If you’ve ever wanted to get in and out of a store to live your life outside of a checkout line, then you know how frustrating it can be to watch someone taking their sweet old time as they scan every item they picked out at the grocery store.
It’s just enough to get someone to want to turn the cashier-manned lane into a hybrid self-checkout situation. Why not help a cashier who isn’t moving quickly enough for you by scanning a few of your items on your own?
And that’s what one woman did in a viral TikTok captured by @laayl0wl7, and there were a number of other folks on the platform who understood exactly where she was coming from.
“When the cashier taking too long & you ready to go,” the TikToker writes in a text overlay of the video, which shows a customer standing in line at the checkout counter and swiping their items over the scanner themselves. A grocery store employee worker wearing plastic gloves and a surgical mask approaches the area to assist with the scans as whoever is recording the video can be heard laughing in the background.
The TikToker added in a caption for the clip: “She trynna be the fastest cashier in the world.” Several other viewers who responded to the clip expressed their own views on self-checkout vs full-service lines at the supermarket.
“And this is why I love self check out I’ll be quicker then the workers,” one person wrote.
It seemed like there were a lot of folks who preferred to just scan their items themselves if given the opportunity to do so. “This is why I use self checkout everywhere lol,” someone else penned.
Another noted that employees are getting paid the same amount of money regardless of how many customers they assist in a single shift, so they aren’t incentivized to process transactions any faster. “For real!! They realized they get paid the same so they go in slow motion, like I don’t got places to be myself,” the user said.
However, some viewers thought that the customer scanning the items was only making it look like she was logging her products for purchase, and could’ve been pulling off a bit of a five-finger discount. “The fact that she wasnt even scanning it,” one user wrote.
But there were also those who felt that the woman was just attempting to speed up the process because she wasn’t really all too happy with the speed, or lack thereof, that the employee was exhibiting in scanning their order.
@laayl0w7 She trynna be the fastest cashier in the world 😭 #shegetsdown #shedontplay #hurryupbih #weinarush ♬ original sound – laayl0w7_
There have been other instances of customers expressing their disdain for the lack of assistance they’re receiving from retail store workers at checkout. One Walmart shopper recorded themself abandoning an entire shopping cart full of goods after they couldn’t receive any help from employees in ringing up their items. The way they saw it, they “didn’t come [t]here to work.”
Another Walmart shopper was heavily criticized after they uploaded a clip in which they called out a cashier who seemed reluctant to assist them in bagging their groceries.
While the patron highlighted the employee’s attitude in their video as being problematic, numerous commenters who saw the clip remarked that they, too, have dealt with overly demanding and disrespectful customers and thought there was more to the video than the TikTok user originally let on.
While The Atlantic claims “self-checkout is a failed experiment,” analysts still believe that grocery stores are moving to staffing fewer and fewer cashiers as time progresses. In fact, Forbes wrote that supermarkets may ultimately do away with cashiers for good, though plenty of shoppers have aired their grievances on social media about the ever-declining number of employees at grocery stores who can assist them with their queries.
The Daily Dot has reached out to @laayl0w7 via TikTok comment for further information.