I like hanging out in parking lots at Walmarts and to scam boomers coming back with a load of groceries
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.
Haha, I am using the “I don’t work here” line 🤣
Management can fuck right the hell off. Self checkout is taking jobs away from people and getting us to work for free.
Do you feel the same about self serve gas?
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.
I like them because it makes my bagging more efficient. At the lanes, if I’m getting a decent amount of groceries, I usually end up bagging for a while after I’ve paid and feel like a dick because I’m in the way of the people getting rung up behind me.
At self checkouts, I take it out of the cart, scan, then stick it right in the bag. Even better if they don’t have the stupid weighing thing that assumes I’m trying to steal shit if they don’t micromanage every item going into my bag.
Also, in this case, management is telling workers to not make fun of people who don’t want to use self checkouts.
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.
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 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.
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 thought they stopped selling children at Walmart
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
Shoppin’ with Hoffman
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.
Based
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.
I genuinely can’t tell if you’re being facetious.
I thought you were fully serious, but then I hit the line
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,
And assumed you were just poking fun and the poor widdle corporations and their giant profit margins, but then you continued with your paragrap, and now I’m not sure again…
But maybe you can explain where all the downvotes come from, because I don’t understand.
Is thievery good? Only when thieving from companies? Is is socially acceptable to take what is not yours from others? Only from companies? Or from a stranger who has more than you? From a friend? What’s this all about?
Fuck the corpos, choom.
Whoosh that’s were the DV came from.
No, I’m serious in all statements. Corpos will jack prices on any occassion that offers itself, so keep the number of those low.
I don’t know where YOU live but Walmart is one of the biggest thieves in the USA. People working there still have to collect government assistance because they pay too little to live on.
it gives retail a free card to jack prices
so blame the corpos for that. not your neighbour stealing some chicken.
Bro relax. It was a joke
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
asking for a cashier?
That would be normal
“I don’t work here”
Is a rude response to the question whether they would like to use the self-checkout.
I would rather someone be rude and fight for what’s right then someone nice that’s propagating a system of injustice because “my 15 mins are valuable”
Ehhhhh very mildly rude if at all. Like it’s not the most polite response but people are allowed to express themselves too
They didn’t ask.
service is not something the client has to ask for but something the vendor provides. Just like you hold a door open for someone entering behind you, you provide that service, unasked. Having to ask for service is a failure in itself, it’s just “no service”.
Can’t you read or do you just want to be right?
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You mean demanding special attention rather than using the self-checkout like everyone else? Not sure I understand.
“service” is no “special attention” but I get to the conclusion our misunderstanding might be a socio-cultural thing
I expect that the management is responsible for adequate staffing. Self-checkout typically doesn’t even work. Not a boomer, not USian, YMMV.
Self checkouts don’t work where you are? Odd.
Typically they need attendant attention, to be reset to be usable. Which makes it rather pointless. My expectation that checkout lines are to be adequately staffed with cashiers. This is, however, increasingly not a safe assumption, in Germany. I expect the situation to further deteriorate. As does everything else.
Here there are like 10 self-checkouts per 1 employee and they’re just there if the machine gets confused about a weight. It’s much better, and faster than waiting in the queue for a manned checkout. I can’t imagine wanting to go backward, where’s the benefit?
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
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.
Corporate gaslighting be like:
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
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.
They still do bagging in the US? Greeters, too?
I only know of greeters at places like Walmart and bulk shops like Costco and BJs
You buy meat pack that’s leaking?
Not leaking but clearly a pack of meat that has moisture on it.
To add to that, you don’t wash your produce before eating it?
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.
Don’t forget the commercials before and after you pay FML
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.
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.
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.
