I was on my way into Marks and Spencers foodcourt today when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of self-service checkouts. I know these checkouts are not uncommon in the US but I’d never seen them anywhere in this country until now. For the uninformed, self-service checkouts allow customers at shops and supermarkets to check out their own goods and pack them into bags themselves. Security is ensured both by placing the bag racks on a balance that cross-checks the weight of the goods in them with those that youv’e scanned, and by the presence of a highly suspicious supervisor.
Theoretically, self-service checkouts are a good solution for the shop and the customer because they drastically reduce labour costs and decrease checkout time. I put the latter part of the equation to the test today.
The self-service checkouts are about a metre and a half long and consist of a LCD touchscreen, a barcode detector and a bag rack (among other things). When you stand in front of the checkout, you can either start passing your items through immediately or press ‘Start’ on the touchscreen, which I did and launched the machine into an excessively polite and cheerful introduction into how to use the checkout. It really is as simple as you’d imagine – you scan your items and put them into the bags. As you scan items, their information and cost appear on the screen. I did have a problem in one item not appearing when I scanned it but that may have been due to it being in the wrong orientation.
When you’ve finished, you press a button on the screen and choose a payment option – credit or debit cards, or cash. Cash can be inserted into the machine, and credit cards can be swiped. There’s a signature panel on the side of the machine which you have to use in the latter case, and at the end you get a receipt printed. Throughout all of this, the instructions continue via videos and audio.
The entire process took rather longer than it would’ve if I went to a normal ‘assisted checkout’ due to the novelty of the experience but I imagine I could cut the time down quite a bit on a second visit. I doubt that I could ever be faster than an experienced checkout person but I could give a good shot at beating many of the slower ones I’ve encountered. The argument could be made that this means self-service checkouts would in fact not save the majority of people’s time, but that’s neglecting the fact that you could fit more self-service checkouts in the same space as normal ones, thus reducing queue length.
I doubt that shops or supermarkets will ever eliminate normal ‘assisted’ checkouts simply because there are some people who will not be able to use (or intensely dislike using) self-service checkouts. This suits me fine – the slow folks can go with the normal checkouts, and the quicker, more froody people can go with the self-service ones. This will save a lot of time, I expect. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before they have to replace the whole lot with RFID scanner gateways.
mssv 