Tales from Self-Scan

[Dreamstalker]

I think the person who was scheduled to watch selfscan last night called out at the last minute, as Bossman grabbed me as I was coming off break and says: "You need to stay til 11, we don't have anyone to watch selfscan!" He's a great guy and I need the hours so I said sure. He practically hugged me.

Maybe something got put in the water today, but the majority of assistance-required incidents were because people simply did not know how to use it. Lots of people scanning an item, then holding it and staring blankly at the machine which was yammering "PLEASE PLACE ITEM ON THE BELT" and then screaming at me when it gets voided off because it was never put on the belt. A few people scanned crap too quickly and only half of it registered so I had to come over and rescan.

Numbers Game
This happened quite a few times, and is actually understandable. Most of the selfscan scanner decks are worse than the normal lanes at reading stuff (I try to keep up with cleaning the glass, but if there's a rush I can't do it as often as it should be done). Any barcode that's printed on a curved surface will not scan for anything, so I have to type it in manually. Any item with condensation on it won't go either, and for some reason if two of the decks have ANY moisture on them whatsoever they won't work at all.

If I know the PLU for an item or it has a sticker, I find that it's faster to type the code in rather than use the menu; also, a good amount of stuff either isn't on the menu at all, or the description is just off enough that the customer doesn't think it's the right thing.

One customer did take the initiative to type in the barcode numbers himself, but kept forgetting the digits at either end (so the machine threw a fit).

Don't we have cleaning supplies?
The store recently got some foodsafe cleaner for stainless steel; works a hell of a lot better than glass cleaner. Now all we need is actual sanitizer (I'm tempted to bring a petri dish to work and take a swab of one of the belts at the end of the day). Each register is supposed to have a can of the steel cleaner...guess what's wrong in this picture? No steel cleaner. Anywhere. Manager C tells me to just use glass cleaner, and then starts yelling that only the glass is clean...duh.
We did get cleaning cards for the card readers which is good.

It's SELF Scan
10:50 PM. I'm standing at the front watching the selfscans (and everything else) and a lady comes to the front of one lane with a cart, looks at me for a few seconds, and then...cue finger-snaps and I think she actually whistled at one point.

OL: "Hello! Hello, you! Girl! Is this lane open?"
Me: (it hasn't quite dawned what she expects me to do yet) "This lane is open."
OL: "Well what are you doing? Get over here and ring me up!"
Me: "Ma'am, this lane is a self-scan which means you scan it yourself. There is a cashier open over there."
OL: "Scan it myself? What do you mean?"
Me: "You scan and bag your own groceries." (I'll bag for customers if they ask or if we need to get people out quickly)
OL: "You're just being lazy. Where's a manager?"
So she stalks a few feet away and finds C. This is gonna be fun.
OL: "Your employee told me I couldn't use these open lanes!"
C: "No she didn't. These lanes are self-service. You're welcome to use them, but the way they work is you scan your own groceries. She's there to help if there's a problem, not to hold your hand."
OL: "Self--?! You're just saying that because you're lazy! Get me a manager!"
C: "See this purple shirt? I'm the manager, and she's a supervisor." (not technically true, but the look that crossed OL's face for a moment was fun to watch)
This went back and forth for a few more minutes, which I didn't see because I was dealing with a non-scanning EBT card (nothing I can really do there) and two lanes running out of receipt tape at the same time (most of the selfscan printers will jam if you look at them funny). I do see OL go over to the regular lane, with C watching her closely.

[Bright_Star]

If she was bitching so much about using the self-scan then why didn't she just take her entitled ass to a regular register? What was so hard about doing that?

[Pixilated]

I'm guessing because that would've meant she actually had to haul her entitled ass a few feet further down the store, rather than having everyone jump to do her bidding where she was.

[Dreamstalker]

In the time she spent arguing she could have been out the door. There's a certain ethnicity around here with a massive entitlement complex, and she was one of said group.

[Zoom]

You know what else doesn't scan... purple or red barcodes.

And yet they exist.

And the stories of SCO in their early days in the midwest are innumerable, especially the ones where the customers expected US to do the scanning. I can only imagine how horrible the stories must have been when they premiered on the west coast.

[Kristev]

If she took herself to a cashier to be rung up, she couldn't scam and scream her way into getting a discount or a gift card, now could she?

I hate self-checkouts, so you know my solution? I go to a real register and have a cashier do all the work. I don't kick up a fuss.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I hate self checkouts, too; and they hate me. XD Every time I'm driven to using one of those damned things by having only a few items or there being giant queues everywhere else, something always goes wrong when I use it. O_o

When the self checkouts were first put in the supermarket, one woman managed to total one completely by jamming her credit card in the place where you put cash. Everything is clearly labeled, but we know that customers don't read signs!

[Dreamstalker]

A lot of customers don't realize that the have to select credit or debit on the screen before using the pinpad.

One of the self-scan lanes regularly throws a hissyfit and can't accept cash or give cash back. The only thing we can do is tape a sign over the bill acceptor, so often customers don't notice it until they've already started scanning. Then they blame the attendant.

There are a few manufacturers that print their barcodes in some kind of cutesy shape; they need to be brought across the scanner in a strange angle to work. Codes printed on clear plastic (now who thought that would be a good idea?) more often than not need to be typed in.

[MoonCat]

Self-scan SC: What planet did she just leave to come here? Because I cannot believe anybody doesn't know about self-scan...

On the other hand, she could have been one of the vast clan of The Oblivious. They're everywhere.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

Ahh, self scan, how I loathe thee. My town recently "upgraded" to a malwart supercenter with a half dozen self scan lanes. It wouldn't annoy me so much if the store would staff other lanes decently.

I went to the store yesterday afternoon and they had 2 20-item-or-less lanes, one person manning the self-check help desk, and the only normal lane open was the tobacco counter. Of course, I had way more than 20 items(120 kool aid packets, lol) so I could use neither the speedy or the self (no quantity button, and I'd rather wait in line for a few extra minutes than individually scan the kool aid.)

There's another thing that I do have to wonder about, tobacco sales. Why do they have to put the tobacco counter as a regular lane, wouldn't it make more sense to put that up by the fast lanes?

For that matter, I wonder how they manage to sell smokes at all, WM is consistently a dollar or more per pack over the convenience stores.

[Dreamstalker]

Probably the one-stop-shopping aspect, someone could be in to get groceries or other essentials and suddenly say "Oh, I want some smokes".

Our cigs are behind the service desk. Technically, a customer can't handle the pack until it's been scanned.

[Andara Bledin]

If you put the smokes at the quick lanes, then you have people with overflowing carts on lanes not designed to take them as opposed to people with dinky orders on lanes that can take any size. If somebody is just buying smokes, then Walmart is probably the wrong place to be, anyway, considering the pricing.

As for SCO; machines like me, and the SCO machines are no different, although I can be a bit of a dim bulb when using them, for some reason. However, I do seem to be able to find the one person on an entire bank of SCOs that is too stupid to be anywhere on their own, much less the SCO bank. >_<

^-.-^

[Chromatix]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm very glad we don't have SCOs over here.

[dalesys]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm very glad we don't have SCOs over here.

The shoe fits on the Finnish last?

[Jaspar]

I *hate* customers who come to self service and say 'oh, just do this for me'. Its called SELF service for a reason!! In my store I'm often dumped on self service by myself (we have 10 machines, and really need 2 people to man them all), so I don't have the time to cater for these idiots, yet I have to anyway.

What's even worse, the front end supervisors will often send customers with only a few bits down to self scan, especially if it's busy, and they'll say to me 'just do this customers bits for him/her'. I yelled at the front end supervisor on Monday, because they sent someone down, I already had a huge queue, several machines going wrong, and I was by myself. I told them I'd be happy to see to that customer if they would send someone to assist me :/

So yeah, you have my sympathy... XD