Self-check kiosks...

[Don Y]

I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

The bagging area is a weighing platform, of course. So,
it can \"see\" when you\'ve placed something ELSE there.
(It can also see when you have *removed* something -- and
bitch because that doesn\'t fit with their notion of how
said human should operate!)

One of my items was a 4-pack of cans. Other similar
\"singletons\" of the same item were on sale. After
scanning the 4-pack and placing it in the bagging area
(and the machine thinking all is well as I am being
a compliant human), I noticed that the 4-pack rang
up as a single item (as it should have) -- and at
the \"singleton\" price (which it should probably
have *not* -- as that makes the effective singleton
price 1/4 that of the other singletons on the shelves
nearby).

This is annoying as it requires the intervention of the
attendant to override the mistake; even if I scanned
the item three additional times (to make a total of
four), the machine would have complained because I removed
the item from the bagging area in order to do so! (and
THAT would have required the attendant\'s presence to ensure
I wasn\'t \"misbehaving\").

But, what I came away with was the realization that the
weighing platform obviously can\'t resolve the differences
in before/after weights. E.g., it doesn\'t verify that
the 3 pounds of onions I purchased -- and weighed on the
*produce* scale portion of the checkout station -- are
actually present in the bagging area. A one pound
difference or a 10 pound difference would each, likely,
appear as confirmation that I had placed the onions there!

(a 4-pack of 16 oz cans weighs considerably more than a single can)

Does anyone know if this is, indeed, the case? I.e., does
the weighing platform in the bagging area effectively re-tare
after each addition? (perhaps uses piezo\'s to detect weight
*change*)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2021 20:17:18 -0700, Don Y
<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

The bagging area is a weighing platform, of course. So,
it can \"see\" when you\'ve placed something ELSE there.
(It can also see when you have *removed* something -- and
bitch because that doesn\'t fit with their notion of how
said human should operate!)

One of my items was a 4-pack of cans. Other similar
\"singletons\" of the same item were on sale. After
scanning the 4-pack and placing it in the bagging area
(and the machine thinking all is well as I am being
a compliant human), I noticed that the 4-pack rang
up as a single item (as it should have) -- and at
the \"singleton\" price (which it should probably
have *not* -- as that makes the effective singleton
price 1/4 that of the other singletons on the shelves
nearby).

This is annoying as it requires the intervention of the
attendant to override the mistake; even if I scanned
the item three additional times (to make a total of
four), the machine would have complained because I removed
the item from the bagging area in order to do so! (and
THAT would have required the attendant\'s presence to ensure
I wasn\'t \"misbehaving\").

But, what I came away with was the realization that the
weighing platform obviously can\'t resolve the differences
in before/after weights. E.g., it doesn\'t verify that
the 3 pounds of onions I purchased -- and weighed on the
*produce* scale portion of the checkout station -- are
actually present in the bagging area. A one pound
difference or a 10 pound difference would each, likely,
appear as confirmation that I had placed the onions there!

(a 4-pack of 16 oz cans weighs considerably more than a single can)

Does anyone know if this is, indeed, the case? I.e., does
the weighing platform in the bagging area effectively re-tare
after each addition? (perhaps uses piezo\'s to detect weight
*change*)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

I don\'t know how those platforms work in detail, but I do know they
can\'t reliably detect very small weights/weight changes. That\'s the
only time I\'ve needed to invoke the attendant. Maybe they\'ll start
adding little steel bars to keep the machines happier, like the
oversize packaging (and internal RFID devices on expensive stuff) to
reduce theft.

The way they handle individually weighed produce in Europe is better
than the poor user trying to remember a code and entering it in at the
checkout in a mirror image of how the professional checkout clerks do
it- they have a machine in the produce area that weighs the produce
and spits out a bar coded label, and that is what you scan at the
checkout. That\'s also how the deli counters work in my usual haunts,
with the gal slicing the meat or whatever and bagging it with a bar
code label, and the checkout clerk scans that.


--
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Don Y]

On 1/1/2022 5:15 AM, Spehro Pefhany wrote:

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

I don\'t know how those platforms work in detail, but I do know they
can\'t reliably detect very small weights/weight changes.

I didn\'t expect them to be able to notice that I\'ve moved
the 3 oz of ginger root from the *produce* scale portion of
the checkout to the bagging area.

But, I had assumed it would complain if I placed an 8 pound
gallon of milk, there, when it was expecting 3 oz of ginger root!

Or, *4* pounds of cans instead of a one pound can.

That\'s the
only time I\'ve needed to invoke the attendant.

I\'ve not \"tested\" it to see if it would complain if it saw
*no* change when I failed to place a 3 oz item in the bagging
area. I know if I fail to move those onions into the
bagging area, it will complain: \"Please place the item
in the bagging area\".

Similarly, if I *remove* something from the bagging area,
it gets pissy.

Maybe they\'ll start
adding little steel bars to keep the machines happier, like the
oversize packaging (and internal RFID devices on expensive stuff) to
reduce theft.

The way they handle individually weighed produce in Europe is better
than the poor user trying to remember a code and entering it in at the
checkout in a mirror image of how the professional checkout clerks do
it- they have a machine in the produce area that weighs the produce
and spits out a bar coded label, and that is what you scan at the
checkout.

Most produce items have a self-adhesive label directly on
the item giving a SKU barcode which can be scanned. Those
that don\'t, can be \"looked up\" -- by typing in the name of the
item or searching through a set of pictures. The most common
items that may have lost their stickers are presented
pictorially at the start of the process.

An item that is priced \"per each\" prompts you for the quantity.
And, the machine likely can\'t know the expected weight due
to variations in sizes (e.g., how much does *a* cucumber weigh,
this week? or, a \"bunch\" of cilantro?).

An item that requires weighing prompts for the item to be placed
on the produce scale, there, at the checkout -- where the weight is
determined, conveyed to the \"register\" (and, presumably, expected
to be transferred to the bagging area\'s weighing platform)

That\'s also how the deli counters work in my usual haunts,
with the gal slicing the meat or whatever and bagging it with a bar
code label, and the checkout clerk scans that.

Ditto for the deli/sushi/meat counters, here. Again, the checkout would
then KNOW what the expected weight to be transferred to the bagging area
*should* be. Ring up a pound of charcuterie and place a watermelon
on the scale and I would have expected the machine to raise its
virtual eyebrows! (as I expected *4* cans to be noticeably different
than the expectation of one)

Costco avoids this as all items are weighed before being made
available to the customer so each item has a known/predictable
weight. One could imagine a smarter Costco implementation
simply having the customer drive the cart onto a weighing platform
and watch items being removed prior to scanning AND REPLACED
immediately thereafter (as the bagging area must be able to
accommodate the entire contents of the cart -- because it insists
on your emptying the cart, completely)

Unfortunately, the types of actions required to *probe* the
machine\'s algorithms likely require frequent involvement of
the attendant (as the machines seem not to self-clear
detected errors but require manual intervention for confirmation)

 

[ABLE1]

On 12/31/2021 10:17 PM, Don Y wrote:

I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

The bagging area is a weighing platform, of course.  So,
it can \"see\" when you\'ve placed something ELSE there.
(It can also see when you have *removed* something -- and
bitch because that doesn\'t fit with their notion of how
said human should operate!)

One of my items was a 4-pack of cans.  Other similar
\"singletons\" of the same item were on sale.  After
scanning the 4-pack and placing it in the bagging area
(and the machine thinking all is well as I am being
a compliant human), I noticed that the 4-pack rang
up as a single item (as it should have) -- and at
the \"singleton\" price (which it should probably
have *not* -- as that makes the effective singleton
price 1/4 that of the other singletons on the shelves
nearby).

This is annoying as it requires the intervention of the
attendant to override the mistake; even if I scanned
the item three additional times (to make a total of
four), the machine would have complained because I removed
the item from the bagging area in order to do so!  (and
THAT would have required the attendant\'s presence to ensure
I wasn\'t \"misbehaving\").

But, what I came away with was the realization that the
weighing platform obviously can\'t resolve the differences
in before/after weights.  E.g., it doesn\'t verify that
the 3 pounds of onions I purchased -- and weighed on the
*produce* scale portion of the checkout station -- are
actually present in the bagging area.  A one pound
difference or a 10 pound difference would each, likely,
appear as confirmation that I had placed the onions there!

(a 4-pack of 16 oz cans weighs considerably more than a single can)

Does anyone know if this is, indeed, the case?  I.e., does
the weighing platform in the bagging area effectively re-tare
after each addition?  (perhaps uses piezo\'s to detect weight
*change*)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform.  Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart.  Morons.]

Sooooo would you still complain if you received a 10% discount
on your purchases for being a temporary employee for the store??

Or putting it another way, by doing the self checkout process you
are reducing the stores payroll dollars. And to do so you are
doing Self-Training to get it right!!

Just a different way of thinking.................

Personally when I am forced to use the Self-Checkout I have the
local attendant assist me to get out of the store.

Les

 

[Don Y]

On 1/1/2022 9:03 AM, ABLE1 wrote:

On 12/31/2021 10:17 PM, Don Y wrote:
I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

The bagging area is a weighing platform, of course. So,
it can \"see\" when you\'ve placed something ELSE there.
(It can also see when you have *removed* something -- and
bitch because that doesn\'t fit with their notion of how
said human should operate!)

One of my items was a 4-pack of cans. Other similar
\"singletons\" of the same item were on sale. After
scanning the 4-pack and placing it in the bagging area
(and the machine thinking all is well as I am being
a compliant human), I noticed that the 4-pack rang
up as a single item (as it should have) -- and at
the \"singleton\" price (which it should probably
have *not* -- as that makes the effective singleton
price 1/4 that of the other singletons on the shelves
nearby).

This is annoying as it requires the intervention of the
attendant to override the mistake; even if I scanned
the item three additional times (to make a total of
four), the machine would have complained because I removed
the item from the bagging area in order to do so! (and
THAT would have required the attendant\'s presence to ensure
I wasn\'t \"misbehaving\").

But, what I came away with was the realization that the
weighing platform obviously can\'t resolve the differences
in before/after weights. E.g., it doesn\'t verify that
the 3 pounds of onions I purchased -- and weighed on the
*produce* scale portion of the checkout station -- are
actually present in the bagging area. A one pound
difference or a 10 pound difference would each, likely,
appear as confirmation that I had placed the onions there!

(a 4-pack of 16 oz cans weighs considerably more than a single can)

Does anyone know if this is, indeed, the case? I.e., does
the weighing platform in the bagging area effectively re-tare
after each addition? (perhaps uses piezo\'s to detect weight
*change*)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

Sooooo would you still complain if you received a 10% discount
on your purchases for being a temporary employee for the store??

I *prefer* to use the self-check. It gets me out of the store faster
than waiting in a line, behind other folks slowly emptying their
carts onto the conveyor, waiting for them to be rung up, fiddling
with their purses/wallets to find payment and waiting for their
items to be bagged and placed back into their carts.

The queue to the self check moves at several times the service
rate of any of the others as it feeds 6 or 12 kiosks instead
of waiting for *one* cashier (in each queue).

Having to involve the attendant slows this down noticeably
as the amplification factor works backwards: one attendant
for 6, 12 kiosks!

Or putting it another way, by doing the self checkout process you
are reducing the stores payroll dollars. And to do so you are
doing Self-Training to get it right!!

Ah, but it\'s not *me* that is needing the training but,
rather, the *kiosk* -- as *it* was the entity that charged
me incorrectly (4 cans for the price of one) and then failed
to notice that I\'d placed a 4-can item in the bagging area
even though it charged for \"1\".

[Actually, if it *does* check weights, it likely made two
consistent errors: one whereby the 4-pack was priced incorrectly
and the second whereby it assumed the weight of that 4-pack
instead of a singleton]

My \"failure\" was being honest and drawing the attendant\'s
attention to the fact that their database had the 4-pack
priced as if a singleton.

Just a different way of thinking.................

Personally when I am forced to use the Self-Checkout I have the
local attendant assist me to get out of the store.

I can get out of the store much quicker via self-check
as I already know what\'s in my cart, can arrange to scan
similar items consecutively (e.g., all of the produce,
all of the cold items, all of the frozen items), how I
want it packed/bagged, etc.

Involving the attendant adds an unconstrained delay to that
process -- he may be tied up with some other self-check
customer, servicing equipment (loading more paper into the
receipt printer), removing the security devices from
liquor bottles, etc. As the kiosk \"locks up\" when it
encounters a problem, I can\'t even change my mind and
decide NOT to make a particular (problematic) purchase
as the attendant has to *confirm*/authenticate my choice.

 

[Jeff Layman]

On 01/01/2022 03:17, Don Y wrote:

I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

(snip)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

I, and many others here in the UK rarely use the self-checkout stations
as they all have different rules. Why the companies can\'t get together
and agree a uniform system I don\'t understand.

However, what I use regularly is what we call \"smart-scan\". If you don\'t
have that in the USA, you use a hand-held scanner and as you take the
item off the shelf scan it and put it in your bag. When you get to the
checkout station, you just use the scanner to output what you\'ve bought,
and the station totals it (you can get the moving total off the scanner
as you use it if you want). You then pay and leave. It saves so much
time. There is an element of trust, of course, but about once every two
or three months you won\'t be allowed to checkout without an assistant
confirming you\'ve scanned what\'s in your bags. They do this by choosing
a dozen items at random, and check you\'ve scanned them.

--

Jeff

 

[Don Y]

On 1/1/2022 11:06 AM, Jeff Layman wrote:

On 01/01/2022 03:17, Don Y wrote:
I made a few purchases at the grocery, yesterday.
Their self-check design requires the scanned item to be placed
in the bagging area before the next item can be scanned (as
some dweeb thinks that\'s how best to \"monitor\" the checkout
process)

(snip)

This might provide a shortcut for using other vendors\'
self-checks that similarly insist on (needlessly) \"watching\"
the items being transferred onto the weighing platform.

[Walmart doesn\'t care if ANYTHING ever appears on the
bagging platform. Costco\'s wants to watch you unload your
entire cart onto it -- and then REload your cart. Morons.]

I, and many others here in the UK rarely use the self-checkout stations as they
all have different rules. Why the companies can\'t get together and agree a
uniform system I don\'t understand.

All have similar systems -- but, they choose whether or not to
require the items to be placed in the bagging area before the
next item is scanned.

There are far more rules regarding whether they will accept cash
payments, dispense cash change, allow you to get \"cash back\"
from a charged purchase, etc.

There is also a fair bit of inconsistency *within* a given
vendor. E.g., purchasing bagged \"salad mix\" will be met with
a voice prompt to \"Place the item in the bagging area\".
But, buying canned goods yields no such prompt. (is there
something insidious about salad mix??)

Some stores allow you to use a handheld scanner to scan the
items without removing them from your cart. If you keep
this in mind when LOADING the cart, it makes checkout
considerably faster (leave everything accessible instead of
piling things atop each other)

However, what I use regularly is what we call \"smart-scan\". If you don\'t have
that in the USA, you use a hand-held scanner and as you take the item off the
shelf scan it and put it in your bag. When you get to the checkout station, you
just use the scanner to output what you\'ve bought, and the station totals it
(you can get the moving total off the scanner as you use it if you want). You
then pay and leave. It saves so much time. There is an element of trust, of
course, but about once every two or three months you won\'t be allowed to
checkout without an assistant confirming you\'ve scanned what\'s in your bags.
They do this by choosing a dozen items at random, and check you\'ve scanned them.

Yes, we can do that, as well. I find it LESS convenient as I now have
to keep track of another \"thing\" while I am shopping. Holding a bag
open to collect onions, or asparagus, or... means having to set
the scanner (the size of a pregnant phone) down, then pick it up
again and interact with the scale. Then, if something is amiss,
having to chase down an employee on the floor (instead of the
KNOWN attendant staffing the checkout)

(I am like greased lightning in stores: in and out so I can get on
to doing more interesting things)

With regular self-check, I just leave the store when done. No one
spot checks my cart.

[Costco counts the items in your cart to ensure it agrees with the
count displayed on the receipt so, if you keep your purchases
to a minimum, they can quickly count without having to dig through
your cart and you\'re on your way after just a few seconds -- literally]

I believe some of Amazon\'s grocers now just let you pick up
items and leave -- they \"watch\" your purchases and charge
your account. (sounds like a problem waiting to manifest)

I suspect folks who fill their carts would have a different
experience than I. With a dozen items, it\'s relatively easy
to plan your shopping *and* checkout.

[Of course, I visit several stores as I purchase different items
at each; some are known for having good produce but a poor
selection of canned/processed foods -- others the opposite.
And, others for better prices on some items (e.g., toilet paper,
pork tenderloins, chicken breasts, etc.) And, I\'d likely not
purchase fertilizer at a grocers. Or, mechanical hardware!]