Near me they adjust them from time to time, so I never know whether this week is going to be full of “you moved too quickly, call an attendant to look through your bags” or if it’ll wave you through.

Im glad that you had a good experience but forgiving for you may be an accusation of theft for another, based on some cues that could very well be wrong. I personally dislike this trend of skimping on cashiers and having people do their own checkout. If they had both it wouldn’t be a problem though…

Walmarts will literally have 25 checkout lanes and it will be one of the busiest shopping days of the year like December 23rd and they'll only have 3 checkout lanes open.

I'll take 25 self checkouts please.

Plus the people they hire as cashiers couldn't possibly be slower at their jobs. I'd rather have zero humans involved in my checkouts. They only waste my time.

In the other hand we have businesses like Best Buy which has a "scan and checkout from the app" feature that doesn't work and the employees know nothing about it. I tried to use it in front of them and we followed the steps on the signage and it just orders an item for pickup, which you can't take with you even if you have it in your hand, because they need someone from the back of the store to receive the order and pick it for you...

Meanwhile I can walk into an Apple Store, never make eye contact with any humans if I don't want to, walk to the shelf, scan an item and pay on the spot, and leave without any friction.

You seem to be implying that self check lines don’t get stuck and don’t need any intervention. In practice they could be slower than cashiers lines, at least that’s the case in my experience. I don’t mind having the option for both but having 3 cashier lines open and 10 crowded self check out lines is disrespectful for customers, there were ocasions where I abandoned my cart because it would add another half hour to my wait.

This absolutely does happen, but part of the issue is due to the design of the self checkouts. The good ones are a forked conveyor belt design so you send all your items down, pay, walk down to the end and bag your groceries while the next person starts their checkout and has their groceries sent down the other side. No congestion unless the issue is related to scanning the items or payment.

My grocery store's self checkout is 1 line for 8 registers, so in that case even if several registers are stuck the line doesn't stop moving. It's great not ever having to worry about picking the wrong lane.

> In the other hand we have businesses like Best Buy which has a "scan and checkout from the app" feature that doesn't work and the employees know nothing about it.

Walmart also has that, except the checkout is still at the self-serve checkout terminals, it works great, and it is only available to Walmart+ subscribers.

For checkout you hit the checkout button in the app, verify that the item count it has is correct, scan a QR code at an idle checkout terminal, and then hit the pay button and it charges your on-file card.

How do you do that at the Apple Store?

>I personally dislike this trend of skimping on cashiers and having people do their own checkout.

I suppose we can hope the technology gets better. But given labor shortages, it's hard not to see a future with more automation and self-service.

Labor shortage? You realize it’s just the low pay that causes this impression. On such a low salary people can’t make rent even if they worked 12 hours per day. There’s a breaking point where nobody signs up for those jobs but as soon as you up the salary the shortage dissapears. I feel it’s more of a maximizing profit problem after all…

Retailers compete with each other on low single digit profit margins. If they increase their payroll, they would have to increase their prices.

Of course, knowing exactly what level of service people are willing to pay for is not an exact science, so the pendulum can swing a bit too far, but I assume the business managers are best positioned to bet on what people are willing to pay before they choose to shop somewhere else.

Not to mention that brick and mortar retail always has to worry about online retail nipping at their heels. It's hard to compete on price with an Amazon warehouse in a cheap-rent area, staffed with robots and overworked staff when you have to maintain a building in a retail area, keep it clean/nice enough that people aren't totally appalled, and then staff it with people that are able to do their job and interact with customers.

The original b&m retail game was to keep the big ticket items comparable in price, but to add high margins on the ancellary items like HDMI cables. Now, however, everyone knows the game and things like Prime shipping can get it to you fast enough to avoid impulse buying in a retail store.

> Labor shortage? You realize it’s just the low pay that causes this impression.

I don’t think it’s just that, because the unemployment rate is especially low.

I like the way target does it. No scale, no obnoxious cameras, they just have a limited amount of self checkouts and usually have security visibly posted near them.

I have yet to witness somebody not scanning things and stealing them from there, the only “success” I’ve seen is sprinting out a fire door.