Comment on Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech

TheBlue22@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• h3rm17@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  In my nearest supermarket (europe) it is a pain. You go through self checkout cause it should be faster, but it works like shit, and you have to wait a lot until someone comes to fix the problem. We are civilized, though, we don’t cause problems to the shopkeepers. Still a pain, though

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• RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m in europe and the issues I’ve had are getting an alert that an employee needs to come to check and sometimes that can take awhile.

  One store also has a scanner so you self scan as you go BUT the paying part is at an actual employee instead of a machine. Every damn time they are alerted to randomly pick some items from your cart to check if any weren’t scanned. And every damn time they pick the items at the bottom of my basket and damage stuff because of it. Or sometimes there is no one at the checkout so i stand there with my basket/cart and scanner like an idiot for 3-5 minutes for an employee to show up. That might not seem like a long time but it sure feels like it…

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  • abrasiveteapot@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yep this is exactly why I refuse to do the scan as you go, it ends up seriously frustrating. Self scan at checkout is fine if you don’t have paracetamol or alcohol, otherwise you’re waiting ages for assistance.

    It’s definitely an overall worse experience

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• rambaroo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Kinda funny how much faster Europe has adopted retail tech lately. Last time I was there 7 years ago they were still mostly using cash for transactions, but now the cashiers get a little buttmad if I don’t tap my phone to the scanner immediately. I hardly see anyone using phone payments in the US and I don’t understand why it hasn’t caught on. At least not where I live. It’s about as fast and convenient as it gets.

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  • TheBlue22@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Pretty much in any major city in my tiny country, this is the case also.

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• grayman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yes. The technology options for self checkout in the US are terrible, so the user experience is terrible. All the horror stories in this thread are true. The stores are terrified of theft but refuse to hire checkers. There’s also way too many grocery stores, so there’s little money to put into technology upgrades and appropriate levels of staffing. For example, I am less than 5 minutes drive from 9 grocery stores. Extend that to 10 minutes and I’ve got over 20. Silly.

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  • TheBlue22@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s crazy. We have a designated checker for each self checkout.

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    • grayman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We have about 1 employee per 12 self checkout stations.

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      • TheBlue22@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Kinda what I meant, too.

        In more modern places, they have little machines that they can solve any issue without having to stand up.

        In older places, they have to walk around, and they are assigned to like 6-10 machines.

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