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Self check-out needs a check-up

October 1, 2006 | 2 Comments | Joshua Gans

I happened upon a different Coles supermarket than my usual one today. We were getting a few things but too many for the 12 items or less line. Lo and behold, I saw another option: the Express Self Check-Out queue. Curious, I dived in.

It was what it said: a self check-out but hardly express. There were four consoles each with a scanner and EFTPOS machine. The idea is that you scan an item and put it in a bag. The bag sits on a machine that weighs it. Presumably, this is to determine whether the thing you scanned was the thing that reached the bag. It is the kind of thing that looks like it just might work.

Of course, it did not. Well actually, more annoyingly, it lacked a certain confidence in itself and/or the customer. That is, it seemed a setting or two away from working. Every second time I scanned something and deposited it the bag, it would ask me to remove it, perhaps try again or wait for assistance. The wait for assistance part is interesting because it seemed that the machine seemed to rely on a human way too much. The assistance would come from an assistant who was responsible for all four machines. This hapless fellow was run off his feet dealing with ‘waits for assistance.’ It turned out that his function was to take a look at a customer’s screen and tell them just to wait a second. Then whatever issue that machine thought you needed assistance on would seem to go away.

So it turned out that whenever something went wrong you could simply wait and it went away. You didn’t need the assistant. Of course, if you wanted to pay by credit card, you did need him because he had to sight the signature.

Regardless, the lack of confidence of the machine as well as the annoying waits for reset were enough to convince me to steer clear of this at all costs. I enquired for the assistant just how long this had been in operation (expecting him to say a few weeks). The answer: a year! I commented that I didn’t think it was quite working and got a definitive, “tell me about it” look. It seems like ‘self’ check-out duty is the poor draw in the Coles employee task schedule.


Comments

2 Responses to “Self check-out needs a check-up”

  1. Josh on October 3rd, 2006 2:25 pm

    Similar problems with the BigW self checkout. Too many checks and balances (sic). Perhaps RFID will solve these problems, but probably not.

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