Automated check-out stands are the retail equivalent of hot desks — a work trend embraced by corporate swells who believed that eliminating personal desks and instead installing work spaces where staff could plop their laptops would increase productivity.
The Atlantic has a smart piece by Amanda Mull about the reality of automated checkout stands at retail outlets.
All is not rosy in the world of self-checkout, and some companies seem to realize it. Walmart has removed the kiosks entirely from a handful of stores, and is redesigning others to involve more employee help. Costco is stationing more staffers in its self-checkout areas. ShopRite is adding cashiers back into stores where it had trialed a self-checkout-only model, citing customer backlash. None of this is an indication that self-checkout is over, exactly. But several decades in, the kiosks as Americans have long known them are beginning to look like a failure.
No surprise: the idea didn’t quite work as promised. Stores are messier, Mull reports, and shelves go unstocked longer than before. Shoppers, of course, are shortchanged.
One other result: Shoplifting went up.
And we all know what can happen when shoplifting increases: Stores close.
I resisted automated checkout for the longest time, mostly I’m a bit of a technophobe. The scanners often require multiple passes. And really, I’d rather deal with a person.
Also, I’d rather see a checkout person earn a paycheck than do that person’s work — scanning and bagging my groceries — for free, and almost always, without getting in and out of a store faster.
So I’m going back to heading straight to the checkout stand staffed by actual human beings. I don’t want to contribute to a cost-cutting process that contributes to store closures.
Want more? Sign up for free notices.
Geez what a Luddite! I vastly prefer them when I have a few items. But I’ve always assumed shoplifting is surely a big problem that significantly offsets any savings.
I'm going to miss the automated check-out machines at the grocery store and other places. They are, at least for me, way more convenient than having a person (most times with no smile and an attitude that they would like to be anywhere else but in a checkout stand) "helping" me. Maybe this affinity to automated checkout goes with my 40+ years in computer hardware and software - plus 5+ years of being a supermarket checkout person while working through college!!!!! Just say yes to automated checkouts - and not having anyone know I'm still buying hostess snoballs on occasion :-)