When you're shopping, whether at a grocery store, department store, or another store, do you use the self-checkout aisles?
Sometimes if I don't have anything to weigh and there are only a few items. Never on a major shopping trip.
Sometimes - If I don't have much and the staffed checkouts are busy and/or if people in front have trolley loads, I'll use the self checkouts when once becomes available.
I do not use them, and will stand in line at the real checkout counter before i will use a self-checkout. The only times that i have used one was when I was standing in line and an employee came over asked me to use the self-checkout and then they acted the part of the cashier. I have noticed that even the larger walmart stores have only 1-2 lanes open most of the time, and I think that self-checkout will be the thing everywhere pretty soon.
Seldom. We need to stop taking away jobs from folks, especially young people where it is a first job. Also, cashiers are usually faster and more sociable.
I tried using one once at Sam's Club because they had no cashier-assisted checkout counters open. When it wasn't immediately intuitive, I started wondering why I was being forced to learn to be an unpaid cashier in a store where I not only pay a membership fee but pay for the products that I purchase, and under threat of arrest if I miss something. If they can pay someone to check the receipt against the items in my cart on the way out, they can pay for a cashier to check me out. I left my cart where it was and drove to BJ's, which is an alternative to Sam's Club, and joined them. I have never tried a self-checkout since, nor have I been back to Sam's Club, and I have left my cart unchecked in a couple of stores that had no cashier-assisted lanes open.
I think a cashier is faster on a major shopping venture. Too many opportunities with many items for “oops” on self checkout.
If the lines are longer at the live cashier stations, and if I don't have too many items, I use self-checkout. And if that's all there is, like late nights at Walmart.
If they offered me a significant discount for acting as my own checkout clerk, I might consider it. Otherwise, it ain't my job. I've left full carts sitting at a couple of stores that had no open cashier-operated counters. If they're not going to pay someone to checkout my purchases, then they can pay someone to restock them. Either way, someone has a job that I don't want to do for free.
I've seen podcasts of people who were arrested for shoplifting after going through a self-checkout. In the ones that I've seen, they would claim that they were confused about the procedure and thought they had rung up everything, or whatever. I have no doubt that some of these people had indeed tried to shoplift something, but others were elderly people who, I think, may have simply screwed up while trying to figure it out. One elderly man is probably going to become wealthy because he had Alzheimer's. He had paid for everything in his bag except for one small item, not anything that any reasonable person would see the need to steal. When an employee (who probably should have been helping him navigate the self-checkout) called to him as he was on the way out, he either ignored him, didn't hear him, or didn't realize that the guy was speaking to him. He kept walking, slowly. The police caught up to him outside of the store. I think he had made it to the sidewalk by that time. He struggled a bit with the police, and they slammed him onto the pavement, causing some obvious injuries to his face, and arrested him. At the time that the podcast was uploaded, charges against him had been dropped and he had an attorney who was pursuing a civil suit. Was he a thief or a scammer? I don't know, but he apparently did have a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, so I'm thinking he was simply confused. The one time that I tried to go through a self-checkout. it kept beeping at me to tell me that I was doing something wrong, I don't remember now, but I gave up and left without anything. I'm not as old as this guy was, and I don't have Alzheimer's. I wonder how many people have been accused of shoplifting because they hadn't been properly trained as a cashier, to do a job they never signed up for. Not just old people, but those who aren't used to reading instructions.
I almost always use the self-checkout, unless a manned cashier has no line. I like bagging my own stuff...I have control issues. I know what I gonna put in the cupboard for daily inventory, and what I'm buying for long-term storage, so I sack accordingly. I like my veggies together, my fruit together, my dairy together...and since the self-checkout areas usually have multiple registers, the line moves faster. (ALDI does not have self-checkout.) I had one instance I've mentioned elsewhere here of forgetting to scan an item (it was a toilet brush.) I got out to my car and was loading it up when I saw the unscanned/unbagged brush laying in the cart under the bags. Rather than go back into the store, I took the UPC tag off of it and put it in my wallet. The next time I shopped, I pulled the tag out of my wallet and scanned it.