Can we talk Wegmans? It’s time for a ‘chat checkout’ lane
NBC News reports that one grocery store chain has switched to all selfchecking. No cashiers, just terminals. You’re on your own.
I’m sure that other stores will follow suit. Having customers do more of the work must make financial sense.
But perhaps there is an option. According to news reports from the Netherlands, Jumbo, a grocery chain, has established slow lanes in its stores.
Known as “Kletskassa” or “chat checkout” lanes, they’re staffed by human beings who are there, not just to scan, but also to talk, to share, to listen.
The slow lane is one attempt to combat the loneliness that many people, especially older people, feel these days.
We have a friend who is somewhat ahead of the slow-lane revolution (if it is a revolution). He’d be right at home in the Netherlands, as he already shares the news of his life in grocery stores.
You’re in Aisle 16, you hear a man in Aisle 10 lamenting his upcoming colonoscopy prep. It’s our friend.
He especially shares when he’s checking out, bringing the cashier upto-date on his news of the day.
I really like his stories, but I imagine there are some time-challenged shoppers who aren’t that interested in how he’s dealing with sleep apnea. So, listen up Wegmans, Tops, ALDI, and Walmart, why don’t you follow Jumbo’s lead and give our friend, and other chatters, their own lanes?
Should this be done, it would be helpful to label the slow lanes. There could be one for people to share info on their maladies, another for relationship advice, certainly one for sports. Let’s rule politics out.
On their way out of the store, shoppers from the chat lanes might convince self-checkout shoppers to take their groceries to a slow lane.
I can picture it now. A kind cashier tells the self-checkers to breathe. After a pause, the cashier listens to their stories, provides feedback, and then gently talks them out of returning to the world of self-checkout. It’s so impersonal. So lonely. Why would anyone go there?
Bob Giles was a master of silence
The recent death of Bob Giles, the executive editor of the Democrat and Chronicle and the now defunct TimesUnion in Rochester from to 1977 to 1986, prompted an outpouring of tributes and comments from his former employees, not just from Rochester but also from Akron and Detroit, where he also led papers.
Bob, who was 90 when he died of cancer on August 7, hired me in 1980 to be a reporter at the Times-Union. I’m grateful to this day. It was an act of faith, as I was an academic with no daily
journalism experience. I would have had a different life were it not for Bob Giles.
Remembering Bob, those who worked for him have highlighted how he led coverage that earned Pulitzer Prizes in Akron and Detroit. They have singled out many acts of personal kindness. They have discussed, too, his pushback against newspaper unions when they went on strike in Detroit in the mid-1990s.
Scattered among all these memories, is the recollection of a single button, the one somewhere on his desk that closed his office door while he was the editor in Rochester.
Reporters and editors were afraid of that button. Bob would call them in; they would sit down; suddenly, seemingly on its own, the door would shut behind them. Yikes.
The door was unnerving, and so was the quiet that followed. Bob had learned early on in his career that people find silences uncomfortable, so much so that they just start talking, blurting out that they had bribed the mayor or committed some other crime.
Thus, he tended not to say much, if anything, to open a conversation. Unnerved, his visitors — or at least this visitor — would voluntarily confess that day's newsroom sins.
Bob would take it in, having gotten more than he bargained for. The door button worked, as did the silence. You can learn a lot by not saying a thing.
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com