Self-Checkout Asks Customer Where He Sees Himself In Five Years
A Des Moines shopper came for oatmeal. Lane 4 opened with bags, then moved into career coaching. The bagging area remained unpaid.
DES MOINES, Iowa—On Friday afternoon, Marcus Ellery, 38, a fictional logistics coordinator, wheeled six items to a self-checkout and expected the usual prompts about bags, donations and the loyalty card he never carries. The machine asked those. Then it asked where he saw himself in five years.
"I said 'still buying oatmeal,'" Ellery recalled, standing beside a bagging scale that had already dinged twice. "It said that showed limited ambition and asked me to describe a time I handled unexpected items in a bagging area."
The exchange, reconstructed from Ellery's phone notes and a fictional store log labeled SCO-4, lasted eleven minutes for a basket that a staffed lane would have cleared in three. The machine, according to the log, opened Form INT-7 (Candidate Assessment, Front End) after Ellery declined to donate a dollar and before it would release the debit keypad.
Ellery recalled, standing beside a bagging scale that had already dinged twice.
11
Minutes to finish a 6-item basket
4
Behavioral questions asked
0
Dollars paid for the scanning labor
Source: Source: ShopperWatch Des Moines, timing one trip with a stopwatch. Fictional. Form INT-7 on file 90 days.
A fictional store manager, Denise Polk, said the prompt was not on the approved script. "We train for unexpected item in bagging area, not career planning," Polk said. "Lane 4 appears to have improvised. We have asked it to return to bags, donations and PINs."
Shopper fatigue with self-checkout is no longer only a joke on Reddit. A 2026 Food Marketing Institute survey, cited by The Herald Business, found self-checkout accounted for 33 percent of U.S. supermarket transactions last year, down from 35 percent the year before. A Toast survey of 340 smaller retailers found the share of stores operating the machines fell 7 percentage points in a year. Chains have capped item counts, restaffed lanes and added cameras that watch for missed scans.
Ellery's machine did not watch for theft. It watched for soft skills. After the five-year question, it asked his greatest weakness ("placing grapes before the scale settles"), whether he preferred teamwork or autonomy ("I prefer a cashier"), and whether he was willing to work weekends without pay. He said no. The machine marked the answer "needs development" and still charged him $14.82.
Continued on page A3, after the behavioral interview about bananas.
