Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

ours have a little control wheel, it's definitely a perk although remembering what all the buttons do when pressed vs held is surprisingly a lot to manage. an overall drive towards things with fewer buttons takes us to all these multi-use ambiguous things. sleeker but slightly less functional.

I'm still using the same GE alarm clock that I've had since seventh grade or so (see the 'how old is your alarm clock' thread) and yes, I'm still doing this onerous task at least twice a year, more when there's power outages

Can't remember if I posted on here but my alarm clock I've had for over 20? 25? years finally died a few months ago.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/self-checkout-kiosks-grocery-retail-stores/675676/?gift=Bqi2uZtdZSXIt7UBFZp4FBRxqWDIvFkgSDWgLrOvUoY&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

That is a non-paywalled gift link from the Atlantic, in case you are interested. Just the normal predictable gripes about self-checkout.

Do I weigh my grapes? What if I want wine? Can someone just approve my OBVIOUS age? Do they need the actual date of birth, do they need to physically scan my ID, or can they put in a random pre-2000 date?

Do I have a loyalty card or do I put in my phone number? Coupons? Do I wish to round up for a charity? Do I need a bag, did I bring a bag, am I okay with a bag charge?

I am five minutes' walk from three grocery stores, two convenience stores, two department stores, a liquor store and a wine/beer store.

Every time I go out for something I think not just about getting there, finding a thing, and buying it... but how much fucking hassle it will be to successfully complete said transaction. 7-11 and

...Target and Safeway are equidistant from me but I know that 7-11 will just let me have the wine, while Target will make me jump through two hoops and Safeway will make me jump through three.

Do I wish to round up for a charity?

ftr this is just a tax writeoff scam, never do it

Whole Foods put in self-checkouts and managed to make them shittier than any others. Slower, only space for one bag (maybe I don’t want to put raw chicken and asparagus together?) and no cash. They would love for you to scan your palm though, because giving Amazon biometric data sounds way more enticing than just taking 3 seconds to get my debit card out.

the question about wine and alcohol is weird and complicated— i have been in places where they just look at me and put a random date in the computer (Whole Foods, often), and I have been in places where my ID literally expired the day before and wouldn’t scan properly and they wouldn’t sell me a beer, tho i was clearly 36 years old.

i do all loyalty programs for grocery stores and have an email account for them and other corporate “deals” stuff.

i find that the less i worry about all this, the less it seems to matter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i admit that i just use apple wallet for payment when i can— i hate cards and always have.

Table I hear you on the arbitrary rando nature of the ID thing.

Like I am standing here, it's 6 PM and I am wearing a suit and I have grey hair and I am literally holding the hand of a preteen child.

I just want to buy a stupid bottle of pinot grigio to go with the goddamn chicken and couscous that I am also purchasing. Maybe I have some scallions and cat food as well.

Does anyone REALLY think that I'm secretly a teenager trying to get away with some alcoholic mischief?

And yet. Some of the time, the cashier is like boop, you're cool, we know you're over 21. Some of the time they ask me to enter my date of birth myself. Some of the time they decide to enter some random date from the 20th century. At other times I need to take my ID out so they can scan it.

But here's the thing: I NEVER FUCKING KNOW which of those things it's going to be. Which store, which cash register, which cashier, which time? Apparently there is literally no way to know.

Honestly it would be great if every store just posted a sign telling me how much of a pain in the ass it's going to be to get a stupid $10 bottle of pinot grigio if I am a grey-haired dad in a suit, holding the hand of a preteen child.

(Nota bene I have been a retail chashier myself and I know they're just following directives from above. It's not about the individual employees but rather about their management chain.)

Do US stores have self-scanners? These were great over Covid. There's a bank of handheld scanning machines at the supermarket (usually a large store) entrance, you unlock one with your loyalty card or app (btw pretty much all supermarkets have these to generously give you amazing savings...) then just scan and pack your stuff in the cart as you go around. Go to a self checkout machine, scan a barcode and it loads it all up and you pay as normal. Stuff that needs weighing, you weigh on scales around the store and print out a little barcode sticker.

It meant no double handling of goods/needed to pack at the till. Also you can see prices if they're not clear.

They do random 'you have been selected for a scan check' when you go to pay, where staff take a bunch of stuff/your whole shop out and check you scanned it.

You could totally steal shitloads of stuff if you're lucky.

On the other hand, there is a Sainsburys in the studenty area of my city that doesn't have these and also has a gate the other side of the regular self-checkout machines that won't let you out unless you scan your receipt!

Some US chains experimented with the above before COVID, but quickly dropped it. My preferred grocery store when I lived in Maryland had it for like a minute.

Puffin, working in local government I know for fact that the Virginia ABC send out underage Virginia State Police cadets to test who cards. You should be flattered!

I vastly prefer self-checkout and will choose it whenever provided the option. I'll admit the challenges with it, especially at some specific stores, but still better to minimize my human interactions wherever possible. Amazon Go is my favorite though.

speaking of supermarkets, how does android pay / apple pay / whatever work in supermarkets given that i lose phone reception whenever i enter one? surely it has to check with a server somewhere.

It works roughly the same as the chip in a card – the phone more-or-less mimics a debit card, so no connection required.

(i installed it on my phone after thrice getting to the checkout without my debit card but i've never used it, and i've got nfc off by default so would have to jump through hoops should i ever need it but...)

the lack of phone connection in supermarkets, that's a thing, right? i only ever notice when i'm listening to Sounds and it stops. is it being actively blocked (which i think is illegal) or just a function of being inside somewhere with no windows?

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/umrfbm/never_getting_any_phone_signal_in_supermarkets/

- it's a big metal box, basically.

modern buildings codes in the USA result in commercial buildings being near-Faraday cages unless provision is put in the building to allow cell signals to propagate

I hate self-checkout more than most things and I have never even tried to use the things Kinder is talking about.

Also YES why do I lose reception inside most supermarkets in the UK?! It's stupid.

Oh wait - I just saw koogs link will read.

I have wondered for 5 years why that happens and if it was only to me lol. Have had to go outside to google recipes.

it's annoying because I need Internet to use the stupid nectar app

Yes that happens in M&S when I try to use their app so I have to open it before I enter the store.

That seemed to be a issue around here in past years, but it all seems better now? Some stores have wifi, albeit terrible wifi.

Boring Md I know they do that, and I would like to be flattered. Maybe I was flattered at 42 (twice 21) but it has since become tiresome.

Like, really?

Honestly I would be more okay if it were consistent. But at present there are at least four potential paths: "yeah, you're old, we're cool," "show me the front of your ID," "can you type in your date of birth?" "uh, can you take it out so I can scan the back?"

Sometimes they type in the actual date of birth, sometimes they just fake it with something that's a bit more than 21 years ago, sometimes they just want to get the year right. But then some places actually want to scan the barcode. My problem is that I never know which stores/cashiers/registers are going to require what.

Adding to this, the loyalty card, the phone number, the PIN, the '"do you want cash back," the "do you want to donate to the Abused Puppies Fund" prompt, and (in my jurisdiction) the "how many bags did you use" prompt? Oh and do you need parking validation as well?

All of it adds up. At this point I would seriously reward a business that was just called "Food for Money."

Particularly annoying when I'm trying to text my wife photos of potential replacements for when the specific thing she wanted me to pick up are out of stock and I have to walk clear to the front of the store and get as close to the doors as possible to even sent it out.

• Dislike self-checkout because I can't do all the cool things a cashier can do. Ten cans of catfood? How about I take one can and quickly swipe it ten times? No? I have to do each one individually? And hear PLACE ITEM IN BAG after each one?

• Usual complaints about alcohol purchases, but in my state, adults under 21 years of age can't sell you alcohol. When the red-vested manager finally shows up after five minutes, she usually pushes the twelve-pack across the scanner and punches in a random birthdate while the original casher stands there.

• Back in the 90s, I was once denied a pack of cigarettes because the cashier looked at my state-issued laminated driver's license and deduced that the "3" in my birthyear was actually a "9". Still steamed about that, but at least technology has taken a step forward from that.

• Don't know what the fuss is about the shoplifting. I haven't gotten one item for free at self-checkout, but Lord knows I've walked out with plenty of free twelve-packs of Coke in the bottom of the cart because both me and the cashier had forgotten about them.

self-checkout has honestly gotten much better since it started it seems to me, to the point where I prefer it unless I really have too much groceries. I've gotten really good at it. I guess the alcohol thing is a bit annoying, but I don't purchase it that often at my regular grocery store.

also both big grocery stores around here that I regularly go to have had self-checkout, then a couple of years later removed self-checkout, then putting it back in. With inflation and increased fear of shoplifting, I am wondering if they are going to take them out again.

I actually switched grocery stores because the one I liked switched to mostly self-checkout and it has one of those systems that weighs every item and gets upset at you when the weights don't check out. and it malfunctions constantly. it's really bad with produce. if I'm buying more than $50 worth of stuff it just takes forever.

I've gotten way less "put the item back in the bag" or whatever it was warnings in the last couple of years, which leads me to believe that they increased the tolerance for weights being slightly off, but I'm guessing this hasn't happened everywhere.

I understand why cashiers will card anyone and everyone buying alcohol, because I'm pretty sure the store can be presented with some astronomical fines if they are caught selling to someone underage.

Hilariously last week I was being rung up and the cashier said, "oh, wait a second..." and grabbed a card from the checkout station next to her. I thought she had maybe scanned something twice by accident and needed the card to void it, but no, she used it to apply A SENIOR DISCOUNT!!!!

Sadly the next time I went there the (a different) cashier did not try to give me the discount. I am really bad at math, but I think it was like ten percent off! I need to try to play up the doddering aspect of how I present from here on.

Most of the places near me do not have self-checkout (I think in part because of space limitations?) but in any case I avoid using them on principle (i.e., I hate doing things)

The self-checkout at the local Aldi is very hectoring--if more than about 3 seconds pass between scanning, it barks at me to scan an item or use the screen to checkout. Heaven forbid I take a moment to distribute things evenly in my bag.

one thing I've learned over the years of using self-checkout is that it's quicker to not put anything into bags as you do the checkout, just do the checkout putting everything directly onto the bagging area and only put it in bags once you've paid.

ftr this is just a tax writeoff scam, never do it

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Wednesday, October 18, 2023 9:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

how does the scam work? stores can't write off customer donations.

I think some of the self-checkout issues that people have aren’t a big deal for me because I was a grocery checkout person relatively recently and still know a lot of the PLUs and the quirks of scales and etc.

xp caek it looks like I was incorrect on that after some research

they do sometimes do shady things tho:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/06/metro/heres-why-cvs-was-sued-over-fundraising-fraud-checkout/

Good reasons not to donate at the register:

• It doesn't go directly to the charity, obviously. And who knows when the store lets go of the money.

• Does it go into an interest-bearing account before it's donated? Does the store donate the interest too?

• You're giving the retailer all of the credit for giving. Way to go for making Walgreens look good.

• Charities appreciate the money, but have no idea who's giving what, other than "shoppers at CVS" and can't follow up.

• Maybe the stores don't get the write-off, but neither do you.

I thought sleeve was right about the stores getting the deduction, but even if they don't, the altruism is still very small.

I think some of the self-checkout issues that people have aren’t a big deal for me because I was a grocery checkout person relatively recently and still know a lot of the PLUs and the quirks of scales and etc.

hashtag humblebrag

agree w/ all that pp, I still won't do it

my beef is when they have twelve checkout aisles but only one or two are ever open, no matter how busy they are... why did you bother to build all these ghost aisles, harrumph

I have a local grocery store here notorious for that Andy, they have around 30-35 lanes and in my 16 years of shopping there (off or on), I have never ever seen more than eight checkouts open at one time, no matter how busy they are.

“ Do US stores have self-scanners?”

Oohhhhhh do we ever

I love this thread and am sad I didn’t realize it’d been restarted until now

Out of curiosity, would y'all be interested in going back to the pre-supermarket age where the grocer would get you everything from behind the counter, at least for stuff like prepackaged goods (and would possibly be sporting a villainous mustache and commuting to work on a pennyfarthing bicycle)?

I guess that's kind of still the case with cigarettes in convenience stores.

I don’t like self-checkout and yet have become the kind of person who uses it because, well, there are never enough lanes with cashiers and as I age I don’t want to be in a place with lots of strangers any longer than I absolutely have to.

(This is magnified at present, during flu season.)

Philip, I don’t know if I’d want to go back to that 100% (haven’t experienced it) but it’d be cool to have maybe one or two stores where that could be done