MY HEB on steroids Houston must have a forty foot cooler with nothing but bacon and sausage with lots of variety.
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On busy aisles I usually park mine by an end cap and get what I need, but one time someone was “nice” enough to haul my cart off to a completely different part of the huge store, I assume by mistake. It took my self and two managers at least 15 minutes to locate it.
Especially true and still true in all the big chain of supermarket, like Carrefour, Leclerc etc. in France. Very annoying.
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I do this too. So much faster and I don’t block a wide section if I need to spend some time trying to locate an item.
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A bit the same experience with some chain that the cashiers weight the product. Luckily most supermarkets put out scales and you DIY and put labels with weight on the bag… Then came another problem, a line waiting before the scale.
Happened to me once, as I like to park my cart somewhere quiet to search for items quickly. One time, I just couldn’t find my cart anymore… I suspected someone just mistook it.
Maybe I’m a rare case, actually I like shopping in supermarket. Things that can be annoying…the usual case of moving products in aisles, long lines for checking out (but I read the magazines lying around instead).
Some additional things I dislike:
- when people leaving all types of rubbish when they return the empty carts
- the item has no price indication, or the price indicated is the not same as the checked out price
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You seldom find that system in the U.S. Lidl tried it when they first opened in my area. The scales and sticker machines were gone in less than a year. It’s too bad - I appreciated knowing that my produce was identified and rung up properly!
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I don’t know why it didn’t work in US, maybe culturally people don’t like to do it themselves. There are, of course, cheaters here: scaling the cheapest of the same type or adding stuff inside the bag after weighing. But I guess the corporates weigh the advantages vs the cheats.
I think it was because most people here had never encountered the system before. It just wasn’t something that would occur to them. The closest thing some people may have encountered is having to write the code number on the package of bag-it-yourself bulk items. Most conventional grocery stores don’t have bulk options though!
I think if Lidl had put staff in the produce and bakery area for several months to demonstrate it might have worked. Cashiers never commented whether you had the sticker or not so they lost that opportunity to educate.
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It’s been at one grocery store in my area for years and I love it. I’m not sure why it hasn’t caught on more. Too bad their prices aren’t that good, so I tend to go to another store with no self checkout at all.
The Chinese supermarkets in France, they have the scales in the fruits and vegetables sections too, but they place a guy, probably working already in the section, to weigh them for you. 
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Our local major chain market eliminated all their self checkouts saying it wax to “improve the customer interaction”. 
Why not be honest and admit people were staling stuff OR the amount of tech support or customer assistance required was too costly. I just LOVE waiting in line with one or two items.
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The local Kroger expanded one self-check and added another large one. Maybe they figured it’s ok to deal with some theft and save money by eliminating some checker jobs.
If you are also purchasing alcohol. Self checkout can be a pain .
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This is where the clueless self checker comes into play as the attendant is pretty much checking them out while others needing services such as alcohol overrides and other things stand waiting. Just go to a regular register if you don’t know what you’re doing.
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Overides . Lol
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For some it seems a deliberate act. There’s a supermarket near me that, whenever I visited, the biscuits aisle was always blocked. Not by fat, elderly people considering whether they should buy Bourbons or Jammy Dodgers but just groups of fat elderly people having a chat amongst themselves with, seemingly, no realisation that they were in an effing supermarket , not soemwhere deisgned for social gatherings. Polite requests to get past them were, almost invariably, ignored and they rarely then took kindly to having their trolleys moved out of the way. Every effing time I went to that supermarket!.
(Be aware that I both fat and elderly and was going down that aisle to buy biscuits. No need to consider which ones - always Hobnobs).
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Yes, our local chain Acme (oy) eliminated self check out too for the same reason. But, another Acme that is a bit further from me added them back in!!
I agree with all the peeves here!!! I have those too. In addition, my Stop and Shop doesn’t carry certain items in a brand they do carry, and that seems to change every week. For example, they carry all kinds of Heinz products, but not pickle relish! DelMonte products but not tomato sauce. College Inn canned broth, and maybe a boxed beef broth, but only the largest size chicken broth. And, one of the worst as many have said, if you are looking for canned tomatoes, say, you have to look in the organic section and the regular section.
Then there is the plastic bag ban. But its a PLASTIC bag ban. Now the markets charge 10 cents even if you want a paper bag. Why???
I am so tired of walking out of my market without many of the things I need and having to stop at another.
And, I actually really like food shopping!!! I like to find different markets too, if I can, but when I am doing my weekly, I like to get what I need in one place!
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Shoppers who have the toddler in their cart picking out fruits and vegetables. I don’t want children’s hands / germs touching and returning foods.
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Regarding placing items such as canned tomatoes in multiple places, if they didn’t have a defined organic area then people would complain that they should put all the organic stuff in the same area for people who just want organics. You can’t win. Personally I think grouping such things as organics in one area is a good idea – it makes shopping for those folks easier. And why would anyone want to compare pricing of organics with conventional anyway? The organic item is always way overpriced so why bother?
On the subject of plastic bags, plastic is not only cheaper for them than paper, plastic is far better from an environmental standpoint than paper except the disposal issue. Little known fact – Paper production uses far more resources, particularly energy, than plastic, which fundamentally is why plastic is cheaper to start with. That said, the disposal problem with plastic is severe, which is why I agree it should be banned. But stores’ view then is that substituting paper is costly for them, which it is, and that is why they start charging for the paper, which has the effect of causing the cost to fall on the actual user. In any event, you’re going to pay for it one way or the other, unless you bring your own bags, which is probably the best solution depending on your view of the “cost” to you of doing it that way.
