Self-Scanning Groceries: What's the Point?

The grocery stores I frequent don't offer self-checkout so I've never had the chance to try scanning my own groceries.

But I've always been curious about how such a system would work, so when a friend told me the new Stop & Shop in Wyckoff had self-scanning and self-checkout, I had to try it.

When you come into the store, you can slide your store card under a scanner which will then direct you to a particular hand-held scanner among the many on a rack next to it. The scanner lights up so you know which one is yours.

From then on, there are two options. You can scan your items as you go and put them into bags, your own or the plastic ones provided on a rack where you picked up the scanner.  Or you can just put the items in the cart and scan and bag them at the end in special checkout lanes.

Scanning the barcodes does have a learning curve. You don't want to be too close, and it is usually better to scan down the code. And your scanner will frequently beep you with news of store specials. I found that annoying when I was trying to focus on labels.

My daughter and I elected to try scanning each item as we went. My thinking was, why bag at the end when you can do it as you go along? My thinking was wrong.  First, it is harder to pack efficiently unless you have items spread out so you can put the biggest and heaviest in first.

Second, it takes a lot of time to first find the bar code on a particular item and then scan it. (And of course, there was a good sale on cat food which I could not pass up, and all those little cans had to be scanned individually.) 

It probably would go faster with everything out on a counter. That seemed to be the way most of the "veteran" self-checkout shoppers were doing it. I also noticed that most of them had just a few items. Shoppers with packed carts were in the lanes that had real cashiers handling things the old-fashioned way.

When you check yourself out, you take your scanner to yet another bar code to signal the end of your order, then follow the on-screen directions to make your payment. This part was fairly simple because we were not buying anything that had to be weighed.

While this was a fun adventure, I wouldn't want to do it every time I shopped.  When you think about it, the store is making you do a lot of work so it doesn't have to pay another employee. 

You personally don't save any more than the shopper who chats with the cashier while she rings up the order and bags the groceries. The store saves the money at your expense. 

I did not find it a time-saver, either. It took more than an hour to do something I can usually do in 30 minutes. Admittedly, part of the problem was my unfamiliarity with the scanner; another trip might take less time, but not less than it takes to do it the old-fashioned way.

Self-checkout probably makes sense if the store is crowded and you don't have many items, but that is the only time it makes sense.

And while the store might save money by having fewer employees, I can't help but wonder if thieves wouldn't have a field day, forgetting to scan some items dropped into a bag and cheating the store. 

The Wyckoff store is gigantic, more like the supermarkets you find in the Midwest where the land is not so costly, and even with lots of video cameras, it must be very hard to police.

There are some wonderful bargains at Stop & Shop but the personal scanner isn't one of them.