You still need employees to help hapless customers and flag tech problems, the security cameras from above to dissuade theft, and someone to man the monitors of said cameras. They were banking on full human replacement. Can’t wait for our AI future with a store devoid of employees where they drop a net from the ceiling and pepper spray me because I forgot my eggplant was the organic price.
Also, the last time I went to a cashier, because it was the one time I saw a long line at the self-check lane, I stood in the short line, I was third, while the cashier chatted up the customers, left the line to help another cashier with something and was generally very slow. I suspect they’re not required to be efficient anymore, and perhaps even encouraged not to be. I watched as the guy I would have been behind in the self-check line left the store while I was still second in line at the cashier.
Reads like a misleading statistic. Why would you invest in self-checkout if you already have it in place?
As someone who finds interacting with register attendants painful, and doesn’t steal, this is unfortunate news.
Or those who shop while stoned…
Agreed. Devastating.
They don’t interact bro
That’s sometimes part of the awkwardness. My additional gripes are completely pedantic, but hear me out:
None of the grocery chains in my area offer bagging services, so I have to wait for the attendant to scan my items, bag them myself, and then shuffle back to the register to pay. None of this is a problem, except that the human attendant rarely ever scans the items in the order that makes sense to bag them. So there’s the weird dance of waiting, pushing items aside, etc.
If I’m doing self-check, I can scan and bag using my own patented autistic process ™ that is quick, makes sense, and doesn’t crush things, and I can do it in one shot.
You can pay after they scan the first item. It won’t go through until they finish the transaction. So put stuff on conveyor. Wait for them to scan first item. Tap your card. Go pack up your bags while they’re scanning. When they’re done you’re done.
This seems highly location/payment system dependent. You can’t do it where I live, the CC terminals require the final amount to be sent to them before it will accept a card, if you scan your CC before the final amount is sent to the terminal it just gets ignored and a CC will still be requested once the cashier has sent the final amount to the terminal.
This is why I unload them onto the belt in the order they must be bagged
I suppose that’s a solution, but you’re also doubling your responsibilities, and the price of the groceries still stays too damn high.
Today I learnt doing what most of the world has been doing is “doubling my responsibilities”
It doesn’t really feel like work, I just sort by weight+size in descending order
I go by uncrushable first, fragile last.
As someone who also doesn’t enjoy interacting with register attendance, but does steal, I too find this to be unfortunate news.
We introverts pay the price 😭
I’m a introvert and hate dealing with people, but for some reason I don’t like using the self-checkout. I don’t know why. But anyway, I recommend moving to Finland. My interactions are as follows:
A very quick eye contact with a nod as a hello.
I pay, receive the change, say thank you.
I go away.
There is no small talk or push for registering for their bonus card systems, etc, here. You go in, do your thing, say thank you, go away. And saying anything is optional. I do it because I feel like that’s the least I can do for the poor person who has to deal with humans all day. But often I see people not even look at the checkout person, just stare at the register until it gives out a number, pay and bugger off.
I’m sure you know the old joke:
How do you spot an extrovert Finn?
When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.
Indeed I do :)
Cool :)
A Swede is visiting his Finnish cousin. They are sitting in a boat, drinking beers and fishing. After the 8th beer, the Swede asks “so, hows the family?” And the Finn replies “did we come here to drink or to talk?”
Haha, thanks, I didn’t know that one. I would honestly love to visit Finland someday.
I can recommend it :P
Just skip Helsinki, 'tis a pointless place to spend any more time than necessary.
That’s pretty much the interaction I expect in New England.
And, it’s better than waiting around for the self-checkout attendant to fix the error when the self-checkout kiosk doesn’t detect the reusable bag I brought correctly.
I know I’m lucky that I live in a country that has 17 people living in it, I don’t remember the last time I was in the checkout line for more than 5 minutes. Also, we have shops that are open until late at night and most of the hyper-markets are 24h. So I just go shopping at around 23:00 or later, when there is 2 people in the shop.
There is no small talk or push for registering for their bonus card systems, etc, here. You go in, do your thing, say thank you, go away
As it should be! The exaggerated fake politeness I’ve encountered in the US is fucking horrible and makes everything worse.
Pulling back doesn’t necessarily mean cancelling all existing self check-out systems. It probably means they will have both, which is how it’s supposed to be, to be honest. Sometimes I just want to scan three items and leave and other times I want someone else to deal with it.
Shitty thing is they won’t hire more cashiers when they shut these off.
I really wonder who these retailers are. Like, my grocer typically has 2 human and 12 self checkout open, and it’s no question which of those is going to be faster for someone pushing less than a full cart. They don’t even have the floor space to build twelve more full service checkouts. Reminds me of the bad old days when I’d go to the store and they’d have every human checkout line open, every one of them with 5+ people in line, and it’d take 30 minutes just to check out. If you’re a retailer that only processes a couple dozen patrons an hour, then yeah, I can see where a few self-checks wouldn’t be any benefit.
Feels like we’ve reached the enshittification phase of self-checks: big stores are now so beholden to the technology that the vendors can jack up their prices to where self checks cost the store more than a full-service checkout, but they can’t go back because there’s no staff and no space.
Guessing they’ll also raise prices when they simply return to previously normal operations.
Thur raised prices when they put them in, they will raise prices when they remove them.
All actions lead to raising prices.
My local grocery had self checkout for about a year before ripping them out and putting normal ones back in. They don’t seem to be understaffed.
Not all stores are awful on all fronts. They don’t have chairs for their checkout people yet though.
Over here they’ve been present for at least 15 years and none are going away. But we have to bag our own stuff anyway.
I think this weird anti-self-checkout crowd is just young people who don’t remember the times before self-checkouts. Even if every checkout was manned it was still completely normal to wait upwards of ten minutes, even when it wasn’t that busy. I remember my Mum excitedly running to a checkout because there was only one person queueing there. Nowadays I totally expect there to be no queue at all and I feel hard done by if I have to queue for more than one minute.
Boomers still line up at the cashier and will wait 15 minutes when self checkout is empty. But they also buy loto tickets and cigs.
The Aldi by me went self checkout. They lost enough business because of it they brought back cashiers. I definitely stopped going because of how clunky it was. The couple times I went I used the single cashier that had a line instead of self checkout which did not.
I think this weird anti-self-checkout crowd is just young people who don’t remember the times before self-checkouts.
What crowd? As far as I can see, the article is talking about retailers who want to do this, not customers.
Um, no. There are many other categories of people who have issues with self-checkouts. Like anyone who’s legally or by the store’s rules due a discount or tax waiver (people with Indigenous status aren’t required to pay sales taxes in some jurisdictions, for instance), since the software often fails to account for these. Anyone paying cash. Anyone who knows anything at all about UI design or has wrestled with a self-checkout that just doesn’t function properly.
I’ll wait in line rather than deal with a machine that’s broken by design, thanks. Fortunately, the stores around here mostly have reasonable staffing practices, so the wait isn’t long unless some idiot tries to price-match against a flyer or something else weird and unusual.
Jusy FYI - I think self-checkouts can accept cash, but sometimes and sporadically do not, because I often see signs, permanent as well as improvisotory, that they don’t.
My problem with the self checkouts is they do require quite a bit of wrangling from the person on staff and that sometimes, depending on the time of day, that person has entirely fucked off to another corner of the store. I’ve abandoned a near-completed self-checkout for the safe harbor of a human-staffed register on more than one occassion.
My experience is that maybe a third of them are set up to accept cash. The others tend to have permanent “Credit or debit only” signage. (I pay in cash quite often, although I’ll grant you that I’m an outlier.)
They can accept cash but those that do work like ass, and also attract less tech-savvy customers. So they need to keep them separated from card-only self-checkouts, otherwise it bogs down everybody. And yes, at that point they might as well convert them back to manned checkouts, because more often than not they require a person to stand by and help the customers with the cash.
Weird brag to admit you can’t figure out the self-checkout and Fisher Price level UI that audibly shouts at you what to do next.
You mean you’ve never run into one that’s got buggy software or non-obvious broken hardware? Lucky.
My only complaint were the ones I experienced in Japanese konbini, which has you scan your purchases, but you had to wait until after payment to bag them. Once this really patient, wonderful local couple showed me what I was doing wrong, it was okay. But still an unfortunate hiccup in their process.
That’s only relevant to… I think just one country where self check outs exist. Namely America.
The thing about Indigenous tax breaks? Also relevant in Canada, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover there was something similar in Australia or New Zealand. It’s only one possible issue of several in that category, anyway. For instance, there’s a drugstore chain in my neck of the woods that provides discounts for seniors on one day of the week . . . but their self-checkouts can’t handle it and anyone who’s due a discount has to go to a cashier. Stuff like that.
I’m over 50 but the queue has to be huge for me to go to self-checkout.
I do not enjoy waiting for someone to come and check if im stealing. I do not enjoy waiting for a go-ahead for goods that are age restricted. I do not enjoy doing unpaid work (wheres my rebate??)
Also - I think cashiers deserve a job.
Same, and exactly all of this. If they want me to do the work that they usually pay someone for, they better offer me a significant discount.
I worked in grocery stores as a teen and I just want that to remain available.
I also do not like the self checkout machine. They have an unacceptable number of steps to pay. They’re horribly programmed. I don’t like the small baggage areas.
The store I worked at in high school got rid of all of its self checkout right after I stopped working there. Let me tell ya, I’ve never gone in there since then. I don’t want to have to talk to someone who may recognize me. Although it’s been like 12 years now so I’m prooooobably okay lol
Ok, now will they actually staff the registers? Because every time I’m in the store there’s only one checkout lane open, and before 10am or so, the self-checkout is closed.
I was a big fan of self checkouts when they were new.
Past year or so, I’ve completely changed course. I go out of my way now to go through the regular checkout lines.
Well other technologies like accounting software are “at least 40%” and self checkout is at 36%, according to the article, so I don’t think this is as devastating as one might think at first glance:
Of 340 retail operators surveyed in 2026’s Voice of the Retail Industry Survey, only 36% say they plan to invest in self-checkout, down seven percentage points from last year. Self-checkout was the least popular technology and the only one to see lower interest YoY. Other investments, such as automated invoices, electronic shelf labels, and accounting software, attracted at least 40% of surveyed retailers.
And of course less retailers are investing in the tech than in previous years: they’ve all already got it.
s/pulling back/slowing expansion of installations/g
These are not the same thing, and if you look at any S curve you can see why.
Self checkout was great for me because I’d have like 3 items and breeze on out. Now people come to them with overloaded carts because they don’t have any actual checkouts.
I swear every time I pull into a manned checkout lane at one specific store I get the nastiest look from the cashiers. There are 3 functional self checkout kiosks and the scale on all of them is slightly under a single square foot. I’m not buying a thanksgiving feast, but forgive me if my regular shopping trip is more than a single cup of yoghurt and a TV dinner, and consequently cannot all fit on the self checkout scale. It’s not like I’m asking them to open a lane just for me, they’re just upset I’ve interrupted their scrolling session.
I try not to go there often, but sometimes my goto location is closed or doesn’t have something I know I’m going to need. I know it’s not all stores or employees because my normal one is pretty good and I can generally use the kiosk without issue, but it’s so frustrating that the culture has shifted to expect all people to use the self checkout regardless of their situation. And I say this as someone who uses them regularly.
Same here - I bring one bag from home and when it gets full I stop shopping. Even waiting behind one half full shopping cart in a cashier line is slower than waiting for an available self-checkout.
Luckily, self checkouts are expanding in Copenhagen. Seriously beats standing in a line for the next 10 minutes. Such a depressing waste of time.
Anyway, haven’t even had half the issues most people seem to complain about with self check out. I’m guessing it’s because Danish supermarkets don’t half-ass it. Or maybe people are genuinely stupid around even simple technology.
