this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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Self checkout in theory is better for both sides - business and consumer.
That said most self checkout as implemented is insufferable. The modern experience is waiting 5 minutes for someone to clear out your order because you accidentally clicked the version of Limes that this store doesn't sell, despite it being an option on the POS, or to tap no / decline on the 5 different "Donate? Round up? Bag? Survey? Phone number?" prompts, or for the POS to lock up because you scanned a single can 3 times rather than 3 cans once, or for the cart to lock up so you slam your shin into it because the camera determined you were a thief.
Personally I avoid all self checkouts.
Is this how it works in the US? Because everywhere I use them in Europe they are pretty smooth if you're not buying alcohol.
What you describe is not at all my experience in Europe (mainly UK and Portugal, plus a bit Germany).
Small tills with not enough room for a big shopping, pushy and badly designed software, the whole "check your age" for alcohol with a single employee handling 20+ self-checkout tills, the thing bitching and moaning if you bring your own bag, different quirks for self-checkout tills in different stores, not taking cash payments and so on, are incredibly common and what's rare is the ones which work smoothly.
I mean, I would love those schemes some people describe (in Scandinavia?) were you basically check things in as you pick them up, but I have yet to see anything like that myself in the countries I lived in during the self-checkout era.
So far all I've seen in Europe are shit cheap implementations which only ever beat the manual checkout in speed if all you have is a handful of things (so, not a weekly shopping) or the store itself purposefully closed pretty much all manual tills and caused huge queues in order to push people to use self-checkout.
PS: By the way, in my experience in Europe, it's always you that pack your own bags, which actually makes the manual checkout even faster since at the same time the cashier is doing the checkout you're doing the bagging, so the whole thing can go twice as fast whilst in a self-checkout it's only one person doing both.
Self-checkout works well in the Netherlands.
Imagine checkout is like rail. In the UK and Germany a disaster, but in Holland it mostly is pretty good. 😉
There's nothing stopping people at self-checkouts from putting items in bags as soon as they've scanned them. But lots of morons will first scan everything, then proceeed to take another stretch of time to leisurely find their bags and figure out how to pack things.
That's not the self-checkout's fault, that's plain human stupidity.
For what it is worth, yesterday I tried to do place the machine first exactly because of that. The machine complained. I did not insist, since it was faster for my five items to just do what it wanted me to do, but it is possible the setup just does not like it.
Even when buying alcohol you just have an employee walk 3 meters to you, you show your ID and the employee clears it. Thats how it is in some stores, others just prohibit alcohol completely.
It's pretty seamless in the States too.
When I was in the US last it was a bit crap. I couldn't remove an item, which was annoying because I accidentally scanned something twice, then picked the wrong thing in either fruit or baked goods (I can't remember which). 🙈
Even while buying hard liquor, I just get a "are you +18" prompt and I just press yes. lol
Although they have a little magnetic cap on them.
At least in the major retailers in my area - yes.
They are annoying AF and that's coming from a pretty antisocial person.
I’m an Anerican and I’ve not really had any of these issues. The bagging area one yes, but otherwise no real problems and I’ve never in my life had a cart lock up. I try to avoid self check out, it’s not my job so why am I doing it?
I don't get that "it's not my job" approach a lot of people have towards self check out. I know its different in the US but I hear this also in Europe. In a proper self check out I take a item from my basket, put it straight into my bag and have all the time I want to organise it properly. While at the usual check out I need to unpack everything on the belt, pray that the person before me was fast enough so I can start packing my shit when the cashier starts pushing 3 items/second towards me. While trying to keep up with the cashier you are either a master of packing or you're screwed. Alternative would be just dumping everything back into the shopping cart and organising after you paid but that means handling every item three Times (put it on the belt, back in the cart, Pack into bags).
Hot Take: Self checkout (in Europe) is less work than conventional checkout.
I never get this take. Like, back in the day it also wasn't my job to pack the groceries into a cart and haul them to the cashier. You entered a store, like a lot of pharmacies still work today, there was a clerk behind a desk and you told them "I'd like three ounces of flour, 4 eggs and a litre of milk", they fetched it for you. So, where are the complaints that walking through a big store "is not my job"?
Everybody is like "no, a store is juuust right, when it works like in my childhood. Everything else is against the order of the world!"
I completely understand all the other, technical, cultural, issues one can have with a self-checkout, but this "not my job" attitude weirds me out, somehow.
Do you also need a separate clerk to pack your groceries right next to the one that scans them?
No, the one who scans my groceries also packs them.
Never understood this concept. It's not your job to fill up your gas tank either, so we should ensure someone is hired to be sure that occurs correct?
Canada is halfway between the two. The best part of self checkouts is one queue feeding into many stations. Traditional tills drive me fucking mad i hate them so so much!
Give me a canadian tire, winners, or dollarama style checkout with one big ass queue feeding into all tills. Then grandma can pay in 19th century haypennies and coupons as an excuse to get her socializing fix outside the nursing home, and i can get my fucking groceries in a timely and non-infuriating manner.
No its not us based, I've never had a self check here that has that issue. They lock down for if they think you are stealing (I've never had repeated scans trigger that its usually if you try to hide a barcode or something) or age restrict but other than that as long as it isn't an operator issue its pretty streamlined.
Some of them are great. Lidl comes to mind.
Lidl just simply doesn't let you leave