veteran+ wrote: ↑February 18th, 2023, 1:17 pm
There is NOTHING more efficient and faster than well trained checkers and baggers.
When customers start doing these things themselves it clogs up the whole system. Very few customers are any good with this stuff.
There have been older studies and brand-new studies that support the above.
OK, but the whole point is, in the end it does not matter! Simply because, that ONE clerk monitoring the self-checkouts, no matter how skilled they are, would not be able to ring up SIX customers faster than they can ring themselves up, because each customer is ringing AT THE SAME TIME.
If the clerk had to do it (even if someone else bagged), they can still only do one person at a time.
The stores simply would NOT have enough people to staff 6 registers instead of one set of self-checkouts (and some have even more than 6 overseen by one person, a few still have less than that).
veteran+ wrote: ↑February 19th, 2023, 8:10 am
That is not the case with the majority of shoppers. They will do what they do on their timeline and couldn't care less about the world around them. Plus many use the self check out to steal (this has been well reported).
That also should not figure into what is offered. The idea is that, if customers are stealing, it is up to THE STORE to go after THEM (and ONLY THEM), not to change what is offered and take something away from those who are NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG.
That's the old innocent until PROVEN guilty, not assumed guilty until proven innocent thing that so many seem to get backwards these days
As Storewander posted, some of the "theft" is totally unintentional - if the system does not work correctly (that is, you run the item past the scanner and it doesn't register) that is the store's fault for having badly designed systems (or possibly the item manufacturer for badly designed packages). When there are several machines, all beeping, it can be fairly easy for someone to miss that their item didn't register. Or the wrong codes - they could place them on the items or have things packed with something attached, then it isn't such an issue as trying to guess which one will match the item you have.
Not sure how that not paying thing happens - maybe that's just using real money and not plastic the majority of the time - but you would think people would wonder why no receipt was given?
The rest is the obvious problem, and some of that is easier to do with self-check, though putting different tags on items might slip by many cashiers as well (doubtful that most these days know the actual price of many items, so they wouldn't necessarily notice unless the differences were extreme and on a whole order of items, like everything rings up 10 cents each or something).