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by mantas 3376 days ago
Just some anecdata, but personally I hate dealing with self-checkout when buying fruits/veggies/buns/bread and other non-barcoded items. Cashiers are so much faster than me to deal with that. Maybe the shop in question have a lot of non-barcode items and it causes serious delay.
3 comments
throwanem 3376 days ago
If you're in the US, your fruits and veg almost certainly have little stickers on them. Those stickers contain four- or five-digit numbers which, if entered into a register or a kiosk, identify the produce and save the time of navigating an icon menu to do so.

The kiosks at all the grocery stores where I've used them have offered the option of entering item codes, so it's a fair bet yours do too; if so, give it a try, and see if it doesn't save you considerable time.

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mantas 3373 days ago
Late reply, but just in case if someone finds this helpful...

Over there fresh fruits/vegs/bakery don't have any stickers/packaging/etc. You pick them, put in a bag and cashier rings them up along with barcoded items. They got a fatass book with pictures for newbies/self checkout and all experienced staff have muscle memory...

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dazc 3376 days ago
In Spain it's common that you have to weigh and label such items as you buy them, so you are just scanning a bar code when it comes to the checkout bit. The only snag is that below a certain price point some stores will intervene to check you really have just bought one croissant, which kind of defeats the whole purpose?
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mantas 3373 days ago
In Lithuania only 1 small supermarket chain do so. In the rest, this is done at checkout.

I still remember when I encountered this workflow for the first time. I didn't speak local language, cashier didn't speak english and I had no clue why cashier is so banana while ringing up my bananas :(

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ghshephard 3376 days ago
Our stores with kiosks have hand bags of fruit, fruit/vegetables already bar coded, and, in the dozen or so cases where you have to buy-by-weight, they have hand scales/bar code printers. So, for about 10-20 items out of 10,000 in stock you need to worry. You are right - having 100% universal bar codes makes all the difference.
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