[jakkos]

I agree that removing some human interactions from my life is good. I vastly prefer self-checkouts in shops. However, I know I'm quite content spending my time alone. Being forced to go and interact with people when I want to talk about ideas or ask questions keeps my "alone tendency" in balance, and has lead to really meaningful conversations and friendships.

[TeMPOraL]

> I agree that removing some human interactions from my life is good. I vastly prefer self-checkouts in shops.

Curious example. Personally, I hate self-checkouts machines, and consider them an example of stores abusing their "stickiness" to profit at the expense of both customers and employees, and get away with it.

First of all, like most "self service" solution, it's basically making the user/customer do the work that, before, was done by the service. Secondly, it's just plain less efficient. You need some 3-4 self-checkout machines and a dedicated person to watch them (to e.g. approve alcohol purchases), just to replace one clerk and their station, while keeping throughput more-less the same. What the stores do instead is, install 2 stations per replaced cashier, and have existing employees do the "watch duty" - which is why half the self-checkout machines end up being stuck for 5 minutes at a time, waiting for the overworked employee to finish resupplying a shelf, and walk all the way to the checkout arena to swipe their card a few times.

The queues get longer, people get more aggressive, everyone is doing unpaid work for the store. Madness.

[hasbot]

Heh, I find self checkout more efficient. I use multiple bags when bagging and pre-sort items based on where they go in my kitchen. Plus most baggers are terrible at bagging and just resort to a massive number of bags which kinda ignores the purpose of the bags.

[TeMPOraL]

I haven't been to shop with baggers, so that time is more-less constant for me (except for the pressure to bag faster, which isn't present with self-checkout). However, the cashiers are absurdly fast at scanning. Their workstation is optimized for this, and they scan through things faster than I can move them into bags. Even without any exceptional circumstances that make you wait for assistance at self-service checkout, scanning speed alone cuts the time per customer at least by half.

[zamnos]

On a per-item basis, absolutely, but what's the number of self-service checkouts at which they faster simply by having a much larger number of kiosks? Having 10 check stands open for 10 customers, each with their own employee is inefficient, but having 15 self service kiosks open isn't out of the question.