I get it. I fully understand why retailers are eliminating self-checkouts, why they are limiting them to Ten Items or Less, why they no longer want customers to check themselves out. All those thieves have ruined it for the rest of us.
But please. I beg you. Don’t make me go through the normal checkout.
I embraced self-checkouts as soon as stores installed these little you-don’t-have-to-interact-with-anyone-and-can-do-it-all-yourself magical inventions, which happened years before the pandemic. My son had just outgrown the cart when Walmart first installed them, I think calling them express lanes with Ten Items or Less. I had waited for this moment my whole life.
My sister and I used to play grocery store. My mother was one of those who saved margarine tubs and Cool Whip containers and always had a stacked pantry of canned goods, condiments, and baking supplies. Our kitchen was too small for a pantry, so downstairs in the utility room sat shelves of inventory for our store. The piano provided the perfect store shelf: the top, the narrow middle part where the sheet music sat, and the covered keys created a great display area for our goods. We priced all items, having garage sale experience, using masking tape for marking. For Christmas one year, Santa brought me a pink plastic grocery cart, a full sized one, so paired with Mom’s old checkbook and outdated checks, not to mention the paper bags she always saved, we had everything we needed to emulate our own grocery store (we longed for the calculator with the receipt tape at my Grandma’s). In later years, we even made a star-like asterisk out of masking tape and cardboard for the new technology—the fantastic scanner, that the cashier passed every item over, which received a beep of approval. If only we had a conveyor belt.
I was trained for the self-checkouts. I never worked as a cashier at a grocery store, or any other store with the magical scanner (the only checkouts I manned were at clothing stores which were not as fun), but my childhood experience meant I knew what I was doing. The only downside to the self-checkouts was its delayed response to bagging. I couldn’t scan one Fancy Feast can after another, instead throwing it in the bag and waiting for the machine to allow me to scan the next one. Otherwise, I felt at home, typing in 4101 for bananas and knowing that my grocery store bagels were categorized under deluxe donuts. I even managed a pile of coupons, much to every self-checkout monitor’s nightmare. In those early days, my son even helped me, scanning items while I bagged them, giggling when the machine said frequently, “Unexpected item in bagging area. Remove this item before continuing,” even though nothing had been set in the bagging area. We mimicked the machine frequently—“Please wait for assistance”—yet through all my grumbles, I preferred the idiocrasy of the machine over the idiocrasy of the human.
My Target was slow in installing self-checkouts, but once they did, I never used the regular checkouts at all. When Covid hit, I was used to the self-checkouts, just not the long lines that had formed now that people were avoiding people and didn’t want anyone else touching their stuff. I felt that way long before the pandemic. The average consumer appeared to struggle with the technology. My husband said many times as we watched people fumble with the check outs, “There should be a test you must pass before you can use the self-checkout.”
After almost a decade of these self-checkouts, retailers are taking them away from me, forcing me to relinquish control of my final step of shopping. Upon my most recent trip to Target, one of those I’m-going-to-stock-up trips because I had Circle offers of ten percent off, plus a birthday five percent off, plus my normal Red Card discount, I wanted to cry when their self-checkouts had newly placed signs: Ten Items or Less. A glorious shopping adventure ended with disappointment and frustration as I started unloading my cart onto the conveyor belt.
Self-checkouts should stay without limitations for three reasons:
Number One: Scanned prices don’t always match the shelf prices
When I have a cartload of stuff, it’s impossible to watch the cashier as he/she rings up my items. I must unload my entire cart onto the conveyor belt, and that includes all the heavy stuff. If it’s under the cart, many times, the handheld scanner will not reach nor does the cashier want to walk around the counter, which means I have to heave-ho up cases of pop or water or kitty litter or squirrel food. I already put it in the cart, I will then have to heft it into the trunk, and then still unload it when I get home. I would rather not do this a fourth time at the checkout lane. No matter how fast I unload all those wayward cans of Fancy Feast, the cashier is at least halfway through by the time I can take my position behind the counter and watch as the prices appear on the register. If I only have a handful of items, this is not a big deal. If I have a receipt that’s two feet long, this becomes a problem.
Through the years, based on my self-checkout experiences, this problem has gotten better. My squirrel food at Walmart no longer rings up as patio furniture that is forty dollars. But my grocery store frequently leaves up expired signs—now that I’m old, I cannot readily see the fine print on these signs without my glasses. I also know from my teenager retail experience that if a sign is left up, retailers more than likely will honor these signs as it is their fault for not taking them down. If I’ve lugged up four eight-pack bottles of pop to receive the sale price and if they don’t ring up at that sale price because the sale expired two days ago and no one has taken down the signs, the last thing the cashier wants to deal with is four eight-pack bottles of pop that I’m going to leave at the counter because I’m not buying them unless they are on sale. I used to be a more savvy shopper—now everything is so expensive that I don’t always pay attention to the shelf price (plus as I’ve aged, remembering all those numbers is a struggle). But retailers are notorious for not having register prices match what is advertised.
On these cartload shopping trips, I had to read through the receipt. You cannot get a refund with the cashier, no matter how egregious the error. You have to go to Customer Service. In those days, I always shopped right after I dropped my son off at school. At eight AM on a weekday morning, the wait is not long. But on a weekend—now you’re forced to stand in line twice to get a two-dollar refund on something that rang up overpriced. Is it worth the two dollars? Back then, before the Land of Self-Checkouts, yes it was. I’m already paying enough for my crap and retailers are making billions from consumers. I want my two dollars back.
But in the summertime, when it’s hot, the last thing I want to do is expose my perishable items any longer than needed. I’m one of those neurotic people who shops for the cold stuff last and then drives like a maniac home to make sure the milk and frozen pizzas don’t spoil. On these hot mornings, I would grumble with despair, now at home, realizing I was overcharged for items. It isn’t worth driving all the way back to the store for a two-dollar refund.
Trust me when I say I was never overcharged at the self-checkout, calling over the employee to remedy the error on the spot.
Number Two: Do not bag jewelry cleaner with food
My first job experience into the world of work was a grocery store bagger. These were the days that plastic was becoming more popular than paper, but we still asked, “Paper or plastic?” I was an expert bagger before I got paid to do it. Common sense should tell every human on the planet that heavy stuff goes on the bottom, that cold stuff stays together, and dish soap shouldn’t be bagged with macaroni.
Apparently, the average cashier is unaware of the basic bagging guidelines.
Walmart was notorious for placing only two or three items in a bag, a complete waste of supplies, plastic that will outlive the cockroach. I never buy much food at Target, except when I lived in Iowa and had a Super Target that had carrot cake (I have never found a carrot cake that beats Target’s). And my grocery store sometimes placed all the cold stuff together; other times, I’d find a wayward frozen pizza transferring all its moisture to my box of Rice Chex.
I clearly remember being trained as a bagger all those years ago. Do they not do this anymore?
At Target, with my cart stocked with toiletries and cleaning supplies, I had a few bags of Easter candy, aluminum foil and cling wrap, and paper plates. While I tried to unload my cart as quickly as I possibly could (see Number One), I tried to simultaneously place like items together: food products, cleaning supplies, toiletries, dog treats. That’s difficult to do when the cashier is scanning as quickly as I can unload.
I buy jewelry cleaner about once every five years. No matter the seal under the cap, jewelry cleaner is notorious for leaking. Despite the hairspray, dry shampoo, deep conditioner, makeup remover, and hand soap refill that she bagged together, the cashier placed the jewelry cleaner on its side on top of my paper plates. I had to count to ten so my head wouldn’t explode.
The cashier was middle-aged, although younger than me. She appeared comfortable in her role, so I can only assume she was not a new hire. At Target, the register has little space to stack bags at its end—now the cashier has to wait on me because I haven’t finished unloading the cart yet, but she needs more space to set the bags at the end of the counter, but I’m more concerned that she just set jewelry cleaner on its side on top of paper plates. But I’m beyond discombobulated at this point as a new problem has occurred, one that didn’t exist before the pandemic because I didn’t own my little two-seater convertible: a teeny tiny trunk.
The Target lady placed my shoe box (I found the most delightful baby pink high-heeled flip flops that have four sets of bows), a pack of four Kleenex boxes, Swiffer mop pads, Clorox toilet refills, and a three-pack of Clorox wipes into a huge plastic bag. That cannot happen if I’m driving with the top down.
On this brisk March morning, the top will remain in place, but that isn’t the point. If I were to take such a shopping trip in June, I’m not going to drive home with the top down with a plastic bag the size of a toddler sitting in the seat next to me.
I’ll be forced to stand in the parking lot, behind my open trunk, rebagging or unbagging half my items. If I didn’t buy any perishable food, this is a doable solution. But this cannot happen in ninety-degree weather.
Part of the joy of the self-checkout is that I have complete control over how my goods are bagged. Please don’t take that away from me.
Number Three: As a perfectionist, I rarely make mistakes, especially if such a mistake will get me in trouble. In other words, I’m probably a more reliable cashier than the ones working at the store.
Before self-checkouts, I loved shopping at Target at eight in the morning on a weekday, especially if one old lady was manning the register. Whenever she saw my kitty litter or Fancy Feast, she’d talk to me about her cats. Because she couldn’t multi-task, I’d end up with free juice boxes and Kleenexes. She would make just as many mistakes in overcharging me, but I would correct her—since she liked to gibber-gabber about her cat, I could unload my cart as she scanned in only a handful of items.
I do not think I was ethically wrong in telling her she did not charge me for juice boxes. It is not my responsibility to make sure the cashier does her job accurately. While I do correct cashiers if they give me too much change, I do not tell them when they haven’t charged me for something. My rationale: See Number One.
Are the mistakes that self-checkout customers make on their own purchases any worse than those who are paid to man the registers? They don’t give a shit. There is no system in place that knows if they charged someone accurately or not. The only way to check this is if a customer goes through the receipt item by item and compares with what is in the cart. One wouldn’t think it difficult to scan everything one by one as it arrives on the conveyor belt, but I also wonder how difficult it is when you ask for Arby sauce and none ends up in the bag. Retail workers today are not known for their perfectionism.
The only mistake I ever made at the self-checkout was in the early days, when a tube of Revlon lipstick stuck to the tape on a microwave box. Even though I slid the box to double check nothing had rolled under it, I failed to notice the exposed tape had taken a lipstick as its lover. I didn’t even see it until I went to unbox the microwave. While I suffered a pang of guilt, I quickly recovered, due to reason Number One.
My lipstick snafu was not intentional. I know that self-checkout thievery is not accidental, that stealers are using autonomy and independence—as well as a once-feared germ—to take things that are not theirs for the taking. Yet can’t there be some sort of fail-safe, like scan my driver’s license before I’m allowed to use it? I refuse to pay to shop at Walmart and then use the self-checkout—isn’t that just going to encourage those people to steal one hundred dollars’ worth of stuff to recoup their fee?
I like being out in public without having to interact with anyone. I like knowing that what I’ve paid for is what was advertised. I like knowing that my body wash is not going to ooze all over my dog treats and that the bags will fit like a puzzle into my teeny tiny trunk. I really do like doing things myself…please, let me continue to do so.