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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

 

The Mercury News' Michele Chandler writes about self-checkout machines gaining momentum among more retailers.
As a general technology fan, I think they're neat. Unfortunately, the implementation I've seen (at the East Palo Alto Home Depot) stinks. Why do I loathe thee, self-checkout? Let me enumerate the ways:
  1. There's no "Back" button. If a human cashier scans something twice, he or she can easily reverse the last scan. If I do the same, I have to call for help.
  2. There's no "Help" button. When I do need assistance from the overworked "attendant" responsible for four of these blinking monstrosities, I need to go over and attract his/her attention away from the personal conversation or phone call or, more likely, wait for him/her to finish helping the people using the other three machines.
  3. The sensors are either oversensitive or not sensitive enough--sometimes both at once. The glass covering the laser scanner is usually coated with a nice thick layer of the glue used to attach UPC labels. A human cashier would be able to clean the glass between customers, but the self-checkout machines are cleaned only once a day (if that). This leads to scanning one item over and over again, trying to get it to register, which invariably leads to scanning it once too often, which leads to points (1) and (2) above. Once I've successfully scanned an item, the machine wants me to put it in the "bagging area" next to the scanner. Apparently there's a pressure sensor there which lets it know I've done so. Unfortunately, many items sold at Home Depot are either of negligible mass (a packet of ten washers, for example, weighs about an ounce) or are far too large to fit into the "bagging area" (a 4'x8' piece of 1/2" plywood, for example). Until and unless you successfully achieve bagging nirvana, a loud male voice (the scanner has a female voice, by the way) rudely announces Item removed from bagging area! Please replace item in bagging area! There's a manual override for oversize or underweight items, but it requires an attendant to enter a passcode; see point (2).
  4. There are fewer human cashiers. George Whalin, chief executive of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, has it spot on in the linked article when he disagrees with retailers' insistence that cutting wait times is driving interest in self-checkouts. That's nonsense, he said. It's really to cut their labor costs. It is now common practice at the EPA Home Depot to have only the self-checkout lanes open! Even the "contractor" types with huge loads of building materials often have to use them, as the "Pro" desk is rarely manned anymore.

Whew. I think I tired myself out with that rant.
|| Andrew, 3:20 PM || ||

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