2mo ago

Ok boomer

381 comments

The Boomers are right sometimes, like about keeping email.
- Yeah, this response is a rare boomer W.
- I have 20k emails in my inbox
  I will only clean it when I get complaints
  
  You're either the kind of person who reads their emails in real time and freaks if that little blue number ever reads "2" or you're the kind of person who selects their entire inbox and marks it as read twice a decade.
  My wife is the former. I am the latter. I get too much junk. I go through my inbox a few times a day, read what looks important, and ignore the rest. I have 2,174 unread emails in my inbox and a folder called "auto junk" with 5,116 in it.
- keeping emai
  Please explain
  
  As opposed to switching to proprietary messaging services.

I've never understood the people who seem to not get that some people actually don't mind scanning their stuff and putting it in bags, and insist that that's the line between what the customer does and the employee. They also used to carry your groceries to the car for you, and you can also get them to pick everything up, bag it and bring it to your car or house. It's not like the checkout process is the special part that can't change.
Yeah, they want to save money by having fewer people get more customers checked out faster. I don't really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
- I don't have a problem with self-check. I use it most the time because I usually have < 10 items.
  I DO have a problem with only self-check lanes being open or only ONE regular clerk check lane open. both of which happen at walfart.
  I know this because I used to work there and policy was to hire floor associates that can run a register so the store won't need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
  
  so the store won't need to pay for cashiers just standing around.
  Aren't walmart employees also required to stand all day? Kinda insane to me that they're not allowed to just sit down
  
  I don't think I've ever seen a Walmart cashier without a line. Doesn't matter how many cashier lanes and self checkouts are open. Find it hard to belief they are ever able to just stand around.
- I love self checkout. Conversation with strangers is difficult, slow and often not fun. Separating that aspect from checking out is the best customer service a lot of stores offer.
  Some stores near me are removing or disabling self checkout. Apparently this better serves the customer. Can't quite see how taking away options improves things, but ...
  
  It doesn't, it's because people shoplift at self checkout all the time and the big retailers can't figure out how to stop it. Almost every shop in my town forces you to do self checkout, they don't even have cashiers most of the time. Last time I was at my local walmart they had like 6 self checkouts and 4 cashiers just standing there staring at everyone trying to find shoplifters. They still can't find them though lol.
  
  I respect your preference, and for some people it could even be considered a "reasonable accommodation."
  But I prefer to have the person who does this all day whip through the scanning and bagging while I pay up. It may not be rocket surgery, but good cashiers have an efficiency of eye/brain/hand motion that I can't match. Especially when there's multiples of the same item, their machine trusts them to do it the efficient way rather than scanning and weighing each item. Or having the produce codes at their fingertips without stopping to read them. And since all machines have little quirks, it's helpful to know exactly where to apply "percussive maintenance."
  I am comfortable speaking with strangers, so I always thank them and wish them a good day. And I don't stand for entitled assholes giving them shit, either.
  Having both options is best and should be part of ADA compliance.
  
  Yea the issue is the employer doing it to make more profit instead of spreading the more profit they make to the workers. There is nothing wrong with self check out. There is something wrong with people being paid shit when the company is sending dividends to stockholders instead.
- Have you ever rang a TV through as bulk onions?
  I fucking love self check out!
  
  They have some new AI thing watching the cameras that will make that a lot harder. Like, it wouldn't let me scan the same item twice instead of scanning both identical items.
- The check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different from those other services you mentioned.
  Also,
  I don't really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.
  That was true until they realized they could enshittify by closing all the regular check-outs and force everyone into it. Now it's just as slow as full-service used to be.
  
  check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different
  Like a vending machine? Or the gas station? Or the grocery pickup, where I pay online?
  What makes a human being present for me giving my money to a machine different if it's a grocery store as opposed to one of those?
  Sorry your experience sucks. Stores near me regularly have both open and the self checkout is invariably significantly faster. It's not like I just didn't notice that something I do several times a week actually sucks.
- That's not the actual animosity towards things like self checkout, most of the time. It's a distaste for a large corporation to replace jobs with automation. Sure, it's a menial job, but it was still an ability for someone to have a job if they needed one.
  Labor shortages go up and down with time and what a lot of younger people don't really understand was that sometimes the country would go years with it being hard to find any job. Even a bad one. The last 15 years have been pretty easy to find work, so a lot of the younger people can't really know what it was like when you could go a long time just trying to find a job.

My parents refused to use the self-checkout because “They take people’s jobs.”
They were hardcore republicans perfectly happy to make sure those jobs got paid shit.
- Do they also book all their travel through travel agencies, always use full-service gas stations, valet their cars instead of parking on the street, make restaurant bookings through concierge services, etc? Those are people's jobs too!
  
  Also, let's not forget that you are doing someone's job simply for using a shopping cart at all. Traditional grocers didn't have anything like the aisles we wander through now. Rather, there would basically be a warehouse with a counter at the front. You walked up with your list of items, gave it to the grocer, and they would grab the items for you. Customers gathering goods themselves didn't come about until the age of the supermarket starting in the mid 20th century.
  This is also why I have zero sympathy for stores that complain about theft and shrinkage. They're the ones choosing to operate in a business model that makes theft easier. Traditional grocers didn't have to worry about shoplifting, as everything was kept behind the counter. Sure, armed robbery was a concern then as it is now, but shoplifting wasn't a concern.
  When the grocery stores abandoned the traditional model, they realized the money they saved on labor would more than make up for the increased losses due to shoplifting. And that was simply a choice they made. And it's the same with self-checkout. They made a business decision that would inevitably result in increased theft, and they have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they don't like the increased theft, they can go back to cashiers. Or hell, there's nothing stopping Walmart from going all the way back to the traditional dry goods store model even. That would work really well with online orders as well. You don't even let customers wander through most of the store. You just have a very long counter at the front of the store that customers walk up and tell the workers what they want. And the workers gather the order. You either wait for them to gather it, or you place the order in advance and have it ready when you pick it up. If Walmart did this, shoplifting would become virtually impossible. Their labor costs would skyrocket, but Walmart has it in its power to completely eliminate shoplifting if they really want to.
  
  I'd book a flight through a travel agency if these still existed. Booking online is pure dread to me. I'm too young to have ever seen a travel agency but the concept of not having to deal with Ryanair and Wizzair is very luring.
  
  I always go into stores to throw stuff from the racks onto the floor, to make sure the people whose job it is to clean that up stay employed.
  I never buy anything of course, I don’t want stuff that’s been on the floor!
- They were increasing demand for labor which pushes up the price of labor.
  Maybe in spite of themselves, they were helping.
  
  I’ll give them a “partly right in spite of themselves” for sure.
- IE. We like the idea of slavery! Someone to do the dirty work while we act superior...while shopping at Walmart.

I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.
At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.
I don't mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you.. but they are not a replacement for cashiers.
Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.
Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I'll never do it again.
- You don’t get to be 3 of the richest people on the planet by paying for labor
- I'm 100% against self checkout.
  They've put the burden of sale on you instead of themselves. If you fail to check something out accidentally, you are liable for theft.
  If they don't have a cashier, I go to customer service and tell them to ring me up even if it's one item.
  
  Which is why I'm against making people do big orders through self checkout, cause thats when an accident can happen.
  Not when you're getting your genital itch cream.
  
  NAL, but i believe that they have to show intent in order to prosecute. As long as the legal system works properly, they would have to prove that you're lying when you say "I forgot that was down there"
  
  Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item
  
  I can't imagine a judge taking a case where someone unwittingly stole something
- Yeah and then I had a lady ask to check my receipt because there’s not enough room to put everything on the fucking thing all at once so I told her no and walked out.
- Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.
  I also faced that scenario once and walked out of the store leaving my $400 worth of groceries sitting in front of the abandoned cashier lanes. The profit from just my purchase would have paid for a full cashier shift that day. Instead they got to pay for restocking and ruined frozen food and meat.
- What’s so bad with self checkout I run through it faster then a cashier does
  
  If you have more stuff than will fit in the weighing platform it’s a logistical disaster. Hence why the belts and bagger system were invented in the first place.
- It’s cute that you think 25% of your sale is going towards labour, even before self-checkouts became so commonplace.
  
  Its cute that you are trying to twist what I said into something that I didnt say.
  No wait, not cute. the opposite of that.
  I said I want a 25% discount for doing their job and saving them the labor. Not that their labor is 25% of my bill.
  
  Just curious, I have no idea what the real number is, what do you think it is?
- Walmarts keep the same number of cashiers before and after self checkouts are installed.
  
  not in any walmart where i've witnessed the changeover.
  
  That number is between 0-2 depending on how many cashier lanes there are.

Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don't even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?
That's the first time I've seen the word "boomer" on the opposite side of the word "sucker".
- Refuse to do free work for a company—insist that the grocery store employees go and gather the items on your list from the shelves for you! Never set foot on the sales floor, do pickup orders online only!
  Background: It used to be that the proprietor of a store brought items you requested to the counter for you. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly pioneered a new grocery store model, requiring/allowing the customers to pick items off of the shelves themselves. Not only did they not give you a discount for doing their work for them, they raked in more money from impulse purchases. The increased sales more than offset the increase in shoplifting losses. A cynical, corporate ploy to bleed customers dry, and we just think it's normal now!
  That is to say, the purpose of a grocery store is to provide food in exchange for currency. There's no law of nature that I know of that says that having an underpaid teenager drag your food across the scanner is the only proper way to do check-out, just like there isn't one that says only a store employee can pick items from the shelf.
  
  In other words, race to the bottom is race to the bottom.
  Those jobs were not cruel and demeaning as you seem to imply. In fact plenty of industries still operate that way (auto parts etc.) and they served a valuable purpose, to give work experience to that underpaid teenager.
  In fact if you go to a butcher shop, fishmonger, farm market etc. you will have your food handed to you by a human as well. And most people highly rate both the service and quality at such shops, with the employees usually being paid significantly more than at supermarkets, and having proper work hours and job security.
  So yes, I suppose Piggly Wiggly made food margins a little thinner. But considering I get better meat prices at my butcher than at a supermarket, who do you think benefited from that move the most? Most likely the same ones benefiting from the move towards a fully automated store like Amazon tested.
  
  Maybe you can go the warehouse and pick it up from the boxes, drive down to the farm to het the produce or, even better, grow your own food ALL THE WHILE STILL PAYING FULL VALUE TO THE SUPERMARKET.
  "People used to have even more done for them and now they don't and pay the same" is not the powerful argument for us having even less done for us that you think it is.
- Exactly! Back in my day, people used to fill up my gas for me and carry my things up to my hotel room. Young people are getting lazy and entitled! Corporations need to make them work harder. Makes it hard to humiliate the poors if they make ME do the work.
  
  Tbh back then the pay was more fairly in line with cost of living for some of the jobs. however, it has been a good 20 or so year since it was more fair. Nowadays, it is absolutely scary the cost of living. it's down right criminal.
- Okay boomer

Recently had a support call with a woman who was complaining about our 2 factor authentication system because she could only access one web page at a time. When I asked her if she couldn't just open a new tab, she said she was too old to learn how computers work and couldn't do that. She went on to claim that there's a lot of people at her level of ineptitude, and that we shouldn't have implemented 2fa because "most people don't have multiple monitors."
It was so, so hard not to throw out an OK Boomer as they proudly lectured me on the depths of their ignorance.
- Can be funny for trivial stuff, but in the medical field this type of stuff is pretty messed up in my opinion. Some medical places implement stuff like that just because they refuse to pay people to staff the phones in scheduling.
  Also, if the old lady doesnt want MFA thats her choice.
  
  Mandatory MFA isn't a bad thing though.
  If an old lady doesn't want to remember a password, should she be able to enter just her email/identifier without any verification?
- There is a time when every person realizes that things have changed so much around them that they no longer understand how it works. It creeps up on you slowly, but in the Information age, that is accelerated. Every person here will experience some form of that at some point in their lives.
  
  That's entirely your choice, it's not a requirement of life. You can continue learning new information, there's nothing that forces you to give into ignorance. I'd also say there's a pretty big difference between "I'm not a very tech savvy person" and "I am completely helpless and choose to make it other people's problem."
  
  My father was 75 when his finances had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer able to afford a personal secretary.
  He had me explain the things he had to do, and he wrote them down on paper, step by step. He was pretty quickly able to do all the things he needed to do on his desktop.
  Never got fast typing down, so I got him dictation software. Anyway, I'm pretty convinced as long as your determined, you can stay hip to new technology in a way that at least allows you to work with it.

They also don't schedule enough employees to keep the lines running quickly, they only have 2-3 lanes open most of the time when it's busy as having another line is 2x $13-15 an hour for a bagger and a cashier. This gets people to either go to self checkout or wait forever. Naturally most people go through self checkout, which they'll probably use as an excuse to make more self checkouts.
(talking about the store I work at specifically, which isn't a Walmart, but I assume Walmart does the same)
- I don’t think I’ve seen a bagger in a decade, maybe it’s a regional thing?
  
  Krogers still have baggers.
  
  trader joes, cashier does it too
- I REFUSE to put how many bags I took if I have to self checkout. I also buy less. in many states now there is a bag fee. if I have to scan and bag my own shit, you're eating that cost and for not paying an extra employee to be there to help. I also don't frequent you as often.
  
  you're eating that cost
  Isn't the bag fee usually a tax though? By not paying it you're not screwing the store, you're screwing whoever would get that tax (e.g. infrastructure, aid programs, etc)
  I also don't frequent you as often.
  This might actually do something, if enough people are committed to it.
  
  Why would you need someone to bag your shit, lol?
  That is nonexistent in my country except in the single Costco in the entire country and everyone feels pretty uncomfortable about it.
- "go to self checkout or wait forever."
  On the unfortunate days I have to stop at the store when myself and everyone else are getting off of work, I've seen the lines at self checkout as long or longer than the registers.
  I'm use a self checkout if 1) there are empty checkouts and 2) I only have enough items that I can carry. Sure - then I'm getting in and out. But if I'm pushing a cart, I'm going to a cashier.
- I usually see lines at the self checkouts too, and they move a lot slower.

I'd rather "work" than wait behind people with 100+ items. I can be out the door in 2 minutes.
- even faster if u skip some items from being scanned
  
  Based
  
  Why bother going through the checkout at all, the fastest way out is straight through the door. Unrelated, the weather is changing so I'm thinking of buying a really big coat, and I'll want pockets for my keys and other essentials.
  
  Shoppin' with Hoffman
  
  I don't know where you live but here theft is a crime and very antisocial and despicable.
  Someone has to pay for the thieves and prices rise because they have to compensate for theft. Even if prices in reality do not need to compensate, because margin is already big enough, it gives retail a free card to jack prices, which, in essence, is yet again against consumers.

So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven't worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway ("Unexpected item in bag", etc), they've lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.
(edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
- I LOVE self-checkouts for small shopping. No human interaction bullshit. Just beep your stuff, whip out your card and go. Rarely do I encounter technical problems.
- For me it's not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it's the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don't bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
  Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I'm walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.
  
  Also over here cashiers don't bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
  I'm a lot faster at bagging when I'm not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.
  
  Scandinavia?
  
  That sounds amazing! Can I ask where that is?
- Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that the mighty MBA class are actually just short-sighted, trend-hopping, avaricious shitbags?
  Yeah, if you can't pay people enough to notice and/or care if I steal from you, I get to steal from you. Them's the rules.
  
  "If you aren't able to stop me, I get to rape you. Them's the rules."
  That's how fucking stupid you sound.
- I just like the feeling of privacy. When the staff redirects customers to the cashiers because there's less queue than at the self checkout, I pretend not to hear with my headphones on.
  
  Same. I'm one of the few people that prefers self checkout. Covid was a magical time for me while grocery shopping. No one awkwardly had to smile after eye contact, everyone gave space and avoided each other, just get in and get out without ever taking out my headphones. Self check out is always faster where I'm from too.
  
  I only prefer self checkout when I'm buying rubbers and lube. Anything else I'd rather have the checkout person scan and bag for me.
  If you have social anxiety, the checkout person conversation is one of the easiest interactions for you to practice those skills on. "Hello, here are my items, thank you" is about the gist of what's necessary.
- Self checkout is great for stealing!
  
  It's not stealing, I paid for that six-pack of bananas and two steak shaped bananas!
- Because the store is packed, they only have 2 cashiers on shift and I want to go home.
  
  It's almost as if they do underman the tills on purpose to force people to do the checkout work themselves for free ....
- Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items
  In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?
  If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
  With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
  If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.
  the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway ("Unexpected item in bag", etc)
  What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.
  The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.
  Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.
  
  In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
  Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
  Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you're buying 8 of them).
  In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don't match up.
  The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn't allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
  The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don't have bar codes.
  As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there's a longer line for regular cashier, but if there's no line the employee cashier is much faster.
- They are HUGELY advantageous to shoplifters. My local grocery store did it for a few years and stopped all together.

I'm on Team Boomer on this one.
- I am and I'm not. If it's like 2 items, give me a self checkout. If it's over 15. Bring on a cashier.
  
  I always prefer self checkout because too many people suck at bagging.
  Don't put a leaking pack of meat with my deli you dumb shit. All while I see people pushing full carts that have meat touching produce...
  The only place I trust to bag for me is Trader Joe's. Tetris masters over there.

Someone needs to write "Ok, Boomer" on this notice.
- The writer seem sympathetic to their workers I. This case.

I agree with the boomers on this one. I'm not in the habit of providing free labor to a corporation I don't even work for.
- I agree! I was at a Walmart one time and some chick ran out right by us at a high speed. We had no idea what was going on but apparently she was stealing. The one worker said as they walked by us "you got all these people standing around doing nothing and they couldn't stop her?" It was a smart ass comment. Did that employee really believe that I would risk my life for Walmart, of all places? I don't work there, I'm not security, I'm not a police officer. Not my problem.
- Do you also demand to have underpaid workers standing all day to bag your groceries?
  
  If it was up to me, they wouldn't be forced to stand all shift or be underpaid, but since I'm not in charge of shit I can't change their company's policies.
- Boy, you're not gonna be happy when you learn how food stores used to work. They've been offloading things labor used to do onto the customers for a century.
  
  Which makes it even worse
  
  I actually prefer being able to choose my own produce and meats.
  Edit: I definitely get suckered in by the impulse purchasing though.
- have fun waiting in line i guess? while i zip through the self checkout in a fraction of the time
  also, do you live in jersey? if not, then you're pumping your own gas, bless your heart
  
  The lines are usually minimal (1 or 2 people) during the time of day I typically go shopping, and I drive an electric that is charged in my garage.
- It's easier to steal shit. So pay yourself with a nice cheap can of Pinot Gris.
  
  Stealing is wrong.
- Then pay for delivery and get it right to your door…
  Cashiers and baggers are underpayed and forced to stand, if you want someone to chat to, you should pay extra. But you don’t want to pay more for groceries to pay people a living wage, the solution is to pay for delivery, sorry that still removes the ability to chat, but they aren’t obligated to, they only need to scan your groceries. Why do you think they need to do more?
  
  These people being forced to stand all day in the USA is pure insanity looking from the outside.
  
  I don't think, nor did I say, they needed to do more. I'm also not particularly fond of small talk, so I dont typically chat with them. They're paid to do a job, so why would I offer to do that job for free?

I refuse to use them as a union worker, when I'm told to use the self checkout as I'm in line for the only cashier I just refuse. I'm doing it for you kids
- This is broken window fallacy, akin to throwing garbage on the floor so some custodian keeps his job. These workers still have other shit to do. I get to waste less time waiting. So it's win-win-win situation.
  
  I see it as every employee walmart has to hire and pay to solve this problem is a local and the money will be saved and spent locally, not automatically going to be another drop in some CEO's bucket.
  The best choice is to shop local in the first place but some places don't have that luxury. And who knows if enough local money builds up people might open their own businesses
  
  Saying this is win-win-win is rather short-sighted. Unless we talk about something nationalized.

I used to love using the self-checkout. But then it became a trend among the corporate overlords here to get all paranoid about people stealing food, so now they have the weight system calibrated too strict. Now if you breath on the items in the bag it locks you out and someone has to come unlock the system to continue scanning. So it's not really worth the hassle, and seems kinda pointless since an employee has to unlock the system after every few items.
- Most stores around me thankfully don't even use the weight station. I don't even think Walmart does anymore since they "upgraded" their checkouts recently. (The self checkouts have completely taken over and have a sort of open floor concept going on.)

Then offer a discount for self checkout.
- In some places, they are making you subscribe to Walmart+ to use self checkout. Like, it wasn't just annoying enough, now if you don't have their subscription service, you have to stand in the extra long non-self checkout line. Can they make us hate it any more?
  
  Sounds like screwing up both customers and cashiers this way.
  
  The best system I saw for self checkout was at a place in New Zealand about...shit. Nearly 20 years ago now.
  You would walk in, scan a barcode on your store card, pick up a hand held scanner and scan the items as they went into the cart. Including fruit and veg, there was a weigh station for that. As you put stuff into the trolley you'd scan it.
  When you got to the front there was a special lane. You didn't unload, you walked through and paid. Randomly - like 1 time in 5 to start with - they'd ask you to rescan so you unload into the belt, which was faster because dedicated lane. But if you always had exactly the same items that you'd scan, the trust threshold in whatever system would greenlight you. No bagging either. Just the stock boxes on a table as you left, or like us you just shove it all in crates in the boot of the car.
  There was a.minor rebate in terms of store points which unlocked specials for using it but holy shit it was sooooo much faster because it moved the scan point back to you loading the cart. You could see how much you were going to spend and delete items from the scanner itself.
  I am not a grocery fan so to be able to do a full week shop in under 20 minutes was awesome. As per tradition we was young and on a tight budget so it was super easy to keep tabs on how much we were spending and saving.

But also, fuck off walmart

I don't work here. Stop trying to get me to do the job for free, either pay a cashier to check me out or fuck off.
There's an epidemic of these machines not working and then the shopper getting charged with shoplifting over it, Wal-Mart is the worst at doing this.
- Yeah. Give a cashier a wage, or give me a staff discount.

I was once mistaken for an employee somewhere and my sleep deprivated response was to say "I am wearing pants so clearly I dont work here." I have no fucken clue what that means but I think it was a threat.
- We're you at a strip club?
  
  Pretty sure I was at an Ace hardware or some shit. Like I said I was severely sleep deprived and was looking for something, pretty sure it was duck tape for reinforcing an air conditioner.
  Frankly speaking once I got to my car and realized what I said I started laughing my ass off since it was such a non sequitur.

Boomer uncle literally drives his electric bill payment to the local office to pay it when they have a perfectly fine online portal.
Same exact response 'that's someone's job' like the employee actually has a say.
- There's no justification from a pure convenience standpoint, but I could respect the pettiness if the electric company ran their shit like one local government office in my hometown, where there was this small annual fee they charged like $9 for...but then to pay it, you could either mail in a check, hand deliver cash or check or card...or pay online...where they added a $5 "convenience fee" to a sub-$10 payment.
  You bet your ass that I paid that shit in person every year, in loose change, and requested a receipt (which they had to write up manually because they didn't have a system to process and print one).
  
  I live by this philosophy
  If you charge me more to make both our lives easier, I will make both our lives harder out of spite.
  It will cost you more than the fee you tried to squeeze out of me, and I will have spent nothing.
  
  My city's water bill went from a free online portal to a shittier one with a fee. I pay it by check now out of pettiness.
  
  No fee for the portal. His only justification was it is some human interaction, which is fine. Just feels like a boomer mentality.
  Hell, you can even pay through a check via the banks online portal. Dude doesn't have a cell phone and never has.
- Most corporate bill portals I've personally used were terrible and charged me a significant convenience fee for using them.
  
  None of my utilities charge a fee. Seems foreign to me. Usually only the bmv charges one online.
  
  You're kidding, right? Are You trying to tell me, You physically walk somewhere to pay Your electricity bill? Are You also using cash to do it?
- Well, the funny thing is... it IS somebody's job, and they get paid for it. There more they push "self service" the less workers they're hiring and paying wages to, and the more your ever-increasing grocery bill just goes to pad some executive's bonus so they can buy a bigger boat or whatever.

I feel like most memos in Walmart break rooms are this kind of fodder for shitposting material

Corporate gaslighting be like:

Management can fuck right the hell off. Self checkout is taking jobs away from people and getting us to work for free.
- I once asked a cashier in Germany if she thought self-checkouts would take away her job. She said she liked them because there's enough to do anyway and they take away the boring task of cashier-ing.
  
  Though there is always a person standing next to the self-checkouts helping people if something is not working or they need to approve alcohol. They always seem pretty bored just standing around.
- Do you feel the same about self serve gas?
  
  Self serve gas was actually lower priced than full service back when the transition was happening, so there was actually a reason to do the work yourself.
  If it had been the same price, only I have to do the work of pumping it, damn straight I would have felt the same.
  In retrospect it was a bad deal because once full service went away entirely, so did the price difference, so I'm smarter now and wouldn't use self checkout even if they gave a discount.
  
  Tell me where I can find a place that pumps it for me at the same price and that’s where I’ll be getting it.
  
  Boomer question of the day
- With self checkout I can literally get in and out the grocery store in like 10-30 minutes where 98% of the time is me choosing products instead of waiting 5-15 minutes in the cashier lane waiting for old people to put their shit on the rolling thing
  
  However, you're increasing the client turnover, doing the cashier's work and not getting a single discount for it. All of this while prices for groceries keep increasing.
  Does that really seem ok to you?
  
  This. I don't even go in the store unless I just need a few things now or meat. In and out. If I'm getting a lot of stuff I'm making an order and picking it up. How's that for job creation they do the shopping for me. I've been toying with even getting it delivered. Those large stores have tons of work to do like keeping it stocked up and trucks unloaded and what not, cooking, cleaning and some even have a place to get your car serviced. Hell maybe there would even be someone to help with electronics for once.. I get it though sometimes you just want the full shopping experience. Staff it accordingly if lots of people like a cashier. We can have the best of both worlds people

I don't get it. Why would you ask a customer if they want to use the self checkout lane?
- Because they are open instead of waiting in line for a cashier?
  
  If the customer wanted to use the self checkout they'd be going to the self checkout ...
- It's so nice of employees, to help the company from needing a certain amount of employees.
  
  I had an employee direct me to self checkout at a fucking gas station were I was the only customer in the store. Shits pathetic.

Reading the comments, do people not like self checkout? Is it another one of these American things, that baffle the rest of the world? Like grocery baggers. I'm European, living in Poland and Denmark and if given the choice, I will always pick the store with self checkout. It's simply faster. Only old people don't use self check out, not because of boomer ideology, but because they need the cashier's help.
- Self checkouts that just let you scan items without issue and accept payment are a nice enough idea for a bag or less of shopping, my problem with them is how they are implemented in reality (in Australia anyway). The first implementations I encountered I considered an useful addition but both the machines and the staffing changes due to them have steadily gone downhill in terms of user experience.
  Instead of a quick painless experience you get a horribly touchy weight sensor which can't reliably handle particularly small items, particularly large items, or non-standard bags (and there are no longer standard bags due to plastic bag bans), a machine which demands assistant intervention at the slightest issue (and the assistants are understaffed so never arrive quickly), and when you finally get to payment it makes you click through an annoyingly slow interface to tell it you don't have a rewards card and don't care to donate to some charity before it will activate the card reader. To make things worse the manned checkouts are never staffed at a level - if any are even open - to cater for people with full trolleys so these end up clogging up the self checkouts (which have tiny bagging areas and are not intended to handle a trolley load) and making everything slower.
  The icing on the cake is the self checkout treating you like a thief and throwing errors if the camera system thinks you didn't scan something in the trolley or letting off an alarm like you're trying to make off with something when you just want to buy a can of paint.
  
  Yeah, I would rather wait for the one active checkout rather than have to go through the rigmarole of scanning one item, putting it in the bag, waiting for it to register before doing the next. The employees get to scan multiple things at once and do things like "scanned item x6". Until self-checkout technology advances to the point I can do the same, it can fuck right off.
  
  Don't forget the commercials before and after you pay FML
- I'm from France living in Sweden and I've seen people not wanting to use self-checkout because it's used to cut cashier jobs. Where you'd get 4 cashiers, you just get one person watching the self checkout. I'm personally ambivalent about because I do find it faster and convenient, but it is indeed a loss of jobs
- I recently moved, and my now nearest store does not have self checkout. It's horrible. I spend more time waiting in the line than actually finding my items in the store. During the three years i used my previous local store, I only had to wait for an unoccupied self checkout maybe two times.
  
  To be fair finding items in store longer than waiting in line is not a good sign either. Makes one suspect dark patterns in such case.
- I'm European too, living in Russia and I've never seen self-checkout that accepts cash. Despite seeing many vending machines that accept only cash.
  
  Why would they need to accept cash? The whole point is speed and convenience. Scan Your item, put your phone to the terminal and off You go.
- Depends on the SCO system. If I can swipe the item, swipe the card, and walk, then yeah, great. But if it can't handle small items, can't handle packages, and in particular makes you scan the receipt, no thanks. You cut an employee, eat the shrinkage and leave me alone.

Never understood that argument. I want to be in and out as quickly as possible. Self checkout makes that happen.
- I'll be honest, going with the people that get paid to do it is way faster for bigger buys
  
  I've found that I scan quicker than most of the people who are paid to do the job.
  
  Sometimes.... I've had lots of bad experiences with super slow checkout people. I would say most of the time, they were boomers themselves and spent half the time trying to make chit-chat.
  That being said, I will still line up for a staffed checkout if I have a cart full because it is easier since I can bag and put in the cart as they're scanning. But also, many of the self checkouts here have a limit of like 10-20 items posted.
- Some people are too entitled and think everyone else exists to serve and fawn over them
  
  I have to scan an item, then wait 10 seconds for the weight sensor to register that I actually put it in the bag. If I have a cart full of shit it's going to take me 5 minutes just to scan everything. A cashier can blow through that in a minute or two. I wouldn't be opposed to self checkouts if they didn't suck ass.
- I love self checkout. From my decades of cash register experience I can tell you, your soul begins to leave your body standing still for hours doing the same repetitive mindless task. It is not a job most want nor honestly should do. I really can't fathom the folks who prefer waiting in line for one bored af human to do a task they could easily do themselves. A good company would find other things for their employees to do or (this would never happen) pay them more per hour to work fewer hours totaling the same weekly check. I feel only the elderly, overburdened, and incapable should use a cashier. If you got 2 available, working hands and can twist at the waist - get to scanning!!
- It works fine until someone tries to buy an age restricted item (ye gods help you if you have more than one!) or inevitably every available kiosk is being hogged by a octogenarian who can't figure out the machine at they all take half an hour each to check out.
  For your convenience, half of the machines are broken, and the employee assigned to unjam the remaining working ones when they get their electronic knickers in a twist is on lunch.
  This situation has gotten so bad that my local Home Depot has started assigning an employee to "assist," i.e. work the machine from start to finish, every customer at the self checkout. So for those of you keeping score at home, that means what we've done is reinvented the standard checkout lane, except worse, and both people are standing on the same side of the counter for some reason.

I actually prefer self checkout. Idk. I get it though.

This says much about respect and social competence in this society when the first instinct is to mock and abuse someone with different priorities than yours.
- When they are that rude and stupid they have it coming
  
  You mean "rude" in asking for a cashier? Not sure I understand

I mean, both are right. Clients shouldn't have to do the cashier job.
But clients should stop going there to send a message instead of harassing the minimum salary employee.
- How is saying I" don't work here" in response to the employee approaching them to direct them to the self-checkout - how is that harassing them?
  
  I've been in these meetings, they call this "training the customer" that's literally what they are telling workers to do, train the customers to self check and stop asking for pos service.
  
  Because I highly doubt the person isn't just saying " I don't work here".
  Either way, the point still stand. Customer shouldn't be dicks to people doing their job as directed by Walmart and go shop elsewhere.
  Either way, be angry at the corporation, not the wage slave.

I'd rather check myself out than deal with other idiots. It's a win for my sanity.

I don’t understand the hate for self checkout it’s faster and easier
- It depends on the store. There are places where the self checkout lanes are dysfunctional and end up requiring waiting for a checkout worker (who are usually understaffed) to come and scan a code to fix it.
- My only issue is how loud and obnoxious the prompts/alerts are at some stores who have their volume cranked to max.
  
  My local king soopers always allowed a super low volume setting if you clicked it, now there's only two, yelling and screaming. People were probably setting that and the beep couldn't be heard on the camera or something
  
  Nah like actually they trying to deafen us
  
  European here. Our self-checkouts make no sounds and don't have any of that unexpected item bs. The experience is great. If your experience is like what I've read here, I begin to understand why it's disliked.
- Not always though. But regardless if you agree there, they are slowly replacing humans with machines and that has negative implications for workers and for the economy
- It's faster for me, slower for the other 799 people in line before me who have never stepped foot in a grocery store before today.
  Obvious hyperbole but some days it doesn't feel like much of an exaggeration.
  
  There’s always the one guy who can’t figure out to scan his fruit
- It's not faster, but it can be easier if you really don't want to talk to people. Don't kid yourself: someone who spends hours per day scanning barcodes knows where they are on each product and can do them faster than you.
  
  It literally is faster for me as I worked at Walmart for awhile but some the people they got in there now are slow af
  
  I am faster on self-checkout than the people working the register 100%, except Aldi. If Aldi scanners had to bag, it would be a tie.

I personally prefer to use the self-checkout lane because I want my groceries bagged in a specific way (raw meat in one bag, cans/bottles in another, etc.). It's infuriating when I line up my groceries in order on the conveyor and the bagger just stuffs them in the bags randomly anyway.
- I miss HEB sometimes back from when I was a kid. They were trained to bag things "correctly" and was one of the few places that didn't drive my dad insane. They banned plastic bags here shortly before Covid and I have used self checkout since with the nice big reusable ones that I can fill how I want. They would barely fill one bag and then demand another or start pulling out flimsy paper bags that will tear while trying to get my groceries up the stairs. I would bring 3 and it still ended up with me re-bagging it all and dealing with them saying I didn't have enough bags.
  
  barely fill one bag
  Right? That's another pet peeve of mine, the inefficiency. I bring up to 6 bags sometimes and somehow they manage to use all of them for a small haul of groceries, and randomly mixed too (bread smushed in with cans, raw meat mixed with hygiene products, etc.)
  I get it, they're not paid enough to be that meticulous; that's why I'd rather do it myself.

I live here in Toronto.
When I go to a store, I pay with cash.
I pay with Canadian money, because I'm a Canadian who buys from stores in Canada.
That was easy to do in Ontario Wal-Mart stores.
But then they put up self-check-outs that only accepted credit and debit cards—maybe because they're in cahoots with the banks and the NSA/wp:CSEC.
Then I had to use a cashier.
So I went to Wal-Mart fewer times as I didn't like to wait (as well as the increased prices during and after Covid-19).
Now they have a person at the self-checkout who will scan my stuff and accept my cash.
It seems that Wal-Mart adapted—somewhat—to people like me: people who pay with cash.
Still, I do more purchases at Food Basics and Dollarama because their self-check-outs accept cash, including pockets full of loose change that I purposely carry when I go there.
- here in Germany the self-checkouts mostly have a cash machine so you can pay cash without a person there
  
  Our Rewe recently switched to card-only
  
  I've never seen a self-checkout that accepts cash in Germany.
  
  Does that include your Wal-Mart stores? because that would be great. 🙂
- Stores still accept cash? What is this, the 17th century?!
  
  Why does Canada love coins so much? | Ivan Decker
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdzL86rW78U
  2:24

I enjoy turning this one around. "Oh, you're one of those socialists who wants everybody else to do your work for you, too lazy to lift your own groceries. Nobody wants to work anymore!"
- i'm sure you use that zinger all the time

Screw Walmart. During the storms here in NC, I went there to buy some relief supplies, and it was awesome to see the whole store getting picked apart by people buying supplies to donate. What was definitely not awesome was the only 3 checkout lanes open out of the total 12, because Walmart has a 3 per employee rule and they don't want to assign enough workers for the checkout lanes, even during times of crisis like this.
- What is a "3 per employee" rule?
  
  Only 3 self checkout lanes should be open per employee. If you have a self checkout area with 12 terminals, there have to be 4 employees to keep them all open.

I didn't know there were places that even asked that.

I get being mean to walmart because corporations are bad but being needlessly rude to random employees rubs me the wrong way. Most of us can't get a job anywhere better despite having a degree. We have to deal with the mental abuse of people constantly treating us like dog shit just because we exist. The job situation is so fucked right now. I should not be having to compete with people that have masters degrees and decades of experience for tech support jobs that pay $15 an hour. Fuck this broken society.
The last time I was not underemployed was 2018.
- Maybe your decades of failure is just obvious to everyone but you

The self checkout is a perfectly viable option, so long as Walmart can find the strength inside themselves to open 3-6 manned tills on a Sunday for folks with large carts or children. Nothing is more demoralizing than getting up to the checkouts after a huge shop and finding there isn't a single till open whatsoever. Throw in a four-year-old who wants to help scan every item and you're ready to burn the store down by the time you leave.
- I'd just abandon my shopping at that point and go somewhere else.
- I thought they stopped selling children at Walmart
  
  They're not great, but they're available.

Haha, I am using the "I don't work here" line 🤣
- Ok boomer
  
  GOT EEEM!...oh wait, that's me....🤣
- It's actually pretty good, isn't it?

When I bring my banana through the cashier lane they give me a dirty look. But when I ride one of the lawnmowers inside and try to mount a self check out, I get kicked out of the store. MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

I hate self checkout. I work all day to then check out my shit and bag my own groceries? And pay 2x for the same food and less service than 5 years ago?
- I like to have both. Self check out if I only have <10 items. But if I have a full cart I'd like to go to a cashier who has the scanning down to a T. I think this the best of both worlds.
- I love it. Less social interaction after a long day of work, I can keep my headphones on. It's a bliss for me.
- It IS weird how this cost saving measure hasn't saved us any money, isn't it?
- Is bagging your own stuff really that much more work? The sacrifice is waiting in line for them to fuck up bagging it anyways. It's significantly faster to use self and get home sooner to relax. If you're over filling a cart I'm sure it makes sense to go to an actually cashier but outside of that it's just wasting time

I've recently visited a grocery store in Hamburg, where you just put all your items on the self checkout counter, it detects all the prices and quantities in an instant (yes, including fruits and vegetables that require weighted!) you pay, you go. So great ! The only truly practical implementation of a self checkout, in my opinion. I've seen this in other types of store before (clothing) but never for groceries.

Real US/Europe split here
No cashier packs your bag for you in Europe. Sometimes it's a fun game trying to be faster packing than them scanning.
- If you scan the groceries yourself as you go through the store, you'll definitely be packing them quite a bit faster.
- We have Aldi and Lidl they're self-pack here as well.
- that is halarious

I wouldn't mind if either the cost savings by the grocery store would be transparently passed on to the customer and not greedily put in own pockets OR the checkout process is like " walk through a gate, everything is self scanned due to RFID tags and you can pay immediately at a machine"

Would the RAtM reply be too insubordinate? 😛

Yeah, you wouldn't want to get fired by Walmart. You'd have to go on welfa... oh.

...because it's a non-sequitur and makes no sense as a response.

The closest Walmart to me has about a dozen or so self checkout tills and there is usually a line of 20 people waiting to get to them. There's 3 cashiers that are there to badge the machines when they need to check ID for alcohol or override the machine if you double scan an item. I love self checkouts in other stores but Walmart has always been infuriating.

Instead, try saying "well, then they don't pay you enough to scan everything now do they?"
- Y...yes? They don't? That's not a very good comeback you got there.
  
  Okay and what if I, believe it or not, actually already knew that they dont pay customers to scan things and wasn't on Walmart side?

ok boomer

punchline in the title?...
ok boomer

381 comments