Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Some of the manuals are online for american ones

They plug into the existing store IT systems so managers can see sales and speed etc. They also have options of leeway in weights and timing delays so if the attendent doesn't get there in 30 seconds it ignores the item and lets you carry on while waiting for someone to verify it or if the item is 5% over it will let it through.

The store managers in areas with high shoplifting can set it to be as extreme as they want, stopping to verifiy coupons and a three strikes lockdown.

Too slow!

My major bug bear with them is they (witnessed in both sainsburys and tescos) are too slow and will forget to add any multi buy discounts. you need to go back to select payment twice before it has added the discounts.

btw I recall a time and motion study stating that it is far quicker to go through a manned till but we all knew that anyway.

I only use them when no on is at the till or the queues look too long or full of people who need to chat to the cashier.

Our local ASDA has just upgraded it's self service checkouts to new ones with a conveyor belt. When the shop is particularly busy a metal tray is placed over the "bagging area" which sits at about the same height as the conveyor belt and the self service terminal suddenly becomes a manned till. I almost never have a problem with the ASDA machines and if it ever says "unexpected item in the bagging area" I usually just pick said item up and place it back down again. I've had a few problems where an item I am attempting to scan doesn't exist in the database and requires an assistant to swap into cashier mode and enter some random text for the item, drop it into the bagging area, have the machine complain that the item is unexpect (as it weighs more than 0), swipe his card thingy to authorise it anyway. On the whole I find the ASDA checkout machines to be a joy to use - though you need to watch the assistants because they haven't learned yet that a voucher is considered payment and while scanning a voucher will give you a nice beep, suggesting the machine has accepted it - it won't actually do anything with the voucher unless you hit "finish and pay" and then hit vouchers and then scan it.

The only issue I have with the ASDA machines is that I go a lot a quicker than they do - for instance by the time I have hit "finish and pay" and placed my card in the reader - it's only just starting to tell me about payment options, by the time I have hit "credit/debit card" and entered my pin number - it's only just telling tell me "insert your card into the card reader" I then get held up because I don't want cashback - but I can't go any further until the machine stops speaking and then asks if I want it :/

Tesco on the other hand.... if you hit "start" or scan an item and it takes more than 5 seconds to respond... you are in for a long arduous shopping "experience"

Still - after all that's been said - look on the bright side.... they could be worse..... they could be voice activated.....

I want to hack the voice box...

...on one of these checkouts. Splicing the beginning of:

"Unexpected item~ in the bagging area"

onto the end of:

"Note~s will be dispensed below the scanner"

(with the ~ denoting the edit point) should produce an acceptable:

"Unexpected items will be dispensed below the scanner".

Considering that "below the scanner" is roughly at knee height - Eggs. Yup, eggs would be about the best; singly would do nicely and they wouldn't need to be wrapped or anything, just coming out at reasonably high speed, and with sufficient variation on the trajectory to make for some interesting slip fielding.

Yup terrible

Yup they are terrible. I've used one at one store that worked right and it was nice. The other times I've tried to use it there, or anywhere else, it always has enough problems to not make it worth it.

For the record ...

... I've never had a problem with this option.

In fact, I quite like it. Much better than being sandwiched between two mothers/fathers with three or four squalling kidlets pushing over-flowing shopping carts for 15-20 minutes after heading to the till ... .

In, out, 5 minutes total, max.

All y'all so-called techies who can't handle the (so-called "easy") interface? Look within.

On the other hand, perhaps Tesco's software sucks rather more than Lucky/Raley/Safeway?

I dunno ... I'm on the left side of the dampish bit of solid ground on the left side of the pond ... Anyone in the San Francisco ElReg Office care to speak up?

I can only assume that these machines were designed with input from the till workers union. They certainly seem designed to demonstrate how bad an idea it is for us to check out our own shopping rather than have a human do it for us.

I won't use them and watch with gleeful anticipation when people behind me in the queue ask me if I will and then pass me to attempt to use them.

They're usually experiencing exactly as Alaistair describes long after i've left after being served by a human.

unexpected item in the bagging area....

....is it the Spanish Inquisition?

Refusal

I simply refuse the using the fucking things. If they want me to do all the work of a cashier, they can give me a discount for doing someone else's work. Even better, they could provide machines that were designed to be something other than torture machines. Fucking things NEVER worked when I tried to use them, and had the worst user interface I've ever seen on any machine, anywhere. And I count 1980's VHS machines in there. I'd rather wait in line at the one till they still have open - it's usually faster anyway.

The checkout part is the best part of shopping

I've got to disagree here!

The checkout part is positively the best part of the ordeal of shopping. It means an end to the torture of being run over by shopping trolleys pushed by old ladies that need better glasses. Trying to get to something on a shelf blocked by those same old biddies.

The hell of walking round in circles looking for an item because someone sees fit to put it just one column wide on the very bottom of the shelf with the packaging all turned so that you cannot see it.

Or go to take a package of razors from the rack only to find that the store has such a bad shoplifting problem with them that they actually security clamp them onto the shelf and you then spend 15 minutes trying to get someone with authority to get you a pack.

Then when you get to do the checkout yourself, you don't have to grudgingly reply with a smile and a witty comment to a checkout operator that has made the same conversation several times over. Yeah I know you don't really have to answer back except for one time in a Walmart store where the checkout operator got really mouthy because I didn't respond to her banter, or flirting or whatever.

If I see a self checkout don't get in my way. I'll punch and kick my way to it so that I can pay for my stuff and get out of that living hell!

Supermarkets? Seriously?

How amusing to know that people still go to supermarkets and endure "checkout hell". I have only very rarely entered such establishments in the last ten years, ever since I discovered that you can do your supermarket shopping online and have it all delivered to your door. It saves massive amounts of time, the need to queue up with other sleep-deprived and often tetchy citizens and makes doing the food shopping almost a pleasure.

A well-designed (or even reasonably designed) website running on my desktop or iPad beats the hell out of battling with the crappy stupid tech these self-serve checkout systems employ. Once every four to six weeks I sit down and knock out my supermarket shopping online in less than 30 minutes while sipping on a home-made coffee and sitting in my most comfortable chair. The next day a nice chappie lugs it all up three flights of stairs and wheels it into my kitchen for me to unpack and store in the fridge, freezer and various cupboards. The only things I usually need to physically go out and buy are fresh fruit and a loaf of bread now and then. The internet's not just about pr0n you know...

Valco, serves you right

Déjà vu

Loved the story;

I hate those damn things - not that i'm a technophobe but the usability of those things is just sh%$e. I'm sure it just an excuse by the supermarkets to reduce checkout staff.

The next thing they will do to lower cost will be to get the customer to collect their items from the warehouse area - just think of the savings they will make on all that space in the front of store filled with shelves and wide isles.

The advantage of automated tills.

When I go to a manned till, this happens every single time:

"Would you like help with yoru packing?"

"No, thank you."

And then they bloody do it anyway, pointedly going out of their way to avoid bagging stuff in the sensible order I've carefully arranged it on the cvonveyor belt, putting tins on top of fruit, anvils on top of chickens, cats in the same bag as dogs, etc.

And don't get me started on the kids from a local "charity" offering to pack your bags for you, emotionally blackmailing you into having your packing down by fuckwits because saying "No" makes you look to everyone around like a tight-fisted bastard who doesn't care how many moppets die of cancer or (more frrequently) how many teenagers go on holiday to Florida.

Automated tills are a pain in the arse in many ways, but they have successfully solved these problems, and for that I thank them.

I do wish they'd say what they really mean, though, and replace "Unexpected item in bagging area" with "STOP! THIEF! STOP! THIEF! HELP! POLICE! HELP! HELP!" That might embarrass the shops' managers into a UI redesign.

Ah, an article about automated checkouts. The "Hey guys, what is UP with airline food?" de nos jours.

Strange, I thought this was El Reg, not Saga magazine or the Mendips Journal. All the article was missing was something about it being "a wry look" in the subheading.

Dear Mr Dabbs

I wish to complain about your blatant stereotyping of gay men. I know several gay men who are absolutely dreadful at shopping, and it's not true that straight men are awful at shopping. I know of a guy in France who's apparently quite good at it, or so his wife Brian says.

One word: norovirus

'Maybe the capacitive screen can’t register my touch through the greasy smears that partly obscure the display.'

I foresee a Douglas Adams style epidemic, possibly preceded by the creation of teams of automated checkout sanitisers.

self checkout

Is something every man of a certain age should be doing, but usually in the privacy of your own home...

None of us really want those 10 stone testicles...

In the land of the free...

or more accurately overly free waistlines...

I have never had issue with them, most of our local stores have them and are really useful for quick buys, however if a cartfull of groceries it is better to see a real person, or, if you have contraband..erm...alcohol, which is pretty much every store trip for me (why they cannot simply scan my drives license... oh wait yeah I could have used someone else's silly me!)

Even the large bulk stores like Costco have them, and can be really quick, though it is fun when your purchase falls backward on the conveyor and breaks the magic eye thing again then the machine gets confused and the red light of shame flashes above your station.... there is usually a happy chappy (or chappette) to fix it fast though..

Home depot (B&Q) have the same things and never give me grief I think they disable the weight thing for a good reason, though there is often a "loss prevention officer" present to check your receipt if they think you are doing a number on them, I tend to glare at them while clutching the 3ft long receipt it spits out for a bag of screws...

as for the human operated machines, I always scan my card and enter appropriate pin well before the person has finished ringing up my inventory, then all I need do is smack the green button at the end and I get on my way (I hate the people who either wait till the end and then rummage for the card in a purse or bag, knowing full well they will be expected to pay at the end of the whole thing, or those who do this, then decide to get out their bloody chequebook! I mean c'mon! you have been standing there for 5 minutes watching this person scan your shopping and only at the end of it do you think "oh my! I need to find the method from which I am to pay this hardworking person, now where could I have put it?"

S.W.M.B.O when she used to pay with a check had it out and ready ( and before the days of the cashier being able to fill all the necessary "pay to:" crap in she had it waiting for a total... though she mainly paid in cash.(.A method of payment that can flummox most under the age of 30 when you give them pocket shrapnel to make the change a whole number like $5 )

maybe it is the way America does it, but they seem to be more together than the shopping hell that the uk seems to have now

btw what happened to the Sainsbury scan while you shop thing? I thought it was quite cool myself

Sometimes it's easier than facing up to a real person.

Better than handing over a tube of KY jelly or Johnnies at a manned till. I'm never sure whether buying other items on purpose is better or worse than owning up to the fact you only entered the store for some lube. The best one I conjured up was buying one single windscreen wiper blade with the KY. Surely no assumptions could be made from that? It wasn't the right size for my car though but for all they knew, the intention was for me to get the wiper blade and the KY was purchased on a whim.

Self-serve tills drive customers away.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2460012/Self-service-check-outs-driving-customers-away.html

must be the brits

I find very little of your posts relevant in the US, except at Kroger. But the flaming hoops and platforms are not consistent from one retailer to the next.