Re:Ikea has bought TaskRabbit
by rsynnott on Friday September 29, 2017 @06:42AM
(#15364146)
Huh, that's surprising. Two of the three supermarkets near me have phased out cashiers almost entirely.
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Same, my local grocery store added more machines after an initial phase and there are disproportionately bigger lineups to use them than the cashiers.
Not to mentioned Ontario, where I'm from, just passed new minimum wage laws ($15CAD/hr) and a bunch of retailers are responding by investing in self checkout for the first time.
That was the motivation as well when the 9€ minimum wage was passed here, too, but they've removed all of them since.
Cashiers are much faster than self checkout, and you still need to employ one person for every 4 self checkouts to prevent theft.
Around where I live, beside Walmart Superstores, those supermarkets that added some self-checkout have since removed them. Self-checkout is such an abysmal experience in supermarkets especially if you buy things like produce that I'll actively avoid any store that uses them extensively.
I have less of a problem in convenience-type stores but I'm usually not buying much stuff and rarely produce.
Maybe it's differing design of machines or something. The only time I'll use a manned checkout these days is if I'm buying alcohol. Otherwise, the automatic one is generally far quicker, and there are usually far more of them.