For better or worse, despite efforts to bring cashiers back into stores, it appears that self checkout lanes are here to stay.
Recently, Kroger has faced some backlash for their lack of open registers, and in two of the instances the corporation apologized for the inconvenience and promised to work with the customer to make things better.
But will things actually change or will the customers just receive a coupon for their inconvenience?
On Friday, a man named Michael Keefe wrote to Kroger on X complaining about his local store’s self checkout lanes.
“@kroger self checkout stinks. If you this is the future I’m headed to Publix,” he wrote.
The company responded, saying they would share his concerns with their Internal Teams “for review.”
“Start with if a store is open, there should always be 1 line open with a human cashier,” Keefe added.
Several days later another complaint popped up online.
This time a Kroger customer called out their local supermarket for what they called a “no cashier available after 7pm-ish” rule that has been going on “for over a year.”
Rather than stand in line and wait to use the self checkout, the customer said they abandoned their cart full of $200 worth of groceries and left the store.
“It’s ridiculous that customers are expected to ring up and bag our own groceries.”
Once again, Kroger responded customer, but this time they asked for the customer’s rewards ID that was used to check out.