In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don’t have bar codes.
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:
As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.
Self checkout isn’t supposed to be for more than 10 or 15 items in most stores… obviously it would be less convenient in those cases.
self checkout cannot remove anti-theft devices.