Expect Some Idaho Grocery Stores to Drop Self-Checkout

How do I know this?  I do the weekly feedback surveys on the Kroger website.  Kroger is the parent company to Fred Meyer and Smith’s (and soon Albertsons) locally.  This week the survey had several questions about self-checkout.  Many chains are moving away from the self-scanning system.  One grocery chain in Maine concluded customers overwhelmingly preferred the personal touch of a cashier.

Self-checkout was introduced in the belief it could streamline your shopping experience and as a cost-cutting measure.  The savings could, theoretically, be passed on to you.

I don’t want to pay more for groceries, but I prefer cashiers.  It’s my experience that one attendant has too much of a workload when the store is busy.  You can have six stations working, and she (usually, it’s a woman) is performing triage.  Someone always needs to have approval for beer purchases (it was NyQuil for me two weeks ago), or they can’t find the picture for green peppers (my experience Saturday).

So, you wait, while she answers three other crises.

The attendants also take their fair share of abuse.  People who picked self-checkout to save time can get irate when they realize the cashier line is moving even faster.  Or when they can’t find the picture.  Or when they believe the price that pops up on the screen is wrong.

A few weeks ago, I had a coupon that promised a couple of dollars off cat food if I spent more than 15 dollars on other items.  I was told it wouldn’t scan because it didn’t print a barcode.  It’s not the attendant's fault, but it sure made me steam.

If we want to restore polite society, restore cashiers!

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