THE SELF-CHECKOUT THAT NEEDED HELP
Japan automates the checkout, but not quite the customer service
When I went grocery shopping the other day, I noticed something new.
The supermarket had installed a large section of self-checkout machines.
I’m one of those increasingly old-fashioned people who still prefers human interaction to a machine.
Judging by the queues at the human checkout counters, I’m probably not the only one.
In fact, I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who has said:
‘You know what I really enjoy? Doing the cashier’s job myself.’
But I can understand why supermarkets are doing it.
Staff are becoming harder to find. Wages are going up. Machines, on the other hand, don't ask for annual leave.
So I decided to give the new system a try.
I had only one item, and there was a long queue at the human checkouts.
Surely this was going to be quicker.
In Japan, however, even self-checkout involves humans.
One employee gently directs you towards the nearest available machine.
Another stands nearby to make sure that, once you have completed the payment process, you successfully locate the exit.
Perhaps they also double as in-store detectives, just in case somebody decides to leave without paying.
Not that I’m suggesting this is a particularly serious problem in Japan.
But better safe than sorry.
They can also help customers who struggle with the machines.
Which is, apparently, more common that one might think.
I approached my robot and instinctively looked for the language-selection button.
There wasn’t one.
Fine.
After 30 years in Japan, I can manage a Japanese self-checkout machine.
I pressed START and proceeded to scan my item.
Then the machine presented me with two options.
In Japanese.
With kanji.
Lots of kanji.
Now, 30 years in Japan does not necessarily make you fluent in reading Japanese.
Let me rephrase that.
Thirty years in Japan doesn’t necessarily make you a reader at all.
At least not when the supermarket throws several complicated-looking Chinese characters at you and expects you to know which one to select.
So I did what any technologically competent person would do.
I pulled out my iPhone.
Google Translate informed me that one of the options was something along the lines of ‘proceed to payment selections.’
I can’t remember what the other one said.
By then, I began wondering whether I might have saved time by simply joining the queue for a human being.
And that left me with a question.
How does a supermarket in the middle of Tokyo spend the money to install an entirely new self-checkout section – and then decide that English isn’t necessary?
Perhaps the assumption is that anyone who has survived 30 years in Japan should have mastered kanji by now.
A perfectly reasonable assumption.
Just not one I would recommend testing on me at the checkout.
I also write fiction under the name R.K. Arnold. My debut novel, Love, Secrets, and a Plate of Sushi, is a romantic comedy set across Switzerland, England and Japan.
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