Supermarket Self-Checkout, a Sadistic Ritual or Cleanup Needed in Every Aisle
October 6, 2022Over the past fifteen years of so, shopping has changed as much, if not more than nearly any modern practice. Think about it – in 2005, if you needed something, you had to go to a physical store to get it. Today, we click a button and waste hundreds of dollars on merchandise we don’t need. What an age we live in. The one exception is the supermarket, where countless plebs like me go and purchase groceries each week. And while technology, including the self-checkout have changed the supermarket, it sure as Hell isn’t for the better.
Now some readers, mostly the dinguses who can’t comprehend the complexities of a Bloggin Hood intro, will counter the above paragraph. On the surface, there’s two flaws with my opening. But like your Sophomore year English teacher stressed, you have to look deeper for the true meaning. Read between the lines man!
For starters, I’m aware that online grocery delivery services exist. I’ve used it in a pinch, but honestly, it’s not the same. Sure, it’s convenient to stay home while some poor, overworked 18-year-old drops off my week’s food at my door, but there’s a downside. I don’t trust other people to pick out my produce. That’s a good way to get moldy fruits, and spoiled vegetables I’ll likely throw out in five days anyway. I want to see those spinach leaves wilt under my watch over the week, damn it.
The other issue with online grocery delivery is the substitutions. If the brand you want is sold out, you either don’t get an item, or get a close substitute. I want to be able to make that decision in the store. If one ingredient is missing, I might be unable to make a recipe and need to audible. Even more tragic, imagine requesting Lil Smokies and receiving some generic, suck brand mini hot dog? Would I eat them? Of course, I’m not a fool. But would I complain about it? Yes, that’s why this website exist.
In short, groceries should be brought by the individual, or at least someone who can trust. A random individual completing my online order is not a trusted person. Sorry Amazon Fresh, the only person handling my bananas is me.
I’m also fully aware most retail stores have self-checkout. Again, I don’t really see the point of walking into other stores. Pretty much every other item is easy enough to click “add to cart”. Clothing is based on sizes, and if it doesn’t fit, it’s an easy return. Nobody buys electronics by looking at them in person; they purchase them based on need and specs. And pretty much everything else is an instinct purchase, which is dangerously easy with the internet.
I will say, the last store I was in was Uniqlo. There self-checkout was insane. I brought two shirts for Maid Megan, and all I had to do was add them to a bin, and the self-checkout did everything else. Why the hell do clothing stores, where no one needs to visit in person, have significantly better self-checkout systems than the supermarket? Oh, trust me, we’re getting there. But first, I have to complain about a lot of other issues I have with the grocery store.
Look, if you thought this was going to be concise, I wrote 444 words to counteract my own opening paragraph.
You would think that the supermarket, the one store that people regularly go to out of necessity would be much more convenient. Naturally, that’s not the case. Supermarkets might be the most annoying shop to navigate. It’s as though they want the experience to take too long. Hmm, maybe they do.
I’d argue that exactly why every supermarket on Earth has the following flaws.
Parking Lot Danger
While every parking lot is chaotic, Grocery Store lots are like international waters. There’s no rules when you enter one, and it takes luck to make it into the store without a serious injury. I try to park as far away from the store as I can, not to get extra steps, but to protect my car. Every trip to the grocery store has a minimum of three near head on collisions. People must really want to handle some bananas.* 1
Actually finding a spot is simple enough as most grocery lots have a ton of spaces. The real issue is navigating the walk into the building. Cars pull out of spots without so much as a warning. Other cars top out at 60 miles per hour, barreling down to get the closest spot available with no regard for human life. It’s truly a game of frogger, except the only total rising is blood pressure.
Why do people do their worst driving here? I think it’s because there’s no repercussions. If a car gets nicked or a dent, they can pull into a different spot and nobody will know. And if a person is dented? Well, they can always blame shoddy produce as the cause.
What we need is an organization that enofrces traffic laws, and while we’re at it, basic human decently in Parking Lots. Maybe we can get some retired military members to whip people into shape. THen again, it might be too much to ask them to deal with the horrors of the parking lot. They’ve already served their country.
But seriously, can people learn how to drive?
Shopping Carts Disrespect
In my opinion, it takes a pretty big douchebag to not simply return a cart to the multiple designated areas in the parking lot. Based on experience, 92% of all citizens are therefore, douchebags. Good job people.
Seriously, how frigging hard is it to return a cart? Not only is it difficult enough to pull into a spot while avoid the 92 year old who is driving 82 miles an hour with their hazards on, but you also have to make sure a cart isn’t in the spot you chose. It’s just incredibly annoying. Put your carts away people. And, maybe get wild and use blinkers in the lots too.
The carts issues don’t stop with selfish use though. Grocery carts are notorious for having bad wheels, and it’s not just a myth. No matter what cart you pick, one of the wheels will barely function. It’ll make turning in aisles a hinderance. It’s not hard; it’s just enough to make turning into an aisle a pain. Maybe this is why people leave their carts in the middle of the road – for vengance.
No, that’s not why people leave their carts. They leave them because they are douchebags. If you’re one of these people, I’m shaming you. SHAME.
While you may consciously control your turns, other shoppers will not. I mean, these people can’t drive a car, why would they do better pushing a damn cart? While you try to navigate all the pitfalls of the supermarket, other patrons will nearly, or full on, ram you and your cart is their quest for junk food, questionable specials, and likely the last of whatever item you really needed. Them the brakes… which the carts don’t really have.
I’d argue the shopping carts are more dangerous than the drives. That 92 year might be deadly behind a car, but he might take out an entire aisle of shoppers with a cart. There should be mandatory training for operating these things. **2 Obviously, drivers’ licenses are too easy to get. A shopping cart license should take some serious work. People that keep falling can use the baskets. Sucks to suck.
Crowds
Nine out of ten scientists agree that food is required to live. Therefore, grocery stores will always be crowded. Unfortunately, this means a quick stop to grab the things you need for the week will take triple the time it should. Shopped crowd every aisle. These people are not your friends. Instead they are rivals, competing for every reasonable grocery you could want.
Fun fact – That 10th scientist was 6’4″, but only weighed 120 pounds.
Think about it. People aren’t running up and down the aisles to get canned mushrooms and twelve packs of Mountain Dew. They’re competing for the meats, cheeses and decent produce. The more people in these aisles, the less odds you’ll be getting the things you need. And it’s not easy to weave in and out of traffic to get the choice items when you have 2.5 working wheels. One false turn, and you’ll be settling for a Thursday Night Spamburger and everyone else scoops up the last remaining chicken breasts and pork tenderloins.
Even worse, individual aisle lanes are tight. It only takes one cart parked in the middle of an aisle to put a complete halt on shopping. Unfortunately, the vast majority of shoppers are the slowest people on earth. Nobody should want to stay in a grocery store for more than 30 minutes, yet every trip, you’ll find people that make up one of the following categories.
- People with extremely strict or picky diets that can only purchase limited ingredients.
- People who seemingly have never been to a grocery store, and have questions like “How do farmers milk almonds?”
- Karens who want to complain to an employee that the avocado they handpicked isn’t green enough for their likings.
- The Elderly.
Now look, this is a rant against grocery stores and self checkout machines. I’m not trying to get canceled for being an ageist. But the millennials aren’t packing the grocery store. They’re either ordering their meals through a delivery app, or they’re getting an Instacart delivery. The vast majority of grocery store patrons are older people. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that every second in the grocery store is a second I’m not literally doing anything else. The elderly tend not to have great foot speed. You also can’t exactly weave a cart around them. I mean, do you want to be the person who hit an elderly person with a shopping cart? No, I have too many incidents on my resume – I don’t need Elderly Cart Crusher added to that.
Poor Store Layouts
Typically, if you’re trying to eat healthy, the outside of the supermarket is your best bet. Here, you’ll find meats, fish, dairy and produce. These are typically natural, less processed foods that we all really should be eating. Almost every supermarket has this basic set up. All the tools are there to eat healthy, and most stores couldn’t make it easier.
But who the hell wants to eat health crap? I want chips, carbs, and sugar, damn it, and I want it now!
Fun fact. Mini hots dogs, and their less tasty cousin, normal hot dogs, are located in the outer aisle. Does this make them a natural, healthy food? I say yes.*** 3
Adding anything with a hint of taste requires you to brave in middle aisles, which never make any sense. Why are drinks located right next to the pet food? Who determined that baking items and protein bars belong together? There’s absolutely no rhythm to any supermarket aisles and it creates more chaos.
Why else would there be an international aisle on one side of the store, and a second on the other? Why are baking ingredients in aisle 6, but cookies in aisle 14? Make it make sense man!
Some of the groupings will never make sense to me. If you’re going to have a condiment aisle, put all of the condiments there. Seems logical, but I suppose I don’t have a master’s degree in product placement. Sauces and marinades will litter nearly every single section of the supermarket, and you’ll need a map to find them. Of course the hot sauce is across from the tea. Who wouldn’t want a frigging dash of it in their Tetley to start the day.
And after a few weeks, when you finally adjust to the nonsensical layout, everything changes. Items get moved to new items just out of cruelty. But I believe there’s a far more sinister reason for these aisle aberrations – profit.
Customers who stick to a list spend way less than those who have no supermarket plan. The more time any individual spends shopping, the hungrier they get. Hungry costumers led to impulse purchases, not that I’ve ever done that every single time I go. Supermarkets are designed to keep even frugal shoppers searching for their must have items. The longer anyone wanders, the more likely they’ll shop off list. It’s a devious, depraved strategy designed to suck us blind.
I’m jealous I didn’t think of it.
Junk Food at the Checkout Lines
Oh, but Big Supermarket has more up their sleeves. Eventually, your long journey comes to a close. What should have been a 15-minute trip became a 75-minute excavation. Sure, your Saturday afternoon is ruined, but at least you got all your items, and only grabbed a few off-list items. Finally, you’re ready to pay for your food and leave the store… But wait, what’s this on your way to the register?
Why it’s every single delicious candy and chocolate bar you’ve ever consumed in your entire life.
This is vicious. You can tell me that my store layout theory is a bit dramatic, but we all know this is true. Supermarkets prey on the tired, hungry patrons by putting sugar laced traps right before they leave the store. It’s nearly impossible to avoid something bad for you on a full stomach. Try saying no after walking up an down the supermarket for an hour searching exclusively for food. You need the willpower of Jesus in the desert to skip out on this and I think even he’d grab a Snickers.
Why isn’t this illegal? There’s already 17 aisles dedicated to junk food. If I manage to avoid all of those, I’m still tested one more time. Now I’m pissed off about this, added two Reece’s Cups to my cart, and will consume 800 calories before I make it home. How the Hell can it get any worse?
Self-Checkout
Oh, right. The whole point of the article. That makes sense.
On it’s own, paying for your groceries isn’t that bad, besides the cost. In a perfect world, this would be straight forward. Instead we live in our world, so it’s awful. The true challenge is it’s a culmination of everything you’ve experienced thus far.
At this point in your trip, you’re exhausted from walking aisle after aisle, searching the last item on your list. You’ve had to deal with far too many people, and often had to re-rout to avoid the cart traffic jams in the good aisles. Hell, you might have nearly died in the parking lot from a rouge driver who signaled both left and right, then went straight. You’ll do anything to get out of here and eat the six pounds of candy you just added to the cart.
It’s here you’re presented with two options:
Stand on line and wait for a cashier to handle your groceries.
Or
Go to the self-checkout section and take care of things yourself.
The main issue with waiting in the traditional checkout lines have nothing to do with the cashiers. These workers take unnecessary blame for being (stereotypically) young and not showing enthusiasm. Would you show enthusiasm if you had to deal with the public? Absolutely not. That is every person’s nightmare. Sure, they might not smile enough, but they’re doing their jobs.
The issue is the customers cashers deal with. Consider all the winners you run into in the grocery store. Despite the constant annoyance, I bet you only come across 10% of the costumers at any one time. Nearly every one is a horrific beast that deserved to be jailed.
Now, think of the poor cashiers who have to deal with that 10%, plus the remaining 90%. And some people get angry that they aren’t smiling? These poor employers have to deal with patrons angry their coupons from 2015 are expired are furious or that their Sears gift card isn’t accepted at Stop and Shop. It’s a miracle each and every costumer isn’t punched square in the face. In fact, if I ran a supermarket, I’d give each cashier three passes a week for haymakers. That’ll show the paying public!
My grocery store would last for five days before the lawsuits forced us to close, but what a week it would be.
Unless a checkout lane is completely open, you have to use the self-checkout. You don’t want to watch a middle-aged women lose their shit on a 17-year-old for bagging chicken and cheese together. But the self-checkout might be even more frustrating than waiting on a never-ending line.
But how? How could something designed for convivence be the opposite? Simple – grocery store owners are sadists that get off on our suffering.
What? It’s true. Fine, I’ll prove it. Not like this rant isn’t long enough.
The Absolute Worst Technology.
When I went to Uniqlo, I couldn’t believe how quick and efficient the self-checkout machine was. Looking back, it’s because how shitty the grocery store versions of these machines are. It’s like they took 1980 computer technology, dumbed it down and called it a career. These machines are never updated, and have the time, 2-3 of them are broken. In a decade, our phones went from taking blurry pictures, or being capable of filming cinema quality video. We can’t borrow 1/1000th of that tech for supermarkets?
One of the biggest issues is the scanners. Unless you position your item’s barcode perfectly, it’ll never scan correctly. You’ll end up wildly swinging the items around, begging to have it register. While you try your best to muffle the curses brewing, the item finally scans. Then it scans again because the system picks up the barcode twice. Looks like you’ll have to correct it. But don’t worry, you only have 400 items to go.
I know that some stores offer scanners that you can use throughout your shopping. When you’re finished, you can use the scanner to upload your purchases to the self-checkout machine. These are surprisingly painless… when you can get one. Often times, these portable scanners are all being used, as nobody wants to deal with the self-checkout machines without one. Even this technology sucks; the batter lives on these are 18 minutes, tops. Nearly every time I go to the supermarket that has these, half remain on the rack “Out of battery”. Fantastic.
Here’s an idea I literally thought off writing the last paragraph. Why can’t the self-checkout machines just have a detachable scanner connected to each? That would make the process 1,000 times easier, no? I told you, supermarket owners are frigging sadists.
Coupled with bad technology is most shoppers are horrific with anything involving a screen. The average grocery store shopper is older, so computers aren’t their strong suit and boy does it show here. People attempt to scan items with the bar code facing away from the device often. It would be funny if they weren’t in line in front of you, delaying the end of your trip.
Self-Checkout should be user friendly, but it’s designed to frustrate. If you buy produce and roll up to the self-checkout unprepared, you’re absolutely screwed. Who the hell remembers the code for bananas? Nobody. Should have had somebody handles your bananas for you.
What’s worse, you can’t effectively search for fruits and vegetables because the systems immediately freeze. That’s a 10-minute delay in the process. If you brought anything frozen, it’s long been defrosted and ruined. God help people who try to use a coupon. It’s easier to ask someone to explain Bitcoin.
The Bagging Area Glitch
I’m not a technology wizard, but usually, I can figure out how to use a kiosk. I’ve never struggled with basic technology. But my god, figuring out where to put my items in the self-checkout after I scanned them is the most confusing thing in the world.
I know what I’m supposed to do. After I scan an item, I put it on the designated bagging area. It’s straightforward. It’s simple. And it never frigging works.
Anytime I put the item in the section, the machine yells at me for not placing the item in the bagging area. If I try to place the item in the bag, it says I didn’t place the item directly in the bagging area, and sometimes I have to re-scan. Trying to scan and put the item back in the cart, which would make complete sense, leads to alarms. It’s a complete disaster.
The bagging area is about a six inch square. How can anybody fit a full week’s worth of grocery in that space? It’s poorly thought out, and probably the dumbest part of the entire process. I can’t stress how frustrating this is. If I had three wishes from a genie, fixing this is in consideration. Sure, I could wish for more practical things, but think of the satisfaction.
Reliance on the Staff.
If the system at any point detects an issue, it will lock itself, requiring a staff member to exist. Unfortunately for you, this will occur almost immediately. Getting help is extremely difficult for two reasons. First, every single self-checkout machine is constantly breaking. The second, and more devastating reason, is 99% of the staff working in this area absolutely despises their job, and not so surprisingly, you, the customer.
I’ll defend the cashiers to the death, but there’s no defending this part of the team. You can see in their eyes how much they hate that they have to, you know, do their jobs. I understand the frustrating of the machines. Hell, I’ll be happy to provide a few hammers and bash them. But the errors caused by the machines aren’t the customer’s fault. The problem is the last software upgrade these things had when during the Ford presidency.
When the “Help Required” message comes on, it’s a bit embarrassing. But, when you look around you, at least three other machines will be doing the same thing. At least you’re among friends. A staff member who can help you should be on the way… but it’s going to take 10 minutes before someone shows. As far as I can tell, they aren’t busy. They just really don’t want to be involved with the general public. Don’t get me wrong, I agree, but I need them so I can get the Hell out of there.
Help finally comes when all the machines are busted. Then, a very angry, rude employee shows up with a card. This card must come from Hogwarts, freshly dusted with Fairy Magic. The employee goes around to each machine, quickly double taps the card, enters a basic code (probably their work id)… and that’s it. It’s the same damn fix every time and it takes less than five seconds. Why the shit did I have to wait 10 minutes for that?
Then, the employee is gone. Was he or she never even there? It’s tough to say, because within a minute, you’ll get another flashing “Help Required” message. 10 minutes later, the employee returns to fix the error. How do I get them to stay until I pay and get to leave? Do I need to genuflect? I’m willing to do so.
In Conclusion
There’s a world where going to the grocery store is a smooth, pleasant experience. Instead we’re given this shit. Stress sets in as soon as you enter the parking lot and doesn’t leave until you’re inside your home, swearing you’ll never return. Alas, food is good for the human body, so you’ll be back next week. It’s kind of like Jets football, but at least that team only ruins 16 Sundays a year (and one Thursday)
The self-checkout somehow remains the worst of everything, including nearly being gruesomely killed by a car in the parking lot. That’s pretty impressive. I’m not sure what can be done to improve the experience.
Oh, except for upgrade the technology, make the scanners actually work, and if something breaks get employees who don’t actively hate the customers help out. Sounds incredibly difficult to do. Again, I blame the sadists who runs these businesses. Get your kicks off on something else.
This article makes me want to put in an Amazon Fresh order this weekend. At least that way, I can handle my bananas in the privacy of my own home**** 4
