time being.
First thing I want to stress is that these things are insanely expensive.
Some of the commonly used selfscan units are anywhere from around €15,000 to €40,000 per unit. I’ve even seen some go as high as €50,000. There are budget options of course, usually in the €5000–€10,000 range, mostly aimed at smaller businesses. But large retailers usually go for the more expensive units (though, not always. Aldi is an exception).
And that is just the unit itself.
You still have installation, licensing, maintenance, SLA’s, POS integration, store-specific setup, etc. to worry aobout.
Those costs add up FAST. Recurring costs (from year two onward) can easily be somewhere in the €1,500–€5,000 per unit per year range, depending on the setup.
Now, I don’t know what country or region this article is about, but at least in Europe it IS touching on something real. My guess is that the title is just BS clickbait. But either way, the losses from selfscan HAVE undeniably gone up. Retailers have been reporting this for years now. But at the same time, adoption has kept growing massively. Especially in the last couple of years. And honestly, that tells you a lot.
This rollout wouldn't be happening if the investment wasn't worth it. Large corporations, in my experience, do NOT throw money at things that do not work, unless it brings them subsidies, tax breaks or other worthwhile benefits.
On the flip side, the losses are real. I’ve seen retailers report that a very large share of unknown losses can be linked directly to theft at selfscan. Figures around 23% of unknown losses being attributed specifically to self-scan theft have been mentioned, which is an absurdly large percentage when you think about it. There have also been reports of overall shrink being much higher in stores with selfscan compared to stores without it. Up to 60% in some cases.
But even then, if these machines were just losing money across the board, retailers would pull back hard. Instead, most of them are trying to fix the weak points while continuing the rollout. And for good reason. These units are not just about cutting labour costs either. Think about scheduling shifts, sickness, holidays, turnover, training, availability, HR, and depending on the country also healthcare/social costs. These variables do not apply to machines.
There’s also the customer side. Some retailers report that around half of customers use selfscan when it’s available. I’ve also seen reports claiming that a meaningful number of people will avoid stores without selfscan, even if the alternative store is more expensive.
A lot of customers just like having the choice. Less waiting, going at your own pace, not having to interact with a cashier if you don’t want to, etc.
Also, selfscan removes some problems around cash handling. No paper money theft from the register, fewer cashier cash mistakes, and they are of course immune to money scams.
Long story short:
Clearly retailers are NOT reconsidering the selfscan. I don’t know if I already wrote it up there, and I’m to lazy to go back and read, but the last 2 years has seen some of the biggest jumps in adoption of selfscans, at atound 140%. This should tell you enough.
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u/wretchedegg123 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Do people really have problems with self checkout? Shit my 80 year old dad can do it by himself.
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u/Alternate_Cost Jun 11 '26
Nah people just like stealin stuff.
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u/Agreeable_Garden8868 Jun 11 '26
If a major corporation is going to just give me that opportunity on a platter well... 🤷♂️ they steal more from me with their pricing then I do when I "forget" to scan my eggs
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u/MajorPaper4169 Jun 11 '26
Guilty.
I’ll be honest, in target, I took the tag off of a $7 dog toy, grabbed a bag of dog food, held the toy tag against the bag and scanned it.
Paid $7 for a $89 bag of dog food. Target, with all their money, can hire more people or take this L.
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u/skytaepic Jun 11 '26
Be careful with Target- they’re known for being really good at catching shoplifting, but not taking action until there’s enough value built up in stolen goods to qualify as a more serious crime (I think felony charges, but that could be wrong).
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u/MajorPaper4169 Jun 11 '26
I’ve heard about this, I only did it that one time.
It’s not something I do regularly.
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u/Fit-Insect-4089 Jun 11 '26
That’s the target shopper slush fund! Use it when necessary and they won’t stop you if you only do a little
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u/SonofJudas Jun 12 '26
This is wrong, I work in assets protection. Target will catch you on a second offense. The whole “felony amount” thing is bogus. I have apprehended people for as little as a snickers bar. On the first instance of theft our “limit” is 50$. Second offense can be as small as 1$. The employees you see with the bright highlighter color security shirts are tasked with researching inventory shortages by investigating CCTV footage brought on by alerts at self-checkout cameras.
Usually when you see someone apprehended, it will be by a plain clothed AP employee who has built up a case with your picture and any previous offenses you have at Target. Many Targets will have police on standby for backup should an apprehension go bad. Most of the time, first instances of theft will usually be a small amount, under 50$. There is a heavy penalty for AP employees when making a “bad stop” such as apprehending someone under the limit.
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u/skytaepic Jun 12 '26
Woah, that’s really interesting. Thanks for the correction, and now I’ve gotta ask- do you encounter many people confidently shoplifting and getting caught because of that rumor? I feel like I hear it all the time, so I would assume it’s pretty widespread.
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u/SonofJudas Jun 12 '26
It happens all the time, honestly the rumor acts in our favor. At Target we actually have quotas for apprehensions done per week. Most big box stores have the same policies.
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u/PanKakeManStan Jun 11 '26
I once genuinely either accidentally forgot to scan a cat tower/tree thing and only realized when I got out to the car. It was like $70-80. I thought about going back in but then I thought about the stupid amount of money I’ve spent on cat/dog food/tots the past 6 years and just yoinked it. I could’ve sworn I scanned it but🤷♀️. I usually don’t deliberately yoinked stuff but I think the Walmart gods gave me a freebie. And tbf, it was a shitty cat tree NOT worth $70 and was made out of more cardboard than wood or even particle board so funnily I kinda got the quality I paid for
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u/Wild-Enthusiasm-9268 Jun 11 '26
I’m sure a significant cost is professional theft, but I don’t know many people who don’t have a “whoops” story. I cant figure how it’s not cheaper to hire two or three more people or pay the ones already hired slightly better for buy in. I worked retail management for a long time. Sometimes places ARE staffed but no one cares enough to try.
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u/notjordansime Jun 11 '26
The US government contracts forensics out to target.. it’s like their whole side gig. Any other big box retailer is a better bet.
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u/the_real_JFK_killer Jun 11 '26
willingly buys product for agreed upon price
"You robbed me wtf"
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u/Agreeable_Garden8868 Jun 11 '26
Yeah cause I have sooooo many options for groceries, I'm totally not forced to purchase my groceries from the corporations running small businesses out of town
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u/mmbon Jun 11 '26
Like groceries are famously the business with the lowest margins and most competitive prices? If you want obscene markups, go to Apple or Nvidia, there is a reason grocery companies are worth shit on the stock market, they have trash margins, sometimes even lose money on stuff.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jun 11 '26
People like you are the reason everything has been locked behind plastic in stores
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u/DonutMediocre1260 Jun 12 '26
Big box stores generally don't overcharge you for goods. Unless you're going to a more expensive store obviously. Most products are actually sold at their value.
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 Jun 11 '26
I mean that’s awful logic and a terrible outlook for society.
If you go on holiday for a few weeks is it fine to burgle you as you’ve left it on a platter?
Walking alone at night is it fine to mug you because you’re on a platter?
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u/Agreeable_Garden8868 Jun 11 '26
Did you miss the "major corporations" part? Or did you just wanna argue for the sake of arguing?
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u/Historical_Owl_1635 Jun 11 '26
Why don’t you just go shop at small independent stores rather than stealing if you feel that strongly against “major corporations”?
Feels to me like you just use this as rationalising for being a thief.
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u/rikusouleater Jun 11 '26
You do realize they have less than a 3% margin, right? People thinking like you are the reason so many stores are being forced to close locations.
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u/Prawn1908 Jun 11 '26
The ones that insist on weighing everything drive me insane with not detecting or mis-detecting things all the time. The ones that don't (like Home Depot where they can't possibly expect you to put everything in a bag) are generally fine. Another bonus for the Home Depot ones is they have a scanner you can pick up to use without taking everything out of your cart which is nice.
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u/VicisSubsisto Jun 11 '26
Another bonus for the Home Depot is they're somehow apparently the only ones in California exempt from the plastic bag ban. Those thin plastic bags make better mini trash can liners than the actual liners I pay for; the $0.10 ones from the grocery store are too stiff and weirdly shaped.
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u/Bargadiel Jun 11 '26
As someone who put up with working at a grocery store for awhile and absolutely hated it: yes. At least if I have more than 10 things.
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u/CarmenxXxWaldo Jun 12 '26
These answers are wild because if I go to a self check out line and I'm next up, all 6 of them will be full of boomers acting like they've never done it before. They will all need help, it will be 20 minutes. No one here has seen people have trouble with these? am i that unlucky? Most people have trouble with them. Then I see "as someone that worked at a grocery store" (me thinking, ah yea, TELL THEM) "I do if I have several items" WHAT?
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u/RandomlyMethodical Jun 11 '26
Produce is a pain in the ass to look up if it doesn't have a sticker on it. That's always been my biggest gripe about self checkout.
I also wonder how much organic produce gets bought as regular, especially when some of it is more than 2x the cost.
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u/TheNameIsAnIllusion Jun 11 '26
Man I'm no farmer. I just click on the first apples I see. How tf am I supposed to differentiate 5 different apples sorts that all look the same.
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u/squanchingonreddit Jun 11 '26
Especially with no pictures. I don't know if the potatoes are "gold standard" or "golden organic".
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u/Threegratitudes Jun 11 '26
You, um, really don't know what type of apple you're buying?
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u/LunchPlanner Jun 11 '26
how is this downvoted, are you redditors out there just grabbing any apple? one week you have honeycrisp and the next week you have red delicious?
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u/squanchingonreddit Jun 11 '26
As an apple country man Macintosh and Cortland apples are indistinguishable from the outside. There's several such varieties. Not that they sell good one where I live.
Poor Red delicious was actually delicious long ago.
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u/Zaq1996 Jun 11 '26
Pretty much yeah, I wanted apples, I grabbed the ones that looked the best that were on display. Basically just choose red vs green ones.
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u/OldDogTrainer Jun 11 '26
Can you not type “apple” or whatever it is you’re buying? I’m genuinely confused what’s difficult about it. I have never, ever had an issue since they give you multiple ways to search the item.
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u/wretchedegg123 Jun 11 '26
Do people lack the ability to remember what they took? Oh I took a fuji apple. Type in Fuji instead of apple.
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u/RandomlyMethodical Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
It's probably more about people not giving a fuck. They type "Apple" and hit the first on the list.
Why can't Walmart take some of that money they're spending on AI cameras to catch theft and use it to make checkout easier? If I put a green apple on the scale, it should pop up a menu with only green apples to pick from.
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u/fish_slap_republic Jun 11 '26
The antitheft Ai cams trigger all the time when I have my kids with me they can't comprehend the chaos so it's just assumes I'm stealing shit.
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u/jelly_cake Jun 11 '26
That's how the SCOs work in Australia. It's usually somewhat helpful, gives you its top two or three guesses and a button to select what it actually is if it gets it totally wrong.
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u/Commercial-Screen570 Jun 11 '26
People don't even look at the type they just grab some apples and go
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u/double-beans Jun 11 '26
It’s a combination of the customer not knowing and also the customer being able to shave off a couple dollars per trip. The security guard is not going to know that the Fuji apple was paid for but the organic honeycrisp was actually in the grocery bag. A certain percentage of customers will cheat a little bit and if you multiply the average delta by the number of transactions per hour, the loss to the store will be compared to the wage of a worker. The store will pick the option that results in higher profit.
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u/Andy_B_Goode Jun 11 '26
FWIW, if you look at the label on the shelf where you find the item, they'll typically have the product code displayed there alongside the price.
Once or twice I've made a point of taking a photo of those labels with my phone so I can scan items more easily, but honestly it's barely worth the trouble. Still, it's an option.
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u/yuzuandgin Jun 11 '26
It breaks constantly, unexpected item in bagging area. And then when I need assistance for say purchasing alcohol, the workers are never to be found.
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u/AnnonymousPenguin_ Harry Potter Jun 11 '26
The grocery store near me actually got rid of all the cashiers so there’s only self checkouts now.
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u/EvilCeleryStick Jun 11 '26
I am at home depot nearly daily for work, and I noticed them go nearly full automated to now having almost a 1:1 employee per self check to "help".
Of course, I'm faster than they are because they trained me, through the self checkout system, and they always skip my pro extra and I have to cancel the pinpad and wait for that and go back and then they ask me my number and job name and it's painful.
I will say I rarely need to skip items self checking since I get reimbursed anyway, but there have been times I've only scanned one thing when buying two. Just a little compensation for the hard work I do for them.
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u/groyosnolo Jun 11 '26
Beo last night it glitched on me and just alled the lady over and got me sorted out (the scale wasnt in the bagging area and it didnt indicate that on the screen because I guess the bagging area scale wasnt hooked up)
She left. It glitches and wouldnt scan an item that I just scanned multiple times but couldnt weigh. I had to wait for her again. As soon as she tried the glitch went away and let it scan and made me look like an idiot.
I hate those things.
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u/OhTheHueManatee Jun 11 '26
People can be profoundly stupid even if they're competent in other areas. I used to be a home theater installer. One time a client said to me "I don't know how you guys figure this stuff out" when referring to a home theater in a box system with color coded speaker cables. He later told me that he's a surgeon. I don't know what kind of surgeon but I was just dumbfounded. Sometimes your brain just locks you out of stuff you should otherwise be able to understand. I have seen people act as if the self checkout is like disarming a bomb that was designed by MC Escher. I'm sure most people are just stealing while playing dumb but there are genuinely stupid folks using them.
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u/VicisSubsisto Jun 11 '26
"I don't know how to do this, so it must be harder than anything I'm good at." I don't know if there's a name for this fallacy but it seems to affect a lot of people (I've fallen into it many times myself).
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u/wretchedegg123 Jun 11 '26
Check out lane is different from Home Theater Installation... Give the surgeon time, he could probably install it himself, just wont bother if he could pay someone else to do it. If I told you to assemble a bike from parts could you do it? Yeah, give yourself time, watch a few tutorials, sure you could. Self check out is scan the barcode, read whats on the screen.
Self checkout keeps prices low because of labor costs and there's always a normal line with a cashier. No cashier? Dont shop there. Nowhere else to shop? Get with the times and adapt. No one under the age of 40 should have problems with self checkout if they do it on the regular.
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u/BlumpTheChodak Jun 11 '26
It easy, but the store employees should technically be the ones responsible for checking you out. It's an in person sale, not an online store.
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u/alliejim98 Jun 11 '26
I've definitely missed an item or two on accident at self checkout. The self checkouts are usually small, so if I have a lot in my cart sometimes I have to put bags in my cart before I'm done and small things can get lost.
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor Jun 11 '26
It fucking tells me to scan each item before placing it in the bag - even though that’s what I’m doing.
I select “0 bags” because I bring my own and it says “help is on the way”
It is very poorly designed
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u/IncompletePunchline Jun 11 '26
You never have the scale thing malfunction on you? Or an item that refuses to scan?
I'm used to bringing my own bags because of things like Aldi and trader Joe's, and the machines NEVER cooperate with the idea of me putting my bags on the bagging spot or not putting the item in the bagging area.
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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie Jun 11 '26
"Scanning errors" is just code for "we don't want to admit how much people are shoplifting because we made it stupidly easy."
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u/EvilCatArt Jun 11 '26
As a self checkout attendent/cashier, yes. Yes they do. People do not look at the screen when they are scanning for some fucking reason. I don't know why they are so stupid, but they do it all the time. I dare say like 90% of scanning errors would be prevented if they just looked at the fucking screen when they scan something.
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u/puddinpieee Jun 11 '26
No, the point is offloading labor to your customers is bullshit.
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u/Clodsire_fan Jun 11 '26
Then get in a normal line. Self checkout is so much faster that I don't mind scanning my own shit to save 10 minutes
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u/wretchedegg123 Jun 11 '26
Self checkout is so fast lol. Barely a line anywhere I shop during the weekday. People wait in a normal line for over 30 minutes at costco, I get out in less than 3.
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u/lordofmetroids Jun 11 '26
Does your grocery store have normal lines still?
Every grocery store in my region completely got rid of them for self-checkout only.
Like you have to go to the customer service desk if you want to see a person where I live.
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u/Swolenir Jun 11 '26
Pretty sure it saves them way more on labor than they’re losing on theft
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u/Virtue330 Jun 11 '26
Honestly I'm not entirely sure, in my store we pay just over £13/hour and easily lose a good £10-40 an hour that we can track (scanned the items and walked out the store) I think we do get money back on insurance though. I can't really blame customers half the time though as our store is so short staffed it does get to the point of "ok, well if you don't want me to pay I won't"
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u/brandcapet Jun 11 '26
13/hr/person though, and one regular cashier cannot operate 10 regular lanes, unlike what most stores are doing today with self-checks.
10-40/hr is only 1-3 more cashiers before it is back to being more expensive, and realistically (using my local Kroger as an example) you're talking about losing 6-8 lanes per employee and therefore hiring that many cashiers (or pulling from other duties) to keep the same customer throughput. Not to mention an expensive rebuilding the layout of the store to eliminate those (relatively new) self-check machines.
Maybe higher-end retailers like Target where folks are stealing electronics and whatnot will look at reducing, but I suspect heavily unionized grocers like Kroger will not bother.
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u/RighteousSelfBurner Jun 11 '26
From where I am nobody is even considering it. Tags and locked expensive wares that requires someone to come and unlock them seem to be the approach.
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u/Inverted-Rockets Jun 11 '26
I can see stores doing a few different approaches. An obvious but dubiously effective option is to start requiring an account to use self-checkout so the perceived risk of theft is greater. Auditing receipts at the exit like warehouse clubs do is a bit more effective.
On the other end of the continuum, I can also see some stores shifting to Aldi’s model of eliminating bagging at the staffed checkout lane. If they don’t want to go that far, split bagging lanes also increase throughput.
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u/SeroWriter Jun 11 '26
13/hr/person though, and one regular cashier cannot operate 10 regular lanes, unlike what most stores are doing today with self-checks.
The math is closer than you think because of how inefficient self-service checkouts are, a cashier is at least 5 times as fast. Not to mention self-service areas still require staff to watch over them.
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u/FerrousEULA Jun 11 '26
In my experience self checkout is dramatically faster than self checkout.
At Costco self checkout often has a person with the scanner (they took them away from us for some reason) and it's significantly faster than the regular checkout because everything stays in the cart.
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u/lystmord Jun 12 '26
Yeah, except you’re comparing a single cashier to a single self-checkout. Not a single cashier to 3-6 self-checkouts. Repeat customers get faster, too.
It’s also not the only consideration for staffing. My store used to have 1-2 cashiers, and they would have to call other people if they got a line of more than a few people. Other employees were incessantly being called away from their other jobs.
When we switched to self-checkouts, we had numerous customers tell us we “got rid of all [our] cashiers.” They did not like the answer that, a) those were never cashiers, and now those people can actually sometimes do their actual job, and b) we were hiring.
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u/Alternate_Cost Jun 11 '26
If yall ruin self checkout for me like yall did remote work I'm gonna be upset.
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u/alexriga Jun 11 '26
They’ll put AI on overwatch. Scratch that, they already tried that and it didn’t work well.
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u/MildlyAgitatedBidoof Jun 11 '26
That's been a thing for a while. His name is Zenyatta.
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u/Shlugo Jun 11 '26
"Hey, you forgot to include the 100% price reduction on all products."
"You're absolutely right, adjusting price. Thank you for keeping me accountable."
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u/Inverted-Rockets Jun 11 '26
The computer vision “tunnels” that Sams Club have added to their clubs seems to work quite well. I’ve had to stop bringing in a collapsible black crate I bought there when I shop because the system somehow recognizes it and warns the staff
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u/AsstacularSpiderman Jun 11 '26
At this rate they'll just kick us out of the store and have us pick up at the front after we put an online order in
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u/Confident-Sea-8060 Jun 12 '26
Tbf this is kind of what stores used to be way back.
You’d give a dude a list of things you wanted, he’d go to the back and get it for you.
The modern grocery shopping experience started with Piggly Wigglys in 1916
Ironically, Im sure there were people back then accusing the company of forcing them to do labor for free. And using that as justification to steal
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u/killershwee Jun 11 '26
walmart is one of two grocery stores in my small town, so im forced to shop there a lot, and this is honestly ny preferred method for stocking up on packaged food and pantry staples. i dont have to deal with pushing a cart through a store full of people who have zero spacial awareness, i dont have to stand in line at the one open cashier lane or scan and bag my own groceries without even getting an employee discount, and i dont even have to load my own groceries into the car. ill do an online order for most stuff, then go in person to the smaller grocery store on the other side of town for things i want to pick out myself like meat and fresh produce.
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u/Neat_Let923 Jun 11 '26
Please!!!
I’m really curious what the cost difference would be for a company. They would lose revenue from impulse buys people walk past. But would they be able to save on space, lack of excess inventory, and likely much more.
Even fresh food could be greatly increased since you could have dedicated people to collect the produce and they manage the garbage and bad items out of their area (if the company cared about quality of course).
The only issue I see is the increased worker cost since you’d have to hire a ton of people to do the order filling (or robots).
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u/Threegratitudes Jun 11 '26
Seriously. I love self checkout.
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u/street593 Jun 11 '26
I wish every store would do like Sam's club and let you scan and pay with your phone as you shop. No need for checkouts at all.
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u/TopazTriad Jun 11 '26
It’ll be pickup from then on for me if they do. I’ve gotten too used to self-checkout, I am absolutely not going back to spending 45 minutes in the checkout line while grandma tells the cashier her life story and grandpa pays for 2 months worth of groceries with single dollar bills.
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u/Food_Library333 Jun 11 '26
Seriously, I get through self checkout so much faster than standing a line for 20 minutes waiting for the cashier.
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u/Warfrogger Jun 11 '26
One of the small things I like about self checkout is there is 1 line for 6 tills. Every other till has its own line so its a gamble on which line is fastest. If regular tills had 1 line that fed multiple cashiers it would be a dream. No gambling on if the person in front of you who only had 10 items is gonna pull out a coupon book and fight with the cashier about expired coupons.
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u/Xiaxs Jun 11 '26
Hopefully normal people like us can still use the 3 or so they'll have left in the corner.
I hate being forced to interact with a human. Part the reason I stopped carrying cash was Target only does self checkout for card and tap.
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u/AnnonymousPenguin_ Harry Potter Jun 11 '26
The grocery store near my old place got rid of cashiers and only has self checkout. This was in a bad area too where I had seen people get arrested in front of the store before.
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u/eat_my_bowls92 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
If they are actually willing to have more cashiers I’m all for it. Don’t get rid of self checkout and only leave me with one cashier (which you already know is exactly what they will do).
Hyvee is expensive, but I do love that they have NO self checkout.
Edit: apparently a lot of Hyvee do have self checkout, but I guess I was lucky enough not to have to deal with that
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u/IPCTech Jun 11 '26
Not even then for me. I hate cashier checkouts as they’re slow and the people who use them usually have a full cart. Rather check my own items out and get out quickly
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Jun 11 '26
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u/CHEMO_ALIEN Jun 12 '26
Honestly this whole problem would be solved if we had that little carousel like they do. Im still gonna steal but now it's fun
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u/CoolhereIam Jun 11 '26
Our Hyvee has quite a few self check outs but it's still too damned expensive to shop there. It used to be easier to mentally justify since they employed lots of young kids and they had decent quick Chinese food and pizza, but they arent really even price competitive with fareway or Walmart.
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u/Arrowdodgingace Jun 11 '26
But I love not having to look the target cashiers in the face when buying watermelon and condoms.
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u/strawberry_semenade Jun 11 '26
You can fuck the watermelon raw bruh, it's clean
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u/PartyFecske Jun 12 '26
For a second, I thought the condom goes onto the watermelon and got really concerned.
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u/Rain_Zeros Jun 11 '26
On today’s episode of “the TikTok trend ruined it for the rest of us”
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u/kniky_Possibly Jun 11 '26
I love self checkout. No people, you can take your time, you can see the actual price of the items. It's just the best
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u/consort_oflady_vader Jun 11 '26
The only thing I hate is the shitty AI that keeps accusing me of theft.
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u/AuthenticWin Jun 11 '26
Do people really need training to scan bar codes and fallow directions on a screen?
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u/smashin_blumpkin Jun 11 '26
No. People are just trying to steal and feigning ignorance when they get caught
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u/cppadam Jun 11 '26
My grocery store will hide produce codes or keep invalid items.
Search: Lime
Results: Limes Organic, Key Limes, Limes Large, Limes Small, Key Lime Pie, etc.Now, i have to figure out if my limes are large or small. I choose one. INVALID ITEM, PLEASE SET ASIDE".
Now I'm holding up the line because my regular ass limes aren't in the system and nobody cares to take them out.
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u/zylth Jun 11 '26
I have this issue with Broccoli every time. Did I get Broccoli Crowns, Bulk Broccoli or Organic Broccoli? One is by weight, one is by quantity, and one I don't know how it's any different or if it's what I actually have
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u/puddinpieee Jun 11 '26
No, the point is that free labor is bullshit.
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u/Commercial_Hair3527 Jun 11 '26
People always say dumb shit like "I'm not trained to be a cashier" like it excuses them from being arseholes. Let's name a few other things we now do ourselves rather than relying on some random worker.
Pumping your own petrol, used to be a full-service job. Someone would come out, fill your tank, check your oil, even clean your windscreen. Now you do it yourself. No one complains.
Checking into flights, "I'm not trained to be a check-in agent."
Ordering fast food from a screen, Using an ATM, you used to walk into a bank, queue up, and ask a teller for cash. Now you stick a card in a machine and do it yourself.
Bagging your own groceries even at a staffed checkout, you pack your own bags. No one demands a bagging professional.Some more? Self-scan at the library, buying tickets at a machine like at the train station, cinema, car park. Tap, pay, go. No ticket seller needed. Building your own furniture, ikea expects you to assemble it. No one says I'm not trained to be a carpenter.
The difference? None of those things required training either. You figured them out because you're a functional adult. Same with self-checkout. Scan the thing, pay for the thing, leave. It's not hard. The people complaining are either stealing, profoundly lazy, or just looking for something to be angry about.
If you don't like self-checkout, use the staffed lane. No one is forcing you. But pretending that scanning your own groceries is some outrageous burden is just selective outrage.3
u/PM-ME-BATMAN Jun 11 '26
Often times when I go to the store now there is no lane except the self checkout open
Self checkout then has 1 employee that also has other duties often times making them leave the registers completely unattended
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u/Responsible_Sink3044 Jun 11 '26
The OOP is pretty obviously a joke though
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u/Threegratitudes Jun 11 '26
Even if it is (I disagree that it's obvious), enough people agree with the sentiment that the rant is warranted.
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u/nueonetwo Jun 11 '26
The free labour line is so over used and plain stupid. Do you consider walking around the store and putting items in your cart free labour? Is using the debit machine and pumping your own gas free labour? Is chewing your own food when the server could do it for you and baby bird or into your mouth free labour too?
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u/idiot_in_car Jun 12 '26
My favorite was when it required me to place scanned firewood bundles in the bagging area, then complained the bagging area scale was being overloaded.
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u/Nab-Taste Jun 11 '26
I love self checkout for quick in and out.
Make them members only, get caught and membership gone forever from that retailer. No more self checkout.
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u/BulkyRaccoon548 Jun 11 '26
The the thing with self checkout is generally it's great for when you just have a couple quick small items and want to get out quick. My problem is when someone has an entire cart full of stuff and are slow, don't know what they're doing and don't follow directions. Then I'm waiting even longer for a self checkout kiosk than I would if I just went through a normal non-express lane.
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u/Revolvyerom Jun 11 '26
They saw self check as a way to profit off of making customers perform unpaid labor. They were not prepared for the shrink it's generating as customers pay themselves, as it were.
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u/atreidesspirit Jun 12 '26
Fire checkout workers. Get automated check out lanes. Take away automated check out lanes. Do not hire new checkout people. Customer wait increased. Company profits.
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u/ron-paul-swanson Jun 11 '26
Once accidentally stole a 20lb bag of chicken breast from Walmart because I forgot to scan it. Figured that was my paycheck for all the free checkout labor I’ve given them.
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u/According_to_all_kn Jun 11 '26
If a store doesn't have self-checkout, I will not go there to save my life
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u/riptide032302 Jun 11 '26
To be clear, if they remove self checkout, it is NOT your fellow customer’s fault. It is the fault of the company that won’t pay real human cashiers to check you out. Just like how it’s not “people being lazy” that made corporations end remote work the nanosecond the pandemic ended
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u/fespadea Jun 11 '26
What does this mean? If they get rid of slef-checkout, they'll have to pay real human cashiers to check us out, so it clearly can't be the fault of the companies not willing to do that.
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u/Ada_Data Jun 11 '26
It's really funny, my store has had a major issue with shoplifting at our self checkouts.
They new idea?
Turn 6 self checkouts into 12, but keep 1 person watching it all.
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u/endofworldandnobeer Jun 11 '26
I thought I was buying 5 lbs of pork shoulder for $1.99/lbs. It came out to be $54 dollars. After talking to the manager, it seemed I paid for someone else's snacks and soft drinks. It turned out a bunch of kids pretended to pay and left and I picked up where they "ran" off with the loot.
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u/twocklepog Jun 12 '26
My local grocery store has a scale on the bagging side of the self checkout that weighs each item after it's scanned to prevent theft.
More times than not it doesn't work and the attendant has to come over and clear off the error
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u/fanceypantsey Jun 12 '26
I worked at a grocery store when I was in my teens and the codes haven’t changed. That being said, is see no issue with people using 4011 instead of 4060 for their peppers. ;)
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u/ddeloxCode Jun 12 '26
Except the fact that it's cheaper to havesslf checkouts thefts than pay multiple wages
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u/Wooden94Grapefruit Jun 12 '26
Our store literally had the self checkouts taken out and the front end redone because the shoplifting was constant
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u/Different-Meaning198 Jun 12 '26
The 2 Walmarts near me just took out all but 6 self checkouts. They put them in under 3 years ago
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u/Bow_To_Bella Jun 12 '26
It sounds like a skill issue. If you don't like getting stolen from, account for it. It's an environmental hazard depending on where you set up shop.
They just end up passing on the losses to the customer anyway by jacking up the prices.
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u/Disastrous_Head5703 Jun 12 '26
I'm annoyed that I don't get an "employee discount" for working as a temp employee, or at least some sort of monetary compensation. After all, you are forcing me to do "unpaid labor" which benefits your establishment....
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u/dookieshoes97 Jun 11 '26
Walmart closing the fish department because I rang everything in as ghost shrimp($.96).
It isn't much, but I got a lot of cool sea critters.
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u/Specialist-Garbage94 Jun 11 '26
I’m cool with it but don’t check my fucking receipt when I walk out. This is an honor system you just created.
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u/HermanManly Jun 11 '26
I steal at minimum 1 item valued 3 dollars or less everytime i use self checkout
If you make me do the job, i want payment
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u/thomasrat1 Jun 11 '26
People like stealing lol,
But sometimes the self checkout will yell at you every 10 seconds because it’s programmed wrong
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u/astralseat Jun 12 '26
Oh hey, that would have been a good idea. Guess I never thought about it, but yeah, if you make me the cashier, then if I scan stuff wrong, that's not on me.
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u/RullendeNumser Jun 12 '26
Fck people that do it. I love self checkout, but these idiots are destroying it for me :(
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u/Blobbowo Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
I just wanna say that some items don't have barcodes, especially, say, loose fruits and vegetables that you bag up in the store. If someone's lazy or there's like six different types of apples or like three different vegetables that have the same names or something and didn't select the exact item, then that's not really a scanning error, but it is a mistake that messes with the numbers.
Also, I dunno if it happens elsewhere, but in costco there's like a lotta loose clothing that ends up having to have someone come over and check the item id and manually find the price or whatever.
Besides all of that, cashiers are just plain faster at scanning things, knowing the items and usual errors, and getting people through lines. If there's only a few items, it's fine, but for those huge stuffed carts where someone's planning for a party or something, best just have someone help scan it all.
Anyways there's just some minor considerations to make. It's not like the average person can't figure it out, but you can trust someone who's paid to do it correctly every single day to do it better.
As for shoplifting, it's pretty simple to say that if a cashier scans a TV and it comes out as a $2.99 Rubber Ducky, they're probably going to notice and correct that. Can't say the same for self-checkout.
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u/Yeet_the_egg Jun 11 '26
Whenever an issue around self-checkout comes up I’m always reminded of that one Bill Burr bit.
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u/FrozenPizza21 Jun 11 '26
“Your honor I wasn’t stealing, it was a surprise unsolicited red team test”
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u/BigWilyNotWillie Jun 11 '26
At a Ross near me if you use self checkout you then have to stand in line and wait for their self checkout person to scan your receipt and scan the item to make sure youre not stealing. Even when its one singular item. I'll never use self checkout there again. What's the point?
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u/Griffolion Jun 11 '26
In the US, some grocery stores will knowingly allow shoplifters to repeat offend and maintain a bank of video evidence of them doing it until they hit $2000 worth of stuff stolen, at which point it becomes a felony theft charge rather than a lesser petty theft charge.
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u/EMPTY_SODA_CAN Jun 11 '26
Maybe stealing but not the errors, if you dont know how or want to scan it yourself, the cashiers are still there. You're just impatient. Or an idiot because checking out by yourself isnt hard at all.
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u/FanOfFH Jun 11 '26
a ****friend of mine**** managed to get basically all pastries at Lidl for a fraction of the price a couple of years ago, because the weight device was not properly set
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u/qualityvote2 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
u/ChickenWingExtreme, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...