Problem: You are a supermarket; you have to invent something for the checkouts. What?
But sure! The automatic tills!
Safe, but at least it's fine flaws!
Today is not the time to waste time, so I'll write this vent a bit of racing today, I hope you forgive me for a possible drop in style.
I will only proceed from the customer/user perspective.
Today I am close to my usual supermarket. I suddenly decide to make a surprise raid, a quick thing. I enter the rocket, Elwood Blues style parking lot, gleaming the few things I need and are at the speakers in three minutes net. Human "crates" overflowed. The rows, as usual, even prevent the passage from one lane to the other (not the lanes of the crates, the aisles of merchandise display). I go to the automatic teller boxes. Maximum 15 pieces per head, I return. Four people at the four boxes, one person queuing in front of me. Piece-a-cake.
No.
Cashier 1 (an arbitrary number decided by me) has a slow user. No problem, it's a paying customer too, she has the right not to be a lightning strike, I am patient, I'm calm.
Case 2 shows problems.
At checkouts 3 and 4, users encounter problems.
The lady at the cashier 3 says they have already called someone and that she is coming.
The official on duty arrives at the checkouts. I do not think it is on duty, but that the first freelance officer is assigned.
You look around and make the triage.
Examine case 2. It does something. The customer has to wait.
Unlock case 4. Now he accepts the lords' banknote.
A recommendation to the lady at the cash 1.
The cashier 3 is okay that way, encourages the customer, who continues.
Manually help the customer waiting for checkout 2.
Checkout 1 is free. The lady in front of me enters and moves forward.
The health fund 2 is declared defective and is taken out of service.
The tail behind me has grown a lot. Block three or four people heading to the checkout 2. Is out of service. Eh? Route. Ah.
Checkout 2 shows signs of vi- Ah, here is: the Windows screen.
Checkouts 3 and 4 are free. I will go to 4. I award "Italian" and "Start".
Glove the bu- No. Agguan- No. Agg- I hold the envelope well and pull it out. Half a minute later I managed to DISTRICATE an envelope from the stack. It is a very light bag, of those made of (boh?) compressed recycled mushroom, with PERFORATED handles (with a fairly large diameter) to put it on the two armrests that support the stack of envelopes. Later, one of these envelopes will, of course, surrender to one of the perforations. I expected it and the damage was minimal. I took a few items, but voluminous: I need five envelopes. I only took three minutes to STRAPPARE EIA from the armrests and open the envelopes.
I look behind me. The employee remained with us all the time and was not stationary for a moment.
Thanksgiving the god of automatic loudspeakers, the hardware and software work decently, and the rest of the procedure runs away in seconds.
Bagged everything, paid everything, I pass the receipt under the scanner and open in front of me the doors of freedom from this system hook.
Ah, I notice that in the meantime the clerk has been replaced by an officer.
Now.....
You, supermarket, why did you commission, pay and install these automatic checkouts?
But, however:
the human cashier maybe not, but you need a full-time employee stuck there (automatic checkouts or customers or both have problems always); always a human person you have to pay, even if there he runs a single checkout and here he manages four of them (meaning that you go crazy four times faster)
four automatic loudspeakers are slower than a single "human" box (subjective, but systematic measure: both at the human and at the automatic one I have always peek at the other side to look at what was flowing most)
somebody has taken some time, designed, overhauled, submitted for approval, built a subsystem (bags & envelopes) which alone would suffice for a twenty-year sentence in the purgatory of the designers; someone has paid willingly to realize said subsystem
years ago, when this supermarket was built, they installed "human" tokens; they are as many years old that I don't see never human tots at the checkouts, not even at rush hour; some checkouts are always closed.
The "boss", the decision-maker, the AD, the CQO, see you, preferred to install new stuff, which works over-price, rather than pay an extra fixed salary to a person to stay at the checkout and do a better job.