Speedrun timers on self checkouts
Speedrun timers on self checkouts
Am I the only one who gets to the self checkout and is compelled to finish as soon as humanly possible?
Imagine if there was a speedrun timer on them and a leaderboard
Would make boring everyday life a little more interesting
Shopping Any% speedrun (WR)
42That’s just walking out without paying (without getting caught).
23Jim from Guiness World Records here. The Cambridge dictionary defines shopping as, "the activity of buying things from shops". Based on this, I have no other choice to disqualify your attempt which, although full of brazen effort with the cunning use of firearms and hostages, was not technically shopping as there was no buying action. You are welcome to try again in six months...or 9 years if your prison doesn't have a qualifying shop.
3
Gotta backhop around the store and trimp off the mobility scooter to jump over the aisles and get to the aisle you need, avoiding the unskippable cutscene of getting stuck behind someone who's abandoned their trolley in the middle of the aisle
15Instructions unclear, speedrun ruined by RNG which put me directly behind a 98 year old lady at the till and subsequently had to endure an unskippable cutscene where she and the cashier are laughing about the things her new Pomeranians are doing.
11unstoppable cutscenes of getting stuck behind someone who's abandoned their trolley in the middle of the aisle
My God that just brought up a wave of nam flashbacks dealing with this bullshit.
5
Dude fucking dives into a store, grabs a pack of gum mid air, scans it as he's falling, drops his WiFi credit card close enough to the reader, transaction finishes before he hits the ground.
A new shopping any% WR, 2.563s.
I can't wait for the summoning salt video.
8Do Wi-Fi credit cards come with free internet?
1
Better do it Glitchless if you don't want to get the permanent, console-locked anti-achievement "misdemeanor conviction."
4There are certain lightweight products which don't require weighting or putting them in the bagging area at all, like spices or bath sponges. These would be perfect for any% speedrun of Groceries since they don't ever require an employee to verify discrepancies
2
I love them because i am not being rushed, i can pack my groceries up in peace and properly stacked in the bag. Meanwhile at a normal checkout a bored cashier routinely scans my 30 items in less than 10 seconds, leaving me struggling to pay, and pack up my shit while a dozen people are waiting in line behind me.
29I imagine if OP were your cashier, they might be thinking of it as a game to see how fast they scan stuff. Bonus points if they make you sweat.
13Come ooon hurry up and tap your card this could be PB!
2
The faster you go the more likely you get free things! Win-win.
19Protip: On many self-checkouts, if you open the "item by code" menu and keep scanning items with the menu open, the machine will beep with every item you scan, but it won't actually add it to your total. Loss prevention only listens for beeps.
0I won't get into the minutiae of grocery theft... but that's not necessarily a great idea. It may prevent LP from catching on initially, but when they do, you may be in a world of hurt... While accidentally missing scans can never be proven as malicious, especially if your goal is to move as fast as possible.
4
I’m just annoyed that I’ve been using self checkout for thirty years, it was dead obvious how it worked the very first time I used it, but I still have to hear instructions like “place your APPLES in the bag”.
Yes. I know.
14Huh, I have never used one with a single spoken instruction. Hopefully it stays that way
8Be thankful you live in a culture of dignity
3
Place your item in the bagging area.
Unexpected item in the bagging area.
Place your item in the bagging area.
Unexpected item in the bagging area.
7Evidently they need it for people who can't seem to get the memo.
2And it gets mad because you brought your own bags.
1It’s loss prevention. People enter the wrong products that cost less, so it alerts the one cashier what was supposed to be weighed. Not super likely they’ll catch it watching 9 registers, but it increases the risk to the thief.
1
I try to be quick because I want to hurry and get out of there.
Its amazing to me how many people use them without a fucking clue what theyre doing and just hold up the line.
12Fortunately there are usually loads of them
But yeah it's kinda annoying to see someone take 20 minutes with one
There's usually a wave when all the old people in my area all decide they want to go shopping at once, though fortunately they tend to ignore the self checkout
7I'm one of the old people. I WAS a speed runner. About 40 years ago, I got a union job as a cashier. The customer put their items on the belt, the cashier scanned the items, and the bagger sorted the items and put them in paper or plastic bags. Cashiers were required to memorize the produce codes and process at MINIMUM 30 items per minute. The timer ran from the moment you unlocked your register to the moment you relocked it or opened the drawer. You would leave your register locked while the customer started putting things on the belt. You greet them and make a mental note of what sort of items are where while the belt brings the load to you. Once the belt is at least half full, you'd unlock the register and start grabbing and scanning items in a fluid motion that passed them over the scanner and on towards the bagger -- sorting as best you could as you went. As soon as you were done, you'd hit 'total' and lock the register until the customer was ready to pay. You'd help the bagger and chat while this happened. Then the customer would hand over cash or check (they were just starting to do credit and debit in grocercy stores so those weren't common), so you'd unlock the register, take their payment, open the register and get change. Your best speeds were always going to be for express checkout (10 items or less), but there is a cruel loop in that because managers schedule fast people for express, but you won't be as fast unless you get scheduled there.
As I recall, we didn't get to see our items-per-minute until the end of the day -- not per-transaction, but it was still fun to see who had the best scores.
As a customer, I NEVER use self-checkout because: 1) I'm not working if you aren't paying me, and 2) every time I've tried to use self-checkout, the machines could never, ever keep up with me. Sometimes the issue was the bagging area was trying to weigh things, sometimes the scanners themselves were bad/slow, and sometimes ... I don't know, the dang machines are just barely working? Anyway, it is never worth it for me. Additionally, I find it better to do my own bagging than to allow anyone else to do it.
Side note: The typical bagger can not bag as fast as a cashier can scan because they have to wait for: cans on the bottom/bread on the top, frozen in one bag/lettuce no where near frozen, detergents and chemicals by themselves/pet foods also by themselves.
2
Clicking through 90 fucking prompts if I wanna donate to charity or learn about their credit card offerings or if I want to sign up for their rewards program or if I want to give them my email so they'll email me a receipt?
3Nah, everyone deals with that.
I mean the people that cant figure out how to use the self checkouts at all. They forget to scan items, dont understand how to search for bulk items or produce that dont have codes, or people that cant figure out they need to scan stuff before bagging it, etc.
4
I'm busier thinking about the people that is being paid to make sure I do the checkouts.
11Is your problem that fewer cashiers are being paid or that someone's being paid to make sure you don't steal anything?
7
I try to be as efficient as possible. I don’t think most people even think about it.
7Amazon Go's ("just walk out") self checkout gives you an elapsed time on your receipt. There was one next door to my old pre-pandemic office. My coworkers and I would complete to see who could get in and out the fastest. My record was 6 seconds buying a single bottled tea.
5That would stress me out too much. I shop for people for a living and I'm constantly timed. The bosses are obsessed with my metrics. Even if I have to stop to tell a customer or to guard a spill per company policy, all they care about is that I'm not getting 100 items per hour.
If I was being timed for my personal shopping, I'd just start screaming and never stop.
5Don't know about how it is in the US, but in the UK the idea of people rushing to finish their transaction fills me with dread. I've worked in a supermarket with self service and the general public really struggles with them.
5I'm in the UK, young people don't tend to struggle with them as far as I've seen. Mostly late gen Xers and older that seem to struggle
2
The shop near me has handheld scanners so you scan as you pick stuff off the shelf. Then at the checkout scan a QR code on the screen and pay. Makes it super quick.
3Sainsbury's has an app that lets you do that with your phone, I found it was slower faffing around with that than just going through the self checkout
Bearing in mind I also tend to buy 2-3 items at a time max and either way you've got to use the machine at the end
2
Glitches allowed?
3All the best runs are
2
Self checkouts are for
stealingrecovering what big corpos steal from us, not racing.3The that's how stress killed OP.
1???
0
That's a great idea. Imagine how much money the store could save gamifying checkout so that they need less checkout machines. Let's all do our part to make the rich richer!
-2Man the post is a joke not everything needs to be about how fucked the world is
3
I do scan as you shop. So when I get to the checkout, answer a question about whether everything scanned OK and then pay. But today we had 70+ items in our shop and got flagged for random spot check. Some exasperated cashier, frustrated she actually had to do some work and couldn't just sit there having excess calories around her waist weighing her down heavily breathed "I need to check 40+ of these". So that took forever.
-14There’s some real vitriol packed up in this comment. Try not to take it out on the cashiers :)
11I didn't, never do, but saw her the shop before shouting at a colleague who was overwhelmed and asking for help. She genuinely seemed to be allergic to work.
1
You seem like a nice person.
2