this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Not defending Apple here necessarily but have you not ever been in line for a self checkout? It’s not a difficult piece of software or equipment to use and in my experience half of the users if not more cannot handle it. Users are really fucking dense
Self checkouts don't work the same across stores, don't accept the same methods of payment across stores, require human intervention the moment anything off the happy path occurs (like not moving an item fast enough and it scans twice), provide constant interruptions during the execution of their single purpose, and are unfathomably slow and inconsistent at what they do.
They just don't work well.
The only intervention I have ever needed over 20+ years of using was for an ID check, it’s very very possible to use them without having an issue 99% of the time. They fuck up because people don’t have any patience or just a general misunderstanding of how a cash register works, which is not a difficult concept
The self checkouts where I am get confused from things as simple as a customer placing their own bags on the scale before even scanning anything and constantly need staff intervention. Not to mention how often prices are wrong on these systems. For the cost of constantly developing, upgrading and maintaining them. In the long run companies would be better off training a few extra staff for express lanes instead. Only my humble opinion though.
Why would you place your bags on a scale designed to detect a scanned product, scan everything pay and then bag if you are bringing your own. That’s what I do every time, stop thinking it’s anything more than a customer facing cash register, the scale/bagging area is the area of transition between pre and post purchase, once the transaction is done it stops caring. I don’t understand how someone can make more than one mistake on those machines without learning what not to do
Because that's double handling and the scales where I shop have bag holders on the side of the scales for their own bags, hence they are designed to account for the bags weight before scanning and placing items.