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Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#211

Post by msh »

megous wrote: post #153
msh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the average online shopping experience is, at least for me, far preferable to the average supermarket experience with queues and so on.

Maybe to you, but until online shopping will be realizable via user chosen User Agent (like e-mail, etc.) via open API, online shopping will continue to suck horribly for anything but single items. Shopping for groceries online is complete hell, for one. There are queues online too. They are just at the delivery side, not at the checkout side.

I often shop for groceries online in these corona times, for a family of 5. I usually use nemlig.com (a danish online super market) and I dont have any issues with the UX. Its easier than searching for things in the physical supermarket.

On delivery its not really a queue as I dont have to spend my time doing it.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#212

Post by msh »

ghaff wrote: post #135
msh wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather do it my self for very little extra time use, rather than waste even more time waiting in line.

For me it depends. If I have a shopping cart full, including typically, a bunch of produce, I'll go to a cashier. If I've got a half dozen bar coded items to scan, I'll probably just do self-checkout.

Some shops have scan yourself where you scan things with your phone when putting them in your basket, even produce then have a barcode, maybe not on the item but then at a sign at their location.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#213

Post by jfk13 »

gambiting wrote: post #100
mpclark wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. I remember trying to get petrol in Belgium at night sometime in the late 90s. The country had its own smart debit card programme (very leading edge) and garages there had unattended pumps that would accept these cards to cater for out-of-hours customers. But, being a UK tourist without a local payment card, I was stuffed. Stopped at every garage along the way, getting increasingly concerned, before coasting…

I've had that last summer driving through Germany - stopped to charge my car, only to discover that all charging stations at that particular Auobahn station will only accept a German-issued[0] debit or credit cards. As a tourist....tough luck I guess? [0]I knew it because of course you had to use an app to start charging, and the app had a pre-filled and unchangable country set to Germany for billing details.

I had that problem with rail tickets in Germany, too... stations with machines that would only accept the local kind of bank card, not my Visa card.

Weirdly, at the main station in Bochum (for example), there were some machines that would accept a Visa card - but even the staff in the in-person ticket office seemed to be completely ignorant of this. (And no, they wouldn't accept my card there, either. But eventually - no thanks to DB's staff - I found a machine I could use.)

Let's just say I wasn't impressed.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#214

Post by hrvTGKFyDyko3aK »

mrweasel wrote: post #142
WhompingWindows wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that'd be a solid strategy. You have to scan your ID to get into the store. So just to raid for a 10L of milk, you'd have to then break and enter, not just steal the milk. The store is probably riddled with cameras and, with the low population density, there's not a great chance you can get away with breaking and entering, much less stealing.

Currently no one would think twice about a masked person entering a store, so I'm not sure about the usefulness of the cameras. I would like to see how secure the entry points really are, because I doubt it a lock.

As most grocery stores aren't open 24 hours there is plenty of opportunity for people to break into grocery stores with no one in them and steal but that isn't a common enough issue to worry about.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#215

Post by leetcrew »

offtop5 wrote: post #196
vages wrote: post #162

There will be a market for both automated and manned grocery stores in the future. Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Although locating stuff _could_ be solved by looking it up with an app, I would…

>wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. What stores are you going to now where this is the case, every time I buy some food I need to know exactly what I want. I wouldn't expect some 19-year-old clerk to be a culinary expert either.

the cheese counter staff at whole foods are usually pretty knowledgeable (more so than me anyway).

but even at a lower end store, the people that work there aren't idiots. they might not be able to tell you what cheese would go well with a california syrah, but they can probably recommend a good blend for homemade mac and cheese.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#216

Post by bryanrasmussen »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #141
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

machines implement stupid broken ux patterns which make shopping hell. on edit: evidently people would like their supermarket checkout experience to be as pleasing as the typical online shopping experience, thus a quick downvote.

I never experienced that "Unexpected item in bagging area" here in Sweden, the UX failures are not universal. Most stores I visited don't even have scales and just trust you to put in the correct items. Especially the ones where you get a handheld device to scan while you walk trough the store. I would guess that fraud levels are much lower here so the stores don't need to do that.

>I never experienced that "Unexpected item in bagging area" here in Sweden, the UX failures are not universal.

the automated føtex near my house has this, or also put your item in the bag, you need to put an item in the bag etc. crash because you didn't put item in bag fast enough, or you took bag off scale to put new one on.

>the UX failures are not universal.

yes, because they do not have a universal interface which a human checker provides. By using a machine you switch from having one well understood, pretty standardized ui paradigm: put stuff on track, tracks goes to checker, checker checks them through, you pay and bag your stuff - to having as many ux as there are companies implementing automatic checkout machines and however many versions of their workflow are in distribution.

The UX failures for a self-service checkout are unique and unfamiliar to the user, just like the ux failures of a new checkout flow on an online retailer.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#217

Post by Kinrany »

qmmmur wrote: post #133
random_upvoter wrote: post #104

I worked in a supermarket for a while and there was plenty of old people who came to that shop almost daily just to interact with another human being.

What's your point? That people should be indentured in low paying jobs to be old people's friends?

Or that the government could subsidize these jobs if they have positive output not captured by the businesses.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#218

Post by jjoonathan »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #74
jjoonathan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can’t artificially keep doing demonstrably less efficient things Well then it's a good thing adamcstephens didn't suggest that, is it not? > If it becomes a problem then we have to deal with it by finding new avenues That's the correct approach, but so far the strategy has been a combination of denial (which I hear an echo of in the word "if") and inaction. Protectionism is a dead end, but so are denial and inac…

>so far Since alphabet's invention put ancient egyptian hieroglyph writers out of jobs, we as a society has put up with it just fine.

After 50 years of a rising tide failing to float most boats in the US, "putting up with it just fine" wouldn't be my take on the issue.

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#219

Post by thatfrenchguy »

vages wrote: post #162

There will be a market for both automated and manned grocery stores in the future. Until we have developed artificial general intelligence, I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers. In stores with a reasonably wide selection of goods, I usually have to ask for the location of at least one thing. Although locating stuff _could_ be solved by looking it up with an app, I would…

> I wouldn't trust a computer to recommend a cheese to with a certain kind of crackers.

I mean, anyone who likes cheese just a little bit would never ever recommend you crackers with it ;-)

Re: Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free

#220

Post by leetcrew »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #36

I used to work at a major multi-billion dollar retailer. One of the biggest complaints from customers was waiting at the check out line, especially for small, quick orders. This is the future of grocery stores, like it or not. Employees are expensive and make mistakes, whereas machines are cheap, don't take breaks, and work pretty reliably once you set them up correctly.

machines may not make mistakes, but the people who program them do. I just bought a guitar for $50 under the going rate because the in store pricetag was lower than the company's own online price. the system had lost track of the guitar entirely, so they had no way of knowing they needed to update the local price. by policy, they had to pricematch themselves. the associate told me this happens all the time.
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