Self Scan Suck

[Millahtyme1983]

I was in my local 24 hr supermarket last night to buy a couple of TV dinners because it was late, I was hungry and cooking wasn't an option. At this particular supermarket after 11 they go to self scans only. Their machines are similar to the ones at home depot where you scan an item and put it in the bagging area which is also a scale that weighs the item to make sure it was the correct item (or something like that) if the weight is wrong at any point, such as if a bag was taken off, or somebody put something on there, the machine locks up until the weight is corrected or a cashier overrides it. The only real difference is that bagging area is on a carousel so when all the bags on the front are full, just spin it around and start filling from what was the back.

So I get my things and walk up to the front where this guy got to the last open register just a second before me, "no problem" I thought since i was next for whichever register was open next. He starts out the transaction fine, fills a few bags and then takes the bag and puts it on the floor, of course this causes the machine to lock up, cashier comes over and overrides it for him and tells him how the bagging thing works. She goes off he scans another bags worth of items and repeats with putting it on the floor, machine locks up making him slightly annoyed, cashier comes over and does her thing again. He does this a few more times getting angrier and angrier each round, by the end his face was beat red he was swearing at the machine (or just in general I guess)

"stupid fucking machines don't even work, pieces of shit freeze up every 5 goddamn seconds"

I wanted to say something about how the cashier told him "every 5 goddamn seconds" to leave the bags where they are, or put them in the middle of the carousel, but i'm too non confrontational. I guess there may have been some suck on the cashiers part by overriding it for him each time and not showing him by putting the bag back on, but she had 6 registers to deal with and other people needing her attention.

[Kogarashi]

This, my friend, is a classic case of Selective Hearing (and a situation I had to deal with all too often before the self-checkouts at my store got rid of the weight part of bagging).

All the guy noticed was the cashier overriding the problem. He did not read the notices on the checkout, nor did he actually listen to the cashier explain what the problem was each time.

Do the checkouts really stop complaining if the bag is returned to the scale? They didn't at my Wal-Mart, which is probably why I don't see much suck on the cashier's part, but maybe if yours are different.... Of course, at my store, the scales were designed such that if the machine was ready for you to scan another item, you could remove a bag from the rack and it wouldn't care. If you scanned something and didn't bag it, or if you didn't scan something but added it to the scale in the bagging area, that's when it would whine at you (until you bagged the scanned item, removed the unscanned item, or overrode the error).

Was quite a treat when I had to explain to several customers (usually of the 30-50 age category, all female) that the machine was complaining because their 10-year-old decided to sit on the bagging scale or because they put their ginormous purse there.

And then there was the guy who pulled a bag off the rack, started scanning his items, and put them in the bag he was holding. That required several overrides, and an explanation that he needed to leave the bag on the rack for the bagging scale to work properly. And he just gave me that vacant cow-chewing-cud look that told me he wasn't actually listening to anything I said. ::sigh::

[Millahtyme1983]

Do the checkouts really stop complaining if the bag is returned to the scale? They didn't at my Wal-Mart, which is probably why I don't see much suck on the cashier's part, but maybe if yours are different....

I'm not sure about these ones, but another local supermarket I used to work at used the weight system too and they would go back to working without a cashier override If The bag was put back. Though the software for the ones in this particular supermarket was different, so it is possible it didn't work 100% the same either.

[lupo pazzesco]

I like self scans to an extent, but I use my own bags, so having to move stuff around is natural for me. Of course, being told that there's a difference in weight when I put my own bag down always happens. No big, though, usually I just get the cashier to fix it and I keep going.

Today, at the store, though, I did and the cashier who came up to me snidely told me next time I had to put my bag down FIRST, then the machine would ask me if I brought my own, and I could go from there. I'd never heard of this before, and mentioned it, but before I could say how convenient it was, she snapped at me that I needed to learn to read the machines before I used them, because it made everything so much easier.

So thank you, you legion of SCs who pulled what the SC did above. Now cashiers think the worst of all of us using self scan. So sad.

[Sheldonrs]

My partial dyslexia kicked in when i read this thread title. Transposed the 2nd and 3rd words. Silly me. lol!!!

[Bagboy]

I was in my local 24 hr supermarket last night to buy a couple of TV dinners because it was late, I was hungry and cooking wasn't an option.

Does the store's name have an SH in the beginning?

[Gabrielle Proctor]

Wow. And I thought the old people at the kroger during my lunch break were clueless.