The US strategy seems to vary widely by store. Some observations:
Target and Whole Foods have minimal oversight and the machines are efficient and permissive. Delightful!
Costco has machines that are not permissive and complain a lot. I find this odd, considering that Costco is members-only and double-checks everyone when they leave.
IKEA has one employee per 1-2 machines. The machines are terrible. The scanners are unreliable, and the machines are slow beyond belief. I suspect they’re accidentally quadratic (with a bad constant factor), and I’ve had to pay part way through and start a new transaction to make forward progress at a reasonable rate. The employees might be there more to babysit the machines than to deter theft.
Even babysitting 2 checkouts is still better than employing 2 cashiers. And that is assuming you can even find cashiers. Way back when I was a child the supermarket cashiers were women in their 40s who got divorced and needed a low skilled job. But thanks to equal education opportunities for men and women that group is gone.
We are going to have to come to terms with the reality that for the first time since the plague employable humans are scarce. Now do you want them to work at Ikea or work in a hospital or school?
Even babysitting 2 checkouts is still better than employing 2 cashiers.
This assumes self-checkout is as efficient as a cashier? I'd say a good cashier is at least 5 times faster than I am, some discount store cashiers maybe even 10 times faster.
The scanners are unreliable, and the machines are slow beyond belief.
That's on purpose so they can monitor for theft from the customers and colluding cashiers. I worked in a grocery store with 1980's era IBM terminals and they were lightning fast compared to modern machines. You could throw cans rapid fire with just a twist across the scanner and have nearly 100% success.
Comments
The US strategy seems to vary widely by store. Some observations:
Target and Whole Foods have minimal oversight and the machines are efficient and permissive. Delightful!
Costco has machines that are not permissive and complain a lot. I find this odd, considering that Costco is members-only and double-checks everyone when they leave.
IKEA has one employee per 1-2 machines. The machines are terrible. The scanners are unreliable, and the machines are slow beyond belief. I suspect they’re accidentally quadratic (with a bad constant factor), and I’ve had to pay part way through and start a new transaction to make forward progress at a reasonable rate. The employees might be there more to babysit the machines than to deter theft.
Even babysitting 2 checkouts is still better than employing 2 cashiers. And that is assuming you can even find cashiers. Way back when I was a child the supermarket cashiers were women in their 40s who got divorced and needed a low skilled job. But thanks to equal education opportunities for men and women that group is gone.
We are going to have to come to terms with the reality that for the first time since the plague employable humans are scarce. Now do you want them to work at Ikea or work in a hospital or school?
This assumes self-checkout is as efficient as a cashier? I'd say a good cashier is at least 5 times faster than I am, some discount store cashiers maybe even 10 times faster.
That's on purpose so they can monitor for theft from the customers and colluding cashiers. I worked in a grocery store with 1980's era IBM terminals and they were lightning fast compared to modern machines. You could throw cans rapid fire with just a twist across the scanner and have nearly 100% success.
Can you explain in a bit more detail? I don't follow the connection you made.
I think the implication is that the faster a customer is scanning items, the harder it is to keep an eye on them to see if they're doing it correctly.