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The story
Self-checkout, QR-code ordering, touch-panel operation — tasks once handled by store staff are increasingly being pushed onto customers. Sparked by a SPA! article published September 8, the story drew a wave of reactions on 5ch’s News Express+ board, with a string of concrete anecdotes covering frustration over the lack of any customer benefit like discounts, anxiety over scanning mistakes, debate over how to handle foreign customers, what happens during power outages, and confusion over Matsuya’s hard-to-use ticket machines. The discussion also branched into comparisons of cashless payment rates and overseas tipping culture, with opinions split.
Delivered 9/8 (Tue) 8:55
SPA!
Self-checkout, QR-code ordering, touch panels, generative AI… Digital technology is supposed to make life more convenient, but with new systems popping up one after another, plenty of people feel they can’t keep up. Talking to people who run into this “wall of high-tech” in daily life reveals circumstances that can’t simply be chalked up to being “bad with machines” or “tech-illiterate.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Seriously, this.
I stopped going to my neighborhood Lawson.
7-Eleven without self-checkout is the best.
At the ones that have it, you can feel the staff's silent pressure of "go use the self-checkout."
Don't convenience stores have staffed registers set up alongside tap-payment registers?
I use the tap register when I'm buying just one item. Otherwise I go to a staffed one.
Though sometimes I get a craving for their curry.
People always complain about Matsuya's ticket machines, but what would a "not confusing" one even look like?
Aren't all the beef bowl chains about the same level?
Matsuya's is bad enough that they might as well just give you a keyboard.
You basically have to type in and search for things like the beef bowl set yourself.
That's exactly why I don't go to beef bowl places where you pay up front like that.
I hate having people lined up behind me.
Sukiya, if I remember right, has you order after you're seated, so it was much easier.
the fact that there's zero benefit to the customer is the problem.
There is a benefit.
If it lowers the store's costs, the customer's burden goes down too.
You might think "the store's just pocketing the difference," but that's not how it works.
Cutting labor costs through efficiency helps hold down the rising cost of labor overall.
At the very least, if a store trims staff (and labor costs) by streamlining, that shrinks the scale of any resulting price hikes, which ends up being a plus for the customer too.
I do kind of feel like there should be a discount equal to the handling fee saved, but…
thanks to old folks lining up at staffed or cash registers for the past decade or so, the cashless self-checkout lanes are always empty — I've never once had to wait in line there. I'd call that a benefit.
For izakayas and places like that, I'm glad the billing got more transparent.
It's just hard for an amateur to scan everything perfectly, so this one can't be helped.
Seriously, highly recommend (wink-wink talk about scan-and-skip "savings").
It's all properly recorded and will be AI-analyzed going forward, so you'd better be ready for damages and a lifetime ban, you know?
Well, everyone makes mistakes, so it can't be helped.
A one-off slip is one thing,
but if you make a habit of it, you'll get flagged and caught.
With a touch panel, you can switch the display language instantly.
Aren't you a little too starry-eyed over foreigners? (lol)
Japanese-only is fine.
This is Japan, after all.
Nothing happens, right?
Regular registers have always been vulnerable to system outages too.
I asked an AI:
> Even during a power outage, many electronic registers can have their cash drawer opened manually using a "drawer key" (a dedicated key).
So basically the system's unusable and it just becomes cash-only transactions.
Does that actually change anything?
You're still forced into irregular handling either way, so nothing's different (lol).
Sure, you can open it, lol.
But most stores just won't let customers in at that point, lol.
Use some common sense.
Japan's already an IT backwater lapped several times over as it is,
and its cashless payment rate is dead last among developed countries by a mile.
Things are only going to get more automated as AI advances, so adapt instead of whining.
Japan's cashless payment rate isn't actually "dead last by a mile" among developed countries.
It's true Japan has long lagged behind cashless leaders like South Korea (about 99%) and China (about 83%), as well as the UK and US. But according to a comparison of major countries by the Cashless Promotion Council, based on data from sources like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), some developed countries actually rank lower than Japan.
Why do you lie so quickly?
Japan: 42.8%
Countries lower than Japan: Germany (about 24%)
It's not dead last.
You've never left Japan, have you? (lol)
Well, we're just in a technological lull right now — before long, AI registers that handle natural language accurately will show up too.
Cavemen who still use fax machines.
There are just a lot of those old folks, so it can't be helped.
Usage by country:
United States: Business usage is high, around 70%, and it also has the most fax machines in use worldwide. The main reason it's still used is said to be that "it's guaranteed to arrive."
Germany: Workplace usage is around 50%. The top reason given is "many business partners still use fax."
Japan: Business usage is only around 40%. People sometimes say "only Japan still uses fax," but there's steady demand overseas too, including in the West.
Do they give tips cashlessly too?
At checkout, a 10 to 20% tip gets added on.
A YouTuber who grew up abroad said a tip-selection screen pops up when you pay at self-checkout, lol.
A tip-selection screen shows up on the tablet's payment screen,
with "Recommended: 18%" written on it.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The spread of self-checkout and QR-code ordering is driven by rising labor costs and staff shortages, and as the article points out, the core grievance is that customers are picking up extra work with little in return, such as a discount. In the thread, a claim that “Japan’s cashless payment rate is dead last among developed countries” was corrected by another poster citing Bank for International Settlements-linked data, noting that “Japan is at 42.8%, higher than Germany’s roughly 24%” — a fact-check that doesn’t come through from the article alone. Meanwhile, an anecdote about a tip-selection screen appearing at self-checkout in the US reflects a quirk specific to tipping-culture countries that’s hard to picture from a Japanese perspective. On the power-outage question, some pointed out that even if the cash drawer can be opened manually, it just shifts everything to cash-only transactions rather than solving the underlying problem — food for thought on the limits of unstaffed operations. And as with Matsuya’s ticket machines, the view emerged that inconsistent operation from store to store comes less from customers being bad with machines than from uneven design.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread ““Why are customers now doing what used to be the staff’s job?” Voices of people worn out by self-checkout, QR, and touch-panel ordering — confused by inconsistent operation from store to store.”
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