Re:The failure of self-checkout technology
by gilbertbw on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:12PM
(#39030493)
My coop has the worst of all worlds. There used to be four self checkouts, but they removed two during covid, and another one after it developed a fault. So you have one self checkout, with a member of staff that has to juggle baby sitting it and manning a basket checkout. It would be much quicker if they just removed the last self checkout and had the staff member man the checkout full time.
In my other living place, Japan, the MaxValu supermarket has, I think, around ten cashiers - not only that, those cashiers are super fast and use double-buffering for payment: You can pay while they're already busy with the next customer. But still - they have also introduced self-service. They still have nearly the same number of inhumanely fast human cashiers but they now also have lots of self-service desks (and a person there to assist anyone needing it).