There are an unusual number of people in this world who gawk at the self-checkout as if they found themselves at the controls of an alien spaceship.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Lately I've seen people get stuck at the pament step. The screen is begging them to pick a payment option and they just stare at it, clueless, until a staff member comes over.
Which is weird, surely people have used online checkout where they ask for various payment options, no?
If every self checkout was similar to others, but each of them want to make things different.
Different and worse. How do designers keep seeing other checkout system and think: "You know, I think I see a way that we could make this process slower and more complicated...."
Well for starters because their job title is designer. Gotta earn that $$$$.
If they just copy and pasted it would be "What are we paying you for"
See every single UI/UX change on a modern operating system, or website in the past 30 years.
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This is doubly true for the card payment terminals. The on screen options are all in different places, orders, and with random questions thrown in. What’s your phone number? Do you want to round up to donate a car to starving kittens? What’s your zip code? Debit or credit?
Also, because this system is apparently developed by a maniac: where I live (might be national and not state level, not sure) EBT cards have to be used on some terminals by swiping, not the chip that comes on the card. But to swipe, first you have to use the chip and let that fail. So if you see someone using an EBT card that looks like they have no fucking clue how to use a card, it’s probably that they’re actually using it the only way they can.
Absolutely insane design choice, especially for people who may already be facing delays like separating items into two separate transactions for non-covered items, having to remove items that seem like they should be covered but aren’t, etc.
why would a store need a zip code?
Sales metrics, I guess. Ikea always asks for it when you check out, and I remember having to ask people when I worked at a retail clothes store untold ages ago.
The latest models have AI cameras watching you scan your stuff. If you don't hold things and do the motions properly it will stop and contact the underpaid human to help you while the queue behind you gets longer.
Burn down the self chechouts
Hell no. They're a godsend. Don't have to interact with people and I get out of the store in way less time. And you don't have a person standing behind you waiting for you to pack your shit.
If they made some system where you could buy booze with some sort of pre-authentication tied to whatever that approved you then that'd be perfect
You must not buy a lot of produce, gift cards or otc medicine; the self checkout is slower every time I have to buy any of these things and it’s given some companies (cvs, Walgreens) a reason to make their employees who would otherwise be working the register do other things and leave the front of the store almost completely unstaffed every time I go in there. Now I have to use a self checkout to buy something I know they need a person there for and then stand around like an idiot waiting for the cashier to come and assist.
If it’s a grocery store and I have even a moderate amount of produce, I don’t have the codes memorized and there’s no bar codes on it, so I have to find everything I’m buying on their checkout machine. Something else inevitably doesn’t scan or the bagging area detector freaks out about something and then I have to completely stop what I’m doing and wait for an employee to come and scan their card.
It has made it a lot easier to steal things though and with the terrible experience that comes with these things, I’m not far from doing.
Gift cards are a scam.
Do your grocery store's checkout have a search by name? Mine can search by name and have a picture of every produce.
For OTC, i dont see how its a problem unless you buy age restricted stuff?
They may have a search by name, but by the time I hit the produce button, then the search by name button and start keying in the name, a cashier could have rung up two things.
For OTC it happened the other day, just to buy NyQuil at cvs.
They may have a search by name, but by the time I hit the produce button, then the search by name button and start keying in the name, a cashier could have rung up two things.
I mean... thats because the cashier memorizes the codes because they do it hundreds of times in a single day. You could do it equally as fast too if you knew the codes too.
Ah yes, stuff like nyquil is ussually age restricted...
Yeah, that’s my point; I’m never going to memorize those, so I’ll never be as fast as a cashier.
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Produce I buy a lot and it's pretty quick to do them, put on the scale, find the item, press the button, done. Not much different to how you would weight them, press the button, put on the sticker and then get it scanned/scan it. Sometimes I have a brainfreeze trying to find where the produce is on the menu but I also have brainfreezes about the scale number so evens out.
Gift cards and medicine, no I don't think I've ever bought either from a store. Gift card maybe but it was before the machines.
Oh, I guess our produce checkout system is different; that definitely seems like more of a 1:1. For the grocery stores in my area, we just bag up what we want and the cashier puts in the code and weighs it up at checkout time. It’s much faster for them to do it since they usually have the codes memorized or at least know where it is on their cheat sheet.
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We buy most of our produce at Costco or something, where we avoid the self-checkout. At the grocery store, we'll usually only get a couple produce items and the rest will be stuff we can't reasonably get at Costco, like snacks, drinks, etc, and most of those have bar codes. If we have a bunch of produce or a full cart in general, I'll get the cashier, but 9/10 times, we'll take self checkout since it's faster.
And you don't have a person standing behind you waiting for you to pack your shit.
Can't confirm.
Here stores usually have a single line to multiple machines so it doesn't feel as much that someone is waiting for you to pack, even though there's people in the line ofc
There's rarely someone waiting where I live in the burbs, there's usually about half the machines available unless I go on the the day before a major holiday or something.
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You use money? I have cash on me very rarely.
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I think that's just called stealing