Checking Up On Checking Out

If comments on social media tell us anything it’s that people hate self-checkout. While most view the POS systems or the complaints about them as necessary evils, one grocery chain sees an opportunity to create something better.

We spoke with Joanne Kepley, a marketing executive for The Kroger Company, about the present and future of self-checkout at the massive and influential grocer.

“We’ve been completely inundated with negative feedback,” says Kepley, “and it’s not that people generally hate self-checkout, it’s that the ones who do hate self-checkout are incredibly vocal about it. Even if that’s not the general feeling of the majority, the negativity soon dominates the discourse.”

“It’s complete horse apples!” says frequent Kroger customer Sandra Krandall. “They’re just tricking you into doing a job they don’t want to pay an actual person to do. I don’t work for them!”

“I don’t fuck with them machines,” says Jeremy Mercer, another regular customer. “They always talking about I got unscanned items in the bagging area. Okay, Robo-Becky, you gonna let me get tackled leaving this store because your sensor’s smudged? Nah, I’m good.”

“Gettin’ pretty tired of livin’ in The Matrix,” says a customer who insists we print his name as Shiv McStabbydick. “The machines are controlling everything now and every time you use the self-checkout you give up a little more of your humanity.”

“Yes, we’ve heard those complaints,” says Kepley, “among the many, many others from those unsatisfied with the current state of self-checkout registers. Like it or not, however, self-service is here to stay.”

Be that as it may, there’s always that subset of people being dragged into the present kicking and screaming, pining for the “simpler times” of their youth and viewing every new technological convenience with wariness. Fortunately, Kroger’s has a plan to combat this animosity.

“We call it Assisted Self-Checkout,” says Kepley, “and we’re already testing it out at several stores in the Cincinnati area, all of which have reported positive customer feedback!”

But what exactly is Assisted Self-Checkout?

“Basically,” explains Kepley, “the customer approaches it the same as they would a standard self-checkout kiosk. There’s still a scanner and a bagging area, only now patrons place their groceries onto a sensor-equipped conveyor belt that ensures they don’t accidentally forget to scan something, removing the need for the annoying ‘unscanned item’ error. Also, every Assisted Self-Checkout lane will be manned by an employee who scans and bags all of the customer’s groceries for them.”

We wondered, can an idea as revolutionary as Assisted Self-Checkout actually be realized? It seems a little far-fetched.

“Well, we like to take big leaps forward,” laughs Kepley. “You know, go big or go home, as they say. Nobody ever changed the world by going backwards.”

Looking to assuage our own doubts on the feasibility of Assisted Self-Checkout, we decided to head to one of the Cincinnati Kroger locations currently beta testing the system.

“Oh, it’s been great,” says Kroger manager Marvin Stanhope. “It always felt like we were in front of a firing squad of complaints over those self-checkouts. Now people can still use them without the issues.”

“It’s been a much more peaceful working experience,” says Camille Hobart who works the customer service counter. “Since people get to choose regular self-checkout or assisted self-checkout I get far less complaints.”

We even reached out to dissatisfied customers Sandra Krandall, Jeremy Mercer, and Shiv McStabbydick to insisted they return and try the new Assisted Self-Checkout system.

“Oh, this is wonderful,” says Krandall. “It’s nice to have an employee right here to help and just have a conversation with while I check out. Also now I don’t feel like The Kroger’s owes me a paycheck just for using the cash register!”

“So smooth,” says Mercer. “No more GLaDOS accusing me of nothing, like the guy right there can see I’m not taking nothing! Man, this is how it always shoulda been, you know?”

“This is more like it,” says McStabbydick after the assisted self-checkout scans his rewards card, “and I love that there’s no computer feeding my personal data into the mainframe anymore! That’ll be debit, please.”

“When they first came to us with this idea,” says Stanhope, “I thought they were crazy. Never in a million years did I think it would work. I mean, a self-checkout where a worker scans your groceries for you? That’s some science fiction stuff, man. I have to hand it to them though: It works! This should be in every store in the country.”

Okay, so maybe Assisted Self-Checkout really is the future of retail. Joanne Kepley sure thinks so and assures us that the system will be rolled out company-wide sometime within the next fiscal year.

So what’s next for The Kroger Company as they push on into the future?

“Okay,” says Kepley in a somewhat hushed tone, “so get this. I can’t say much about it at the moment, but we’re currently looking into a system that lets customers give a shopping list to a clerk who would then do all of the customer’s shopping for them. We’re calling it Go Get’ems.”

The Kroger Company really does dream big and we look forward to seeing all the amazing innovations they have to offer, whether it be Assisted Self-Checkouts, Go Get’ems, or something else we can’t possibly imagine.

Hopefully, you’ll be able to check it all out soon.