SCO nightmare (long)

[He who Attends]

i work as an attendant for the self checkouts at my store, a large cronicly under staffed store.

now i'm going to start off by saying that if i ever find the people responsible for designing these machines, there deaths will be BRUTLE and as painful as possible

however the truely sad things is that the vast majority of the problems with the SCO's are not the fault of the machine.

Let the horror stories begin!

i had a lady come up on a busy saterday with her 3 bratty children, they fight over who gets to press the start button, then the youngest proceeds to Climb onto the weight scale, wich renders the machine inoperable, now instead of getting her child off the machine like a sane person she looks at me like this is all my fault.

now i have 4 machines to run and with there crappy design and abused weight scales it takes most of my attention just to keep them from locking due to weight problems or miss-scaned items, i do not have time to come over and personaly explain to you that your child can not use the SCO as a JUNGLE GYM.

so i tell her in a loud voice in order to be heared over all the noise a full store makes that her child needs to get off the machine (i was much more polite then that), to wich she responds by throwing her hands in the air and removeing her child from the abused machine.

now as can be expected haveing the full weight of a 5 year old child on it would confuse even the most finely tuned scale so when she scaned the next item the machine complained to me about the "weight imbalance" wich i swiftly over rode and continued helping other customers.

apperently my over ride did not happen fast enough because as soon as the red light came on the lady threw her hands inthe air and began to stare daggers at me.

now haveing solved her problem i was busy helping another customer, content in the assumption that she would continue her transaction, so you can imagine my suprise when i get a rather rude "excuse me!" from her.

i look at her, a questioning expression on my face wondering what she could possible need as the light above her checkout was green and the screen was waiting for the next item.

now instead of telling me her problem she simply gestured violently toward the SCO as if to demand i fix it.

now i want it clear that she has been standing there stareing at me helping customers waiting for me to fix a problem that was fixed practicly as she turned away from the screen and that if she'd even checked she would have been though and gone by now.

so i tell her in a calm voice "it's been fixed"

so she whips around and low and behold it is!

she stormed out not 3 min later draging her children with her!

she is by not means the Worst.



The most long held hatered i've had for SCO customers is when it comes to swipeing the card, you have no i dea how many people can get this wrong!

there is an animation on the screen of the SCO whenever you chose to pay with debit or credit, it shows where to swipe the card, how to swipe the card and even what side to swipe it on! got a chip card? no problem! it shows you how to do that to! have trouble with the animated directions? no problem! the damn machine TALKS YOU THROUGH IT!

but nooooooo god forbid anyone PAY ATTENTION!

"which way do i swipe it?"
"where do i swipe it, is it this one? (gestureing toward anywhere from the side of the screen, the signing pad or the bill accepter)"
" i don't see the debit machine!?" ( REALY? is not even half a foot to your left! you'd have to be wearing blinders not to see it!)

seriously people if you aren't willing to look then don't ask me.

and if i have to pry one more debit card out of the rather expensive bill accepter that has the word "bills" in inch high letter above it i'm going to lose it!

That's it for now, there will be more later.

It's christmas time after all

[mikoyan29]

And old saying I learned while learning how to be an engineer..."We try to fool proof it, but they keep designing better fools". You're probably lucky she didn't break the scale because I've got to believe they're not designed for too much weight.

And again....What the hell is wrong with people?

[jackfaire]

Grrrr those SCO's are a gift from the shopping gods I hate when idiots use them.

For me they keep me from long wait times when I am on my way to the office.

[ArcticChicken]

I feel your pain. I've recently been trained on the SCOs, and I regularly want to murder people.

Seriously, they walk you through every step of the way, don't ask me what to do next when the damn machine just told you.

[bainsidhe]

It's interesting how the SCOs take the sanest and most reasonable customers and change them into frothing, raging masses of anger in nothing flat.

[Chromatix]

I've used an SCO - *once*. I'm not sure I want to again. I'm glad we don't have them in Finland.

It has a completely different rhythm to using a ordinary cashier lane, or even watching the cashier do her job. This only makes it more difficult still.

And *I* had trouble working out what to do next at any particular stage.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Ah, yes, SCOs. We have those at the wholesale club. I recently posted about them, too.

We don't have problems with kids climbing on them, since there's no bags at our store. You place your item on our conveyor belt, it moves down through the EAS sensor, and collects at the bottom. No place for kids to climb to mess up the scale.

Doesn't stop the belts from mis-reading the weight on things, though.

[SG15Z]

I know what you mean about kids playing on them, and them looking at you like it's your fault. The vast majority of problems at SCO is the customers fault. If it's not I'm usually really quick in fixing the problem. But of course they yell at me anyway even though I cleared the problem the very second it came up.

[depechemodefan]

and if i have to pry one more debit card out of the rather expensive bill accepter that has the word "bills" in inch high letter above it i'm going to lose it!

That happened when our copy mahcines used to take coins and bills. There are huge frickin' signs that say "Coins and bills only". And how many times people force their debit/credit cards in the slot that has a pic of a $5 bill? And how many times it happened 10 min. to closing? We used to get a pair of tweezers to pry out the card until the guy from Xerox said we would likely electricute ourselves doing that. So we call the repair guy (he does get to the library quick) One Sat. a woman did this 20 min. till. Of course, she wants us to get the card before we closed; she didn't want to wait until the next working day when the repair man makes his rounds. So I was telling my cw about the Xerox guy going to show up, but only after closing so we have to tell the lady this when a customer comes up and wants attention. I tell him I'll be with him in a moment (since I want my cw know a customer has her card in the copier) and the guy said we were ignoring him. and when we finally were able to help him he continues with it, and adds a lot "and you discriminate against hispanics". He would not shut the fuck up and he wanted us to help him print. ugh.

[mattm04]

It is a computer, and will only work the way it is programmed. If it says, place your item on the belt, PUT IT ON THE BELT NOT IN YOU CART, THE FLOOR WHATEVER.

The one tiem I dos SCO 95 percent of the issues are custoemrs not following instructions, the other 4% machine problems such as a bar code not scanning, and the other 1% price checks.

[Seshat]

The one complaint I have about SCOs is really about other customers.

When it does mess up (price checks, scale not registering a weight), I have to wait while the SCO operator helps a customer read the instructions before I can get help.

[ThirdGenRetail]

Ooooh, SCO... Almost my permanent home now at Land of the Red Vest... Quite a few of the customers drive me up the wall Most notably, the people who, when the machine says "Information/Optional Information Needed," turn to look at ME. No, you turn and look at the BIG HONKIN' SCREEN to your left/right(Depending on which machine they're on)! For the duration of this transaction, YOU are the cashier, not ME. Of course, they then proceed to put the required information in... By absolutely SMASHING their thumbs into the screen to the point their finger turns white, and the machine barely registers the touch... "Why do you press it so hard...?" "Oh, so it can feel it" "..." Actually, about BREAKING THE SCREEN by pressing so hard does NOT make the machine feel it, it makes the machine hate you and me even MORE. And then I cheese some of them off by not only swiping the cards(Our readers are the kind you have to stick the card in... I hate them, with a passion, as they rarely work RIGHT) and getting them to READ(Here's a clue: RAMMING your card into the reader, pausing for 4 seconds, and then YANKING it out while PULLING it towards you will NOT make the reader read the card but in fact possibly BREAK the reader AND your card. And that pause does nothing but make it mad), but I can type in the information fast because I'm just TAPPING the screen with my fingers, not cramming them against the screen. Oooh, novel concept, pop the card in and pull it out in one motion... And use a GENTLE tap on the screen...

The ones who keep removing bags annoy me to no end. Or they have 20 items, and hit "Skip bagging" every time, and get mad when every 4th "Skip bagging," the machine demands I approve the limit being hit. It's not even always things that won't fit in the bagging area, but tubes of caulking!

[Shalom]

(Our readers are the kind you have to stick the card in... I hate them, with a passion, as they rarely work RIGHT)

We had these in a few of the Chain of Verylarge Stores' branches where I worked.

There were a couple problems with them. One was that there was a slot at the top of the machine, clearly visible, that did nothing at all. (It was originally supposed to be used for gift cards, but I don't think that was ever implemented.) Whereas the actual credit card slot was at the bottom of the device, and I can't count how many people tried to jam their card in the do-nothing slot at the top rather than inserting it at the bottom.

Also, I think these read the card on the way out, rather than in, on the grounds that people will push the card into the slot at varying speeds, but they all pull it out the same. Except when they don't, instead pulling it out halfway, pausing, and pulling it the rest of the way out. That won't work.

Stupidest thing that I ever saw happen with that machine, though, was this: I wander over to the register to answer a customer's question, and there's this other customer standing there with a confused look on her face. "My credit card isn't coming back out." So I look at the bottom of the machine, no credit card visible there. She says "It went all the way in, and it's not coming back out." OK, WTF? There's not enough room in there for a card to disappear totally. So I finally swivel the thing around and squint into the slot. Sure enough, something's in there. I go back to the dispensing area, grab the long tweezer that we keep handy for yanking the cotton out of the bottles (scissors work better for that, BTW) and go fishing. What do I pull out, it's something I've never seen before: a miniature credit card, maybe half the size of a regular card, with a hole in one corner so you can put it on your key ring with your loyalty cards, which she had shoved in the slot so far that it totally vanished. Now this is a monumentally stupid idea to begin with, but what did she think, that she could put this mini card into the slot and the machine would spit it back at her like an ATM?

I wound up swiping the card on the reader that's attached to the register's keyboard instead, and wonder of wonders it still worked (the bar code was the regulation width and distance from the edge, just shorter, and apparently hadn't been damaged when it was jammed in there).

Have any of you out there encountered these cards? I've never seen one again, but I looked at that one closely and I'm sure it was issued in that format, not something that the customer decided to make with her scissors and hole puncher.

As a side rant, why is it that they never figure out the right way to swipe the card, even though there's a little picture on the machine showing the orientation and which way the little stripe is supposed to go? There are four ways to swipe the card, and only one of them works. I've had people try all four. They put it in, I say "The other way", they either turn it over so the stripe's out of the machine altogether or else turn it 360° and put it back the same way they had it originally. Some of the machines at СѴЅ have two magnetic read heads in the slot so even if you put the card in backwards it'll still read, but you'd think they'd realise that if the mag stripe is in the air, nothing's going to read it.

[Chromatix]

Chances are they think of it as "a card" and don't realise that it has specific functional parts.

[EvilEmpryss]

About two years ago one of my credit cards once came with those little keychain cards. They're an absolute waste of plastic. First off, why would I risk losing my credit cards with my keys (which I'm notorious for dropping)? Second, they aren't of a size that will fit in most card readers. They aren't the kind with the paypass (or whatever it's called) where you wave the card infornt of the reader, either.

They only sent me that one, and none of my other creditors ever sent me one, so they must have figured out that they aren't very good.