The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
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The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#2The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are
I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order.
Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize more than one scan every ten seconds. I wish I could just log into one of the main, unused lanes and scan myself out. It would take significantly less time.
The banana trick shows that the security implemented in self checkout is simply a sham. Just open them up completely and let us go through them at a higher throughput. You can probably eliminate yet another cashier at that point.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#3The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
Look for a self-checkout that has a handheld scanner on a cord. 100% of the Target units I've used have them.
The hand unit works way faster than the scanned-laser on the tabletop.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#4The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
I think you should have to take a simple intelligence test as you walk into a store. If you refuse or fail you don't get to use the self checkout. This should be a very very simple test like being able to read a number properly and pick something out of a list....when I stand there watching people use those machines I really feel like 90% of them would fail.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#5The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
I think you should have to take a simple intelligence test as you walk into a store. If you refuse or fail you don't get to use the self checkout. This should be a very very simple test like being able to read a number properly and pick something out of a list....when I stand there watching people use those machines I really feel like 90% of them would fail.
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Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#6The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
I've used a lot of these systems in the UK, but I don't work in that industry (I'd love to be corrected by someone who does!) but my impression is that these machines are primarily slow because of a combination of awful software and sloppy guard periods around their operations in an attempt to help with UX.
Some of the examples I've used are catastrophically broken; the machines in low-to-mid-tier supermarkets (ASDA and Tesco) are in this category. Some of the machines are so bad that they are obviously malfunctioning – extensive delays between scanning and registering an event on the screen, or failing to react to button presses, that kind of thing. The software on these machines is embarrassingly bad. These ones also have a deliberately enforced delay when scanning multiple instances of the same item, which is utterly confusing, though presumably intended to prevent accidental double-scans. Combined with the enforced "pick-scan-weigh" workflow they're a total pain to use.
On the other hand, some of the implementations of this technology are great. The machines in the relatively higher-end supermarket Waitrose are fast and efficient; the settings appear to be tuned much more leniently. In smaller stores, there now seem to be quite a few with no weighing system at all; these are particularly great to use. Waitrose also has a pre-registered portable scanner system which can use either a dedicated device or a mobile app, and this is also a good experience.
The impression I get is that manufacturers can tune various parameters to suit the shrinkage requirements of a particular retailer. I'd wager that in lower-cost supermarkets or those subject to higher shrinkage, these settings are more aggressive. It's a shame, because when the technology is well-implemented I much prefer using it. When it's bad, it's unpleasant being repeatedly screamed at by poorly-implemented bug-ridden software.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#7The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
I think you should have to take a simple intelligence test as you walk into a store. If you refuse or fail you don't get to use the self checkout. This should be a very very simple test like being able to read a number properly and pick something out of a list....when I stand there watching people use those machines I really feel like 90% of them would fail.
Sometimes I understand why you feel that way. But I think there's some bias; as an engineer I can work out why these machines operate the way they do, to some extent. From the perspective of someone with no experience in this field, I imagine it's a much more frustrating experience, especially when some of the machines are so god-awful to use.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#8The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially slowed down they are I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep up, no matter the size of the order. Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize…
The worst is when you have a self-checkout that adds a wait between scanning identical items. If I buy more than one of the same items, I scan other things between them otherwise the system makes you pause for several seconds because it thinks you are trying to scan the same thing twice even if you've already put the first item into a bag that's on the scale.
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#9[deleted]
Re: The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery
#10I was expecting the “banana trick” to be the case where dropping the leading 9 from the item code will ring up organic produce as the cheaper regular version (9nnnn vs nnnn).