Giant used to be one of the best places to work. Back in the 90s they paid far above minimum wage ($20/hr or more) and I know a few friends that literally put themselves through college by working there. In the 2000s I worked at the Food Marketing Institute and our clients were supermarket retailers and wholesalers. I primarily worked with the international companies.; like Ahold, Giant's corporate parent. 20 years ago, when they started rolling out the self-checkout, they touted this as great for the company and increasing profits because you could hire more employees to improve the customer experience. Contrary to popular belief supermarkets operate on tiny margins (similar to restaurants) and Wal-Mart essentially wiped-out entire grocery chains one by one starting in the late 90s. A lot of local and regional family-run businesses essentially died overnight. When the scanners were introduced, there was a flood of kickback from customers because nobody wanted to ring up their own groceries and basically teach ourselves how to use a company register; especially if they're dealing with tantrummy kids. There was also the concern that this would tantalize stores to hire less people - not more. We dealt with all of these issues at our regional and annual conferences with the result being add more self-checkout...not less. Well, here we are. The only company that seems to be addressing this well is Wegmans. Incidentally Danny Wegman was our board chairman when I first started my employment far before Wegmans was even in the DMV. Go to any Wegmans and not only do they have about 15 self-checkout aisles (with an employee staffed at each one), but they still have about 20 fully staffed registers. AND they pay their employees competitive wages. I've noticed that Costco is also doing a pretty good job at balancing both. Essentially my reply to that sign at Giant is a) it's your own damn fault, and b) quit treating all of your customers like thieves. There are other retail options and eventually your customers are going to find their own way out the door.
Very interesting comment. Thank you! I feel like anybody could have predicted we would end up here. Wegmans does do both checkout options very well. They have always seemed like a really expertly run company to me. (They came to central Jersey in the late 90s/00s and I'd never seen anything like it. I've gotten used to those cavernous stores but I still think they're incredible. Nobody has discount-level prices on staples plus real high-end food plus a serious wine section.)
Interestingly, Wegmans doesn't make you weight your items. You could scan them and put them right back in your cart if you wanted to. Why they don't have to same issue as Giant or can absorb them better than Giant is a very good question. I know they scrapped their "scan as you go" feature last year after too much "slippage" (the feature let you use their app to ring up your bill as you shopped and you just paid when you left - it was the greatest).
I drive well out of my way to go to wegmans over the food lion or giant right near me. Those two stores are ghost towns any time of day while the wegmans is crowded all the time (but because of all the checkouts and ample space, I rarely have to wait for a checkout). Unless there is something unique about store (like trader joes) I will go somewhere else if they don't have self-checkout.
The person working in the self checkout will send you to the check out line if they think you have more than 20 items. When I told her I counted as I shopped so I knew there were only 18, she said I have a lot of grapes so it must be more than 20. I picked up my purse and reusable bag and walked out. I understand that they have to do something to limit shoplifting but that was ridiculous.
My local Food Lion is wonderful. Simple old school supermarket with no self-checkouts and friendly people. It's like a good version of Safeway. (I am particular about my supermarkets)
The Giant near me in Falls Church did the same thing. The whole shopping experience there is meh! The volume at the self-checkout are so loud that I am pretty sure the employee manning it will have hearing loss soon. I never liked Giant anyway, but it is the only walkable grocery store near me. Anyway, they will have less and less of my business.
My Harris Teeter hasn't done it either. As noted Wegmans hasn't either. Not sure about Safeway - my old Safeway used to lock the doors near the liquor area and turn off half the self-checkouts at night, but it was "clean" in the sense that nothing was blockaded or roped off.
Up the road in Baltimore, my local Safeway seems intent on making shopping as miserable and dispiriting as possible. But I have friends who rave about their experience in other Safeway stores. Maybe it's an "up to management" thing.
Automated checkout is grocery stores trying to save labor costs by offloading the cash register work to customers. Turns out customers can do the job just fine, except for the part policing customers from stealing. So now they need to add back in that guard labor, which inevitably absorbs a lot of the savings from having self-checkout in the first place. So now we have an equilibrium where more work than ever is being done to produce the same result, just spread between the customers and the store employees watching them. The best thing you can do as a customer is either refuse to use the self-checkout, or shoplift as much as you can while you do it, to make that new equilibrium as costly as possible for the company and encourage them to switch back to fully staffed checkouts.
At Wegmans you aren't even required to weigh your items in self checkout. This is not a self-checkout problem. There are more factors at play. I like self checkouts and I am not a thief, so I won't be taking you up on your suggestions.
My experience being treated as a thief. Used self checkout in my local store from a big supermarket chain (three big chains, not in the US), and while I'm riding the escalator that takes to the store's exit (two floors, store is actually a basement) I hear someone shouting. I look back and see a store clerk shouting at me and asking me to go back... back on a climbing escalator. I did the reasonable thing and started climbing faster so I could get off the escalator and take either the stairs back down or the downward escalator, but the moment I reach the end of the escalator I feel someone grab my bag from behind me. The clerk starts rummaging though my shopping bag and asking for my receipt while a second clerk arrives to "help". I produce the receipt and they check every item in my shopping bag against the receipt. Once they are done they give me my bag back. No apology, no please come back anytime.
Giant used to be one of the best places to work. Back in the 90s they paid far above minimum wage ($20/hr or more) and I know a few friends that literally put themselves through college by working there. In the 2000s I worked at the Food Marketing Institute and our clients were supermarket retailers and wholesalers. I primarily worked with the international companies.; like Ahold, Giant's corporate parent. 20 years ago, when they started rolling out the self-checkout, they touted this as great for the company and increasing profits because you could hire more employees to improve the customer experience. Contrary to popular belief supermarkets operate on tiny margins (similar to restaurants) and Wal-Mart essentially wiped-out entire grocery chains one by one starting in the late 90s. A lot of local and regional family-run businesses essentially died overnight. When the scanners were introduced, there was a flood of kickback from customers because nobody wanted to ring up their own groceries and basically teach ourselves how to use a company register; especially if they're dealing with tantrummy kids. There was also the concern that this would tantalize stores to hire less people - not more. We dealt with all of these issues at our regional and annual conferences with the result being add more self-checkout...not less. Well, here we are. The only company that seems to be addressing this well is Wegmans. Incidentally Danny Wegman was our board chairman when I first started my employment far before Wegmans was even in the DMV. Go to any Wegmans and not only do they have about 15 self-checkout aisles (with an employee staffed at each one), but they still have about 20 fully staffed registers. AND they pay their employees competitive wages. I've noticed that Costco is also doing a pretty good job at balancing both. Essentially my reply to that sign at Giant is a) it's your own damn fault, and b) quit treating all of your customers like thieves. There are other retail options and eventually your customers are going to find their own way out the door.
Very interesting comment. Thank you! I feel like anybody could have predicted we would end up here. Wegmans does do both checkout options very well. They have always seemed like a really expertly run company to me. (They came to central Jersey in the late 90s/00s and I'd never seen anything like it. I've gotten used to those cavernous stores but I still think they're incredible. Nobody has discount-level prices on staples plus real high-end food plus a serious wine section.)
Interestingly, Wegmans doesn't make you weight your items. You could scan them and put them right back in your cart if you wanted to. Why they don't have to same issue as Giant or can absorb them better than Giant is a very good question. I know they scrapped their "scan as you go" feature last year after too much "slippage" (the feature let you use their app to ring up your bill as you shopped and you just paid when you left - it was the greatest).
I drive well out of my way to go to wegmans over the food lion or giant right near me. Those two stores are ghost towns any time of day while the wegmans is crowded all the time (but because of all the checkouts and ample space, I rarely have to wait for a checkout). Unless there is something unique about store (like trader joes) I will go somewhere else if they don't have self-checkout.
The person working in the self checkout will send you to the check out line if they think you have more than 20 items. When I told her I counted as I shopped so I knew there were only 18, she said I have a lot of grapes so it must be more than 20. I picked up my purse and reusable bag and walked out. I understand that they have to do something to limit shoplifting but that was ridiculous.
Wow. I would walk out too. I guess the best gloss you can put on it is security theater, but that's not very good either.
Wegman's has the best deli too!
100%
Hopefully Ahold Delhaize doesn't bring this shit to Food Lion.
My local Food Lion is wonderful. Simple old school supermarket with no self-checkouts and friendly people. It's like a good version of Safeway. (I am particular about my supermarkets)
It's amazing they're owned by the same company in some respects. I love Food Lion (ours does have 4 self-checkouts, though.)
The Giant near me in Falls Church did the same thing. The whole shopping experience there is meh! The volume at the self-checkout are so loud that I am pretty sure the employee manning it will have hearing loss soon. I never liked Giant anyway, but it is the only walkable grocery store near me. Anyway, they will have less and less of my business.
They used to be very nice. It's a shame. The other quasi-related chains seem to still be better.
My local Harris Teeter, on Columbia Pike in Arlington has NOT done this. Is this just a Giant thing? I never liked Giant anyway...
My Harris Teeter hasn't done it either. As noted Wegmans hasn't either. Not sure about Safeway - my old Safeway used to lock the doors near the liquor area and turn off half the self-checkouts at night, but it was "clean" in the sense that nothing was blockaded or roped off.
Up the road in Baltimore, my local Safeway seems intent on making shopping as miserable and dispiriting as possible. But I have friends who rave about their experience in other Safeway stores. Maybe it's an "up to management" thing.
Automated checkout is grocery stores trying to save labor costs by offloading the cash register work to customers. Turns out customers can do the job just fine, except for the part policing customers from stealing. So now they need to add back in that guard labor, which inevitably absorbs a lot of the savings from having self-checkout in the first place. So now we have an equilibrium where more work than ever is being done to produce the same result, just spread between the customers and the store employees watching them. The best thing you can do as a customer is either refuse to use the self-checkout, or shoplift as much as you can while you do it, to make that new equilibrium as costly as possible for the company and encourage them to switch back to fully staffed checkouts.
At Wegmans you aren't even required to weigh your items in self checkout. This is not a self-checkout problem. There are more factors at play. I like self checkouts and I am not a thief, so I won't be taking you up on your suggestions.
My experience being treated as a thief. Used self checkout in my local store from a big supermarket chain (three big chains, not in the US), and while I'm riding the escalator that takes to the store's exit (two floors, store is actually a basement) I hear someone shouting. I look back and see a store clerk shouting at me and asking me to go back... back on a climbing escalator. I did the reasonable thing and started climbing faster so I could get off the escalator and take either the stairs back down or the downward escalator, but the moment I reach the end of the escalator I feel someone grab my bag from behind me. The clerk starts rummaging though my shopping bag and asking for my receipt while a second clerk arrives to "help". I produce the receipt and they check every item in my shopping bag against the receipt. Once they are done they give me my bag back. No apology, no please come back anytime.
At least in the US, just keep walking. If they want to call the cops they can, but they aren't supposed to stop you from leaving.