Source: u/Portarossa on Reddit, April 7, 2020.
Transcription:
‘Unexpected item in bagging area.’
It’s not unexpected, you digital fuck. You literally just told me what it is. It’s right there on the screen. I did the wavy-wave, you did the bleepy-bleep; up until the point where you decided to have an electronic stroke, things were going exactly according to plan. What you mean is that you haven’t been programmed right. Don’t go putting this on me, like I’ve somehow gone out of my way to surprise you. I’ve got places to be, man. I can’t be playing hide-the-actual-salami with the Terminator’s younger, shittier cousin.
Oh, and now you’ve sent for backup. Well done. Now I have to deal with a human person who thinks I’m either an imbecile or a thief for not being able to work what’s effectively a bathroom scale with delusions of grandeur for the fourth time.
I’m sure 99% of the self-checkout attendants are in a daze of numbness or barely contained rage when the item weight is a known error and requires them to correct it every single time a customer scans it, to be fixed at the monthly inventory adjustment and only to be replaced by another few items not correctly weighed or sensed.
Having worked a self checkout, it’s mostly numbness. At least for me it was, every time the yellow light came on I just walked over, asked what happened and then scanned my badge while trying to to get them to stop rambling at me
You asked what happened?
All I ever did was scan my badge.
I recently used the self checkout in an Aldi and it just… didn’t care. It was fantastic! I left most the items in my cart and just scanned everything with a hand-held scanner then paid and bagged everything at my car.
Then I went to another store and they have plastic bag holders welded in the scale area and it complained that my head was an unexpected item in the bagging area with a top-down camera perspective to prove it.
Aldi is like the crown jewel of grocery stores. There’s not one close to me, unfortunately. And they’ve always (as long as I’ve known them, anyway) let their cashiers sit. Aldi needs to buy Kroger and show them how it’s done.
Other grocery stores don’t let their cashiers sit? Wtf? Standing still for 8+ hours sounds like hell? Why would you force someone to do that?
I’ve never been to a grocery store where cashiers were forced to stand and I’ve lived in 4 different countries in the past decade. This is an American thing, yes? But why?
If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.
This infuriating quip summarizes the cultural perception of the laziness of the low wage worker. I also think it is somewhat culturally related to “Protestant work ethic” and the phrase “idle hands are the Devil’s playground.”
I worked a lot of shitty low wage jobs in college and I can still feel the unfairness of it all in my core. I bristle decades later when I think about being reprimanded by a manager for waiting to mop a lobby until we had locked up for the night. Their argument was that I was wasting time and no counter argument would be heard. They didn’t get it, I was insubordinate, I quit a month later. Rinse and repeat somewhere else. I’m sure the hours worked after close cut into their Christmas bonus or some shit.
But I digress. The point is, in the US, it’s common knowledge that businesses exist to abuse you. It’s just that a lot of people delude themselves into thinking that if they’re the customer then they’re better off than the employee. Then add in some “back in my day” and a “well, I never” with a twist of “I took advantage of a combination of luck and a commitment to unhealthy work-life balance to get promoted to assistant regional manager so now I empathize with your boss because I now realize that employees leaning against the counter or sitting at the register cuts into my productivity bonus and also looks bad to snotty customers like me and that’s how I rationalize working 60+ hours a week after signing a contract where I’ve waived my right to overtime pay because technically I’m salaried and should be able to do all of my work in 40-hour week.”
We have had these in Europe now for nearly as long as you North Americans. I tend to do daily shopping after work, nice little 15 minute walk calms me down.
But because of this, I was using the scan thing statistically far more than people who don’t shop daily. Another important thing is I use my backpack to pack groceries, and in a former life I did a shit ton of back country hiking, so I know how to pack.
I got so fucking tired of 16 year old kids asking to unpack my carefully packed stuff to scan a random number off items (it’s not by weight most places here) then trying to pack it back - no no no don’t mess with my system - that two years ago I swore off of self check out and only go to the humans now.
Yeah I have to wait in line sometimes, but I figure that evens out for the number of times I was “randomly” checked by some teenager.
At least our check out people can sit down.
I bring my own bag. I press the “I have my own bag” button. I scan an item. Alarms. “Please wait for an associate.” Wait. Associate toddles over. “Sir next time press the ‘Brought My Own Bag’ button.” Scream internally.
You have to press the “brought my own bag” button, then put the bag on the scales, then let it think about it for about 30 minutes, and then you can start scanning.
I can never be bothered with that, so I you always just put the bag on the floor and transfer all the stuff from the sensor to the bag when I finished
Woah dude, when this happens to me the attendant comes over, presses a flurry of buttons and apologizes for the problem.
I mean, yeah, that’s kind of how it is here, but there are usually 12 to 15 self checkouts all being monitored by one person. They’re constantly going from machine to machine doing that, so you’re often stuck waiting for them to get to you. It’s ridiculous on multiple levels.
Is this really that common? I never have issues with self checkout- but I realize that’s anecdotal…
Completely dependent on how the store programs it. There is a lot of variance. For me it seems like grocery stores are the worst where even looking funny at the thing sets it off, then like target is usually fine, and finally places like home Depot don’t even seem to have the sensors (they let you use the gun and keep things in your cart).
Definitely regional, but common enough. That has been my experience with my local chain pretty much every time, including on the way home from work this evening.
The local Loblaws near me (the Canadian devil chain) set theirs up with like a 5% weight tolerance, so if you put something down too fast? Sensors go off. Bag it then put it on the scale? Sensors go off. Manufacturer put too many chips in your package? Sensors go off.
I don’t shop there anymore
Unexpected item in the bagging area
Please place item in the bagging area
Unexpected item in the bagging area
Please place item in the bagging area
My local supermarket swapped over to a system with no scales, which works fine. Probably running some kinda detection software on their surveillance cams or something, I’d guess. At least scanning goes faster now.
Refuse the auto checkout. Join the resistance.
