Home Depot Self Check Out
So, I go shopping at Home Depot for some shelves for our warehouse. I get the shelves after searching through the store for an hour (does anyone else understand why it is impossibly difficult to find something at Home Depot, anyways) - of course there isn't an employee around to help out. Is there ever?
So I lug these shelves up to the cash registers to check out. They aren't heavy; just bulky. So I want to check out with a human being who has a gun to scan these things in. It's the middle of the day on a Thursday. One, count them one, register is open, the rest are all closed. Four employees are standing by the "self checkout" helping people ring up their stuff. I understand the concept of the self checkout and generally like it for small stuff. Impersonal. Yes. But do employees at these stores every say hello anyways? No, so they are impersonal too.
Anyways, four people at the self checkout helping people ring up stuff. One register open. The line at the register is like 6 people long, and course everyone has a ton of junk. Nails; that have to be rung up one a time. Eh? It takes me 30 minutes to move 5 feet and get checked out.
If it takes four people to run a self checkout that should, optimally, require 0 people (or 1 maybe to make sure people don't steal stuff), then isn't there a problem? Perhaps?
April 19th, 2007 - 12:45
I give up on Home Depot. I wanted to buy some plant liners (really light plastic things). Naturally, I went to checkout and the aisle open is the self checkout. Being smart and clever, I figure the stupid sofware would let me scan one of these items, add a quantity and be done. Nope. They don’t want the consumer to have the same power checkout people do. So, I have to scan each of my 10 plastic liners. Fine. But then you have to put them in the bag, so the non-accurate scale can make sure you’re not stealing stuff. Except these liners weight about 1 nano-pound and wouldn’t register. So, in the end I had to call over an “assistant” to help me out, sort of like if they had staffed checkout lines to begin with. I told her they need to take all the automatic machines and smash them, then I left in a huff.