Day 4910 of telling people that being introverted and having social anxiety are not the same.
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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i am not afraid of the cashier. I just want to continue listening to my music and be left the fuck alone while paying too much of my income on basic necessities.
Exactly what i wanted to say. I am pretty introverted, but i 100% prefer having a nice little chat with the cashier instead of having a machine scream at me to put the item in the bagging area
Preach
Socially anxious not introverts. Introvert does not mean you dont like being social it just drains more enegy than you get back. Im introverted but I love speaking to people I just need some time alone after. Im actually more anxious using self checkouts than the cashier
Definitely drains my battery less if I don't have to speak to a cashier
Don’t feed into their stupid fucking pedantics
They’re socially anxious because they frequently knit pick at people and they probably tell them off.
I’ll bet ya
The majority of self-checkouts I've tried were such a clusterfuck of bad UI design, and it's made worse by the requirement to have a human check your ID when you're buying alcohol etc., which is a huge bottleneck when a lot of people are using SC. And when you inevitably push some wrong button that puts you into a situation you can't get out of without employee intervention, you (as an introvert) are in a far worse situation than if you had just used a regular checkout (though cashiers in my country don't really do small-talk, which obviously helps a lot from an introvert perspective).
Here in sweden they all work fine, biggest UI problem is that they require you to tap the screen before you can tap your card and start scanning..
As usual, Swedes live decades in the future.
don't worry, we also have decades of cultural erasure from our own government and we're currently in the process of dismantling every public instituation in favour of privatizations, we'll be a dystopian hellscape soon enough.
Yeah I absolutely prefer the regular checkout. They don't care if I say a word or not. It's faster and more convenient and it is 100 times less awkward than waiting for help or sneaking away when you realize this isn't working and you need regular checkout. Stupid Rewe stupid herbs that don't weigh enough I CAN'T MAKE THEM WEIGH MORE you stupid scale with your stupid put the scanned product on the basket side
Except I am also severely frustrated by how crappy they are, with 50% of my checkouts requiring pressing the bloody assistance button.
Problem between bag and screen
The original skill issue
PEBBAS; sounds fun!
Here they work fantastic
Same, they are so damn frustrating that "that makes 13.89, you want a receipt?" "Yup" is preferable
Exactly this. When I get waved towards a self checkout I refuse, those things hate me. They always time out on me.
Just 50%? You're a pro cashier I would say.
I loved them when they first came in. Then they started messing with the software. I have a grocery store near me that requires everything to be scanned with the build in scanner (no gun). And be placed on the belt to get weighed. That means cases of water, soda, anything else huge has to come out of the cart and put back every time.
It makes me not want to shop for large items there. And I’m faster than most employees that run checkout.
Interesting, I've used self checkouts all over the US and every single one has been as you described. I didn't know there was a gun option!
One I saw had a big depositing area where you'd put your stuff to be weighed, though it did tell you to keep particularly large or heavy articles in the cart. There was a service counter right opposite, so I assume there was some measure of trust that the employees there would see if you pulled suspicious shit.
Every now and then, that scale would be picky though. Article should weigh 400-500g, but actually weighs in at 503? Yeah let's flag that for a human to check.
Blessedly, the employees generally were quick to step up, slap their access token thing on the sensor, recognise the situation and clear it without much need for interaction. Likewise with age controls, quick and no fuss. The UI had its issues but the employees at least made up for it.
Self check out was created as a way to reduce labor costs in stores allowing them to maximize profits.
It's also a way to decrease the amount of labor required to produce an essential service, which is good. Might as well complain about the combine harvester killing jobs in the agrarian sector. Do you want to work as a field hand who harvests grain with hand tools? Hell, do you actually want to work as a cashier?
If stores exploit the lower costs, that's entirely on our societies failing to distribute wealth properly or have even a semblance of a functioning market. Don't blame technology for that.
If they manage to make my shipping experience faster and more convenient while saving money I'm not gonna bitch too much.
Sometimes technology makes a job obsolete. Not many milkmen or stablehands these days either, and society isn't worse off because of it.
You're not wrong
I'm not sure about that, I feel even more observed at the self-checkouts.
Nothing worse then when the thing bugs out and you have to awkwardly wait for the staff to come help you
I love the supermarkets that have a beep thing, that you use to beep everything during shopping, than you just hand the beep thing over to the cashier or beep it at the self check out, pay and get the fuck out of there.
They are ok, but the implementation in some stores is terrible. The one closest to my home has a scale that measures the weight of the products you scan. Almost every time I use it that scale decalibrates itself or doesn't properly detect that I put the product down, and locks itself until a cashier comes and solves the issue. And it locks itself for other reasons too, like if a card payment fails, you can't retry until the cashier comes and unlocks it. The only advantage is the smaller queue.
Went to a local Kroger subsidiary (Fred Meyer), the automated theft cameras at self checkout resulted in me having to step aside while an attendant came over, reviewed footage of my suspicious activity, and then allow me to continue scanning. Happened like 3 times scanning maybe 15 items. Fucking infuriating. I stopped going there altogether.
and shoplifters
Then try online order & delivery. You'll lose your freakin mind!
Where I live there were a lot of people complaining about order and delivery especially when ordering fruits and vegetables. The delivery people don't care about picking the better ones.
Nah, now I am just anxious that I am going slow and preventing others from checking out.
Privacy organizations when self-checkouts accept only cards: