For me most often it’s because of incorrect item weight, not because I screwed up. Even if I go to another machine like some of you are suggesting, it would probably end up the same with me ending up wasting my time; and if it’s not the first item, I suppose it might trigger a security warning (i.e. me picking up my items before paying).
I just pull and push on the scales.
So you’re telling me you just don’t skip and go to another machine and leave it for the staff to fix? Because truly it is not your problem, it is theirs.
Pretty funny coincidence here
Drat, I liked not having to interact with anyone!
Next time this happens to you, may the comments here be a reminder: you didn’t screw up, the machine is perfectly capable of screwing everything up all by itself.
Literally the last time I used self checkout, I had to ask the cashier for help, and he was like “🤷 what can I say, man? These things suck. At least I still have a job!”
Me, waiting for age verification because I scanned a 0,0 alcohol free beer
In my experience those don’t trigger the age verification.
They do in the US, at least in Minnesota. (In some respects the US is 50+ countries in a trench coat… and probably not much else, ready to flash our flaccid little Florida at unsuspecting victims.)
They do here in UK. It’s entirely stupid.
They do in Germany
What happens when it gets triggered during self checkout?
The machine will stop working, the error message on screen will have to be verified by the assistant cashier standing nearby.
Sounds a whole lot like America. Same exact order of operations happens here.
In my local Lidl in Finland I was able to buy beer upto 2.5%abv without checkups, until about 18:00. The employee explained to me that during the day when they have more employees they let you buy it without checking, but in the evening they have less employees so less eyes on the self checkout.
Lol in Italy i buy gin without the check
And here the cheapest shit goes for like 7€
Depends a lot on the country and sometimes even between the store chains within the country. At my local store you can’t buy anything age limited at the self check-outs, they start flashing and beeping and you gotta get your stuff and walk to the closest real check-out. And alcohol free drinks, like beers wines ciders whatever, are treated the same as the original versions, limited to 18. Heck, even candy pipes (tobacco pipe shaped liquorice candy, quite delish!) is age limited as it kinda-looks like a pipe and you know, think-of-the-children.
one of my favorite “welcome to ____” experiences was when i moved to Utah. I went to the local grocer and bought some San Pellegrino. the cashier carded me. now i’ve worked retail, so [most likely] this was her first day (the POS tells you when to check someone’s ID) or [i’ve learned not to overestimate Utahns, so also most likely] she somehow had no understanding of what i was buying. i somwhat bemusedly told her i’d show my ID to her manager. when the manager came over, i pointed to the bottles and told him the cashier wanted to see my ID.
i may have memory problems from time to time, but the look on the cashier’s face when her manager told her I was buying water will remain with me til the day i die.
Such fun, humiliating people for no reason!
Right. No reason, like they manager needs to know they’re pulling this bullshit so either they were trained wrong or not at all. And the her incorrect behavior won’t get fixed if no one speaks up. But sure, she was right because she humiliated herself
If I accidentally put something in the bag before it scans, it catches it immediately, but if it double scans the barcode, it can’t tell it overcharged and the employee has to cancel it 🤔
If you double scan something, it should wait to weight the second item scanned. Where I shop, the machine doesn’t let you scan anything until you put the already scanned one on the scale. If where you are it relies just on cameras, then yeah, it could be faulty like you say.
You’d be wrong. I had the great opportunity of figuring out one store I know sets the “removable scanned item without supervisor input” at 3. For a cashier-operated register, mind you. The limitis for the shift lead to override for the cashiers and not for the person standing around the self checkout isle for customers.
And you’d think this meant 3 items on the bill regardless of their amounts. Nope. 3 items.
You can imagine how the rest of the business’s operations looked like. I have to say, I’m impressed they somehow just… chug along just fine. A multinational chain in Europe.
Well, if they’re cutting expenses at the end, they’ll continue going this way.
Had this happen this week at a Tesco Express. The only guy on the register had to call someone out from the back to remove the double-scanned Irn-Bru.
What made it extra awkward was that the staff door was directly down the aisle from the self-checkout, so I could see the employee marching down the aisle so they could deal with this shit and get back to whatever they were doing. I want those 2 minutes of my life back.
Guilty confession: I will sometimes just grab my things and start over at another station. It may be rude, but I imagine it’s not any more work to cancel the whole transaction rather than edit a single item.
Funny enough at Aldi’s if I scan the same two items fast enough it won’t scan the second item probably for this purpose.
Wait … what is “it” and if it’s the self-checkout, how does it know if something is in your bag?
At some stores they have an overhead camera with a computer that watches for you to pick something up and move it to the bag without there being a scan. At my local grocery store, I stopped using the self checkout because of how overzealous that system was.
I’ve gotten pretty friendly with the woman who manages to self checkout area.
It’s when they start scanning coupons that you don’t know about that they have the hots for you. Fifty cents off toothpaste? 😳🥵
I guess we’re not that friendly.
🥵
Its either that, or she’s trying to tell you something else…
“If you want to run to aisle 5 real quick, I’ve got some secret coupons for deodorant too. Don’t run too fast now, wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
i was forced to wait (under pain of “loss of customer trust rating”) for ten minutes because they wanted to inspect and approve my purchase of a can of redbull because there was no one available with all staff busy.
that amount of time, had i been clocked in at my job, would have entitled me to a quantity of pay greater than the price of the drink.
When I was a kid you could just leave some cash/coins and take the drink in this situation lmao. Progress!
One of the many ways in which the world used to be better, indeed…
Nowadays if a store tried to be that lenient, they’d be robbed blind and bankrupted in short order. But that says more about people struggling and not having the resources they need to survive no matter how hard they work or how willing they are to work than it does about people being moral. It didn’t take as many work-hours to afford rent or bills or food back then so people used to have the ability to not care if a little went missing every once in a while. Now there’s no margin left and the squeeze only gets tighter and tighter.
Who forced you to wait? Was this one of those people who stand at the door? You know you can just walk past them right?
I’ve been in a Dollar General store before, that had 4 self checkouts, that were all out of order.
There were 2 human run registers, but no humans to even be found.
I hollered across the store “DOES ANYONE EVEN WORK IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER?!”
Almost needless to say, an employee came to the register, but in hindsight, I probably should have just said fuckit and walked out with the merchandise.
Complaining about the service at the Dollar General 🧐🤵♂️🍸
I should have just started working there myself. Like fuck, what they gonna do, fire me?
I remember seeing somewhere. Possibly John Oliver doing a story on dollar general where he showed exactly that happening. Small town dollar general with one employee, merchandise everywhere cluttering the store. So a customer just started stocking the shelves to help the guy out.
Patience of a god for not doing that
I feel personally attacked, right down to the pink shirt. Whenever I get wine I “think I require adult supervision”.
I’ve never had a problem with the scanners, I use them every week.
Then, just a few days, ago…
I got something I don’t usually, it was supposed to be $24, but it rang up as $48. I was on the wrong hook, as it turned out. Anyway, I didn’t want it for $48, so the lady had to help me. She happened to be standing about five feet from me when it happened, and she saw it happen before I asked her. She was taking care of it on her little device.
Thing is, when I noticed it scanned incorrectly, I accidentally put the coffee I was holding in my other hand in the bag without scanning it and without thinking.
So, as soon as she canceled the sale for the thing, another error pops up, which flustered me again, and I kid you not, I did the same damn thing, I put ANOTHER item in the bag without scanning it and without thinking about it or noticing. Like the fucking idiot I am. While I was apologizing for the first unscanned item ANOTHER error appeared.
She was very kind, dealing with the village idiot.
It’s almost like the store should just have a professional there to do this for customers in the first place.
Management in charge of these decisions wildly underestimated how mindless customers are almost all the time.
I work retail and can feel my IQ drop when I am shopping vs working.
LPT never pick up anything except the single thing you’re scanning.
So many times I’ve had to wait on the cashier to clear me, because I was holding a second item in my off hand, and it thought I was pulling a fast one
Yeah the trick is to put your reusable bags in the trolley, with a second reusable bag inside them. Put your groceries in the inner bag, and the items you’re going to steal in the outer bag between the layers of bag as you shop.
Then when you get to the self checkout, you unload the inner bags onto the checkout, scan as normal, move your trolley to the other side with all the unscanned items hidden between bag layers, pay, load the inner bags with the paid groceries. They’ll never even see the stuff between bags after you’ve unloaded for scanning, and if they look into the bags it still looks empty.
… Or so I’ve been told
The real protip is always in the comments
😂 I appreciate the wisdom
That would require a cashier to be nearby and paying attention though.
I’m supposed to, what? Drop my balls!? Ludicrous…
Also me while I wait for them to confirm my id
Yeah, my supermarket has a new guy and he asked for my ID 3 times already … I’m 40 years old.
Me causing it with kombucha instead of beer for a change
lol do they still card for kombucha? I wonder how much of that you would have to drink in order to get the equivalent of the buzz you get from half of a bud light?
I don’t think it’s humanly possible.
