Technology Review: Meijer’s new self-service checkouts
I’ve always been a reluctant fan of self-service checkouts (SSC), especially Meijer’s. There’s always a clerk lurking at their little base station with their eyes glued to you. One false move and your entire reason for using the SSC has been negated - you have to interact with a person. Plus, there are the countless times I’ve been asked to remove my last item and place it in the bag which always results in me standing there like an idiot waving some broccoli or other random produce in the general area of the bag. On top of all this, these SSC have a 12 item limit but super small bagging area, requiring a keen knowledge of the appropriate order to scan and bag my groceries in. Of course, even when all four SSC are open, there will inevitably be four clueless souls who can’t seem to get it right.
But, Meijer has won me over with a new SSC paradigm! These new SSC have really changed the way I pay for my groceries. A couple key points to starts off:
1. There is no longer a 12 item limit.
2. There is no longer a clerk watching you
If these were the only two changes, I’d be a happy camper. But, Meijer took an extra step and made the SSC totally badass by adding a huge conveyor belt to move your scanned items to the bagging area. Boring, you say? I beg to differ. This belt ROCKETS your items down the belt and then uses a second belt to slow them down so your glass containers don’t get mauled. Now you don’t have to worry about scan and bag, scan and bag, scan and bag. Now it’s scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, scan, and so forth. It almost feels like competitive bagging because you can get an awesome scanning rhythm going while your items are hurried away. Once all the items are scanned, you pay like you normally would. An added bonus when using cash - your changed gets rifled out of that machine. My four bills almost ended up on the floor. Another bonus is that it will ask if you want small items kept separate (like my batteries). Super cool! The user interface was clean and simple. The buttons were easy to see and clearly marked. Unfortunately, I had no bulk produce to weigh or key in, but that will be a priority next time.
The last step is bagging. You can take the needed time to separate your cold items from the warm and whatnot. While there wasn’t a queue behind me to confirm this, I believe there is a gate that you can swing shut to keep your stuff separate from the person behind you.
Overall grade: A. I’m looking forward to future use of these marvels of technology!!
