Even when Susan is taking a huge cart through, a single queue for multiple service providers (self checkout) is always going to be theoretically more efficient than multiple queues - one per provider (one line for each cashier). The best of both worlds are places that have a single area to corral you into line, and a row of cashiers where you can go to the first available.

[–] Rentlar 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I once was that guy who took a cartful of groceries to the self-checkout. The goddamn thing had to call staff no less than 6 times because we couldn't fit everything on that damn scale.

I'm not doing that again.

[–] Dempf 3 points 1 year ago

I can't even blame you that much when places like Costco do their damnedest to get everyone in the self checkout line. If you're not paying attention it'd be easy to roll through there with stuff that doesn't really work well for self checkout.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here's the thing most people don't understand. It's possible to bag your shit elsewhere. You can scan your shit, put it back in the cart, and literally go anywhere else and bag it up. Everybody and their mother are taking the time to bag their shit at the checkout and holding everyone else hostage while they figure out where to put their bananas and lube. I routinely take a full cart of shit, scan it all with the handheld scanner, and I'm out the door before Nancy and her 10 shits. The whole point is that the POS is just there to pay for your shit. If everyone just took their shit to the giant area in front of every store, or to their car to bag their shit, no one would be holding anyone up besides the truly inept.

[–] DarthBueller 5 points 1 year ago

Many grocery stores have scales in the self-checkout bagging area. If you scan a can of soup, you're going to take that can, put it on the bag scale but not into a bag, scan your other items, put them onto the bag scale but not a bag, and then take all of your loose items and put them one by one into your cart? How is that efficient?

[–] Aceticon 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's literally what you had to do in Germany in Lidl - even with a cashier there wasn't even room enough to bag it there at the till and the whole thing was even shaped so that you could park your trolley in such a position that the cashier would directly put things into your trolley.

Not only that but everybody (including other customers) clearly expected you to operate within that system (for example, moving your trolley in a timelly fashion to the right "docking" spot to recieve the scanned products) and, if you paid with cash, get the change, free the area near the till and do the whole "store the change properly in your wallet" elsewhere were you weren't wasting other people's time.

You had an area you could go to and bag your stuff or you could take to trolley to your car and transfer the goods to the trunk there (in my case, this being Berlin, I had a bicycle with removeable cargo bags, so took the trolley there and then at home just unhooked the bags and carried them upstairs to my appartment).

I've never seen that anywhere else here in Europe, even in other Lidl stores (I'm now in Portugal and after Germany it's all frustratingly slow and inneficient). I suppose a certain cultural mindset is probably required for people to naturally fit into such a system (were if everybody does their bit, everybody gets to pay and GTFO much faster).

Oh, and there were no self-checkouts there and the cashiers were amazingly fast, which makes all sense: self-checkout is really just using amateur and untrained - thus slow and inneficient - "cashiers", so self-checkout tills would probably use more space and make the thing go slower.