Some Walmart employees say customers are getting hostile at self-checkout — and they blame anti-theft tech::When Walmart’s anti-theft self-checkout tech alerts an employee of a missed scan, it can cause some uncomfortable situations.

  • tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk
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    1 year ago

    It’s gone further here… we have shops with scanners so you scan the goods as you go around… in theory speeding up checkout but…

    1. 25% of the time you end up selected for ‘random check’ so an employee has to come and rescan everything anyway
    2. If there are any ‘restricted’ items a like painkillers, a different employee has to come over and allow them.

    Given the chronic understaffing meaning you’re basically in a queue for attention, it frequently takes longer to get through the ‘rapid’ checkouts than it would if I simply queued up and got someone else to do it. But as far as the supermarket thinks they’re winning as they pay fewer people.

    • Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Companies only want to shift to self checkout because they think they’ll make more money.

      It’s all about profit.

      I was fooled, I thought it was going to be better for me. And it was for awhile, because I can check myself out faster than the average employee.

      However, the average customer sucks at checking themselves out. So the line for self checkout sucks. Stores use scales to make sure you’re scanning the right number of things, but that means that I have to put everything down on a tray, and then put it back in my cart after.

      Worst of all, I check out so fast that I regularly get stopped because I guess I look like a thief. No, I didn’t steal anything, I just don’t want to waste any more of my precious time in this depressing fluorescent establishment.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can tell who’s never worked as a cashier because they take fucking forever to check out

      • arefx@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        My local grocery market solved the problem of customers sucking by just adding more self checkout and it worked I think. I don’t know I go even when it’s super busy and never have to wait and if I do it’s for like 20 seconds. Wegmans for what it’s worth . Overall the quality of Wegmans has gone down though the past few years.

    • TheLight@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      This is the store policy making the experience suck.

      Random checks at Kaufland (European supermarket chain) only require the employee to visually inspect your cart to see if you scanned everything and they only need to rescan like four items, to verify the employee actually took the time to check instead of just waving you through, so it’s all very fast.

      Also, all employees can clear restricted items, so that’s fast too. My only gripe is that alcohol-free beer also triggers the age verification, but that’s a minor issue.

      I love the hand scanners since thanks to them wonky scales and weight limits are a thing of the past. They really make checkout faster, as long as the store isn’t using them in a boneheaded way.