The idea being it reduces the number of staff needed to run the store because now we can restock shelves uninterrupted.
Of course, that’s not what’s happening. Instead of being asked where our canned mushrooms are, we’re now being asked where aisle 31 is, and we’re having to take extra time to find out what their actual question is.
Because there are only 14 aisles in the store.
Oh, and I actually like being asked where stuff is, because it breaks up the monotony of bringing out rollcomp, rotating, stocking, facing up, putting back rollcomp, repeat until lunch.
- They could have an computerised lookup of location that isn’t AI based very easily. It’s just a stock location database.
- Shops move their stock around to get you to search the store and drive sales of other items " you didn’t know you wanted".
So now they can’t get the shelves stocked having made their staff smaller and given them more questions to answer. They’ve also given the customer a worse experience because they used AI for a task easily accomplished by normal means, which if successful would drive down sales as people would just buy what they came in for.
A stunning level of idiocy on display.
Everything is already on a planagram. It would be trivial to do.
Planos come from multiple sources in my store; some come down from on high, some come from suppliers who buy out entire shelves (or even entire bays apparently), some come direct from the store management, and occasionally I get one or two that’s hand-drawn and I have absolutely no clue where they came from but I’m not paid enough to care.
Just have it pop up a question on our Telxons, we can update the locations when we’re restocking.
Being generous, I could see A use case for translating whatever the customer says (because how often have you known something exists, but not what it’s called?) into an actual product and then looking it up in a proper database. This, though, is bound to fail.
I live in a country where they speak my second language. I prefer to explain what i’m looking for to a person because sometimes AI doesn’t understand my spanish. At least native speakers understand what i mean when i describe something.
I don’t know if it exists in the UK, but there’s a craft store chain in the US called Michael’s, and when Covid kicked up they changed a lot about how their business is done.
So many things went online-only after 2020. I’m a life-long artist/crafter, and let me tell you, the people making decisions at this place clearly have no idea how crafters’ minds work. We don’t always go into stores with a particular goal in mind - sometimes we go in just to see what’s there and get inspired to try something new. We see things we didn’t think about, but once we see it, we know exactly what we want to make/how we want to work an item into a project.
But in order to do that, things have to physically be in the store. We aren’t going to impulse-buy something that isn’t there. Obviously.
As far as art supplies go, I’d much rather buy something I can physically interact with before purchasing - this tool says it has an ergonomic grip, but does it actually feel better in my hand or is it just hype? Can I trust a screen’s color rendering to faithfully represent the hue of this product? Will the feeling of this yarn be comfortable to wear as clothing?
Sometimes, we have to experience a product to really decide if we want it. Some art supplies might be fine to order online, sight unseen, but to rely on that alone (as a seller) is absolutely foolish.
I guess my wallet should be thanking Michaels, but I’m too frustrated by so many things becoming “online only” to really appreciate the inadvertent savings. I’m far from the only crafter/artist that follows their energy in the moment, and if I go to an arts and crafts store and get told I need to order a product online and wait for it, that can be enough friction to scrap the entire idea. I need to follow my artistic energy when it occurs. If I put it off til later, the project might never happen - because I’ll be onto something else by then.
But if the company really insists on misunderstanding their customers and shooting themselves in the foot, I’m not gonna stop them.
- They could have an computerised lookup of location that isn’t AI based very easily. It’s just a stock location database.
- Shops move their stock around to get you to search the store and drive sales of other items " you didn’t know you wanted".
My biggest experience of this is that those systems just aren’t updated. So they will have rearranged a bunch of stuff and now the website is wrong. When they’re doing it right, the same system that generates the printouts to tell store workers where to move things is also connected to the site. But there’s still errors. An AI isn’t going to solve that in any meaningful way, you just need to pay someone to check the locations of the top 100-200 selling items. Or niche items or whatever works to reduce the number on enquiries. It’s pawbably much cheaper to do that once a month, or once every three months, than pay OpenAI for a huge contract. Have that person rotate through all the stores in a region. But that would be too bloody smart for a business to do.
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The other day I had a customer with a printed piece of paper with things that chatgpt imagined our store would sell. Homebrand stuff made up and valid sounding brands that don’t exist.
Reminds me that I often like asking questions I could google because it’s more engaging too
Also, Google turns out seriously shitty answers nowadays, and the sponsored keyword ads are more irrelevant than ever.
Ironically its not even good at finding things to buy. I was trying to find a aur fryer recommendation but all the top sites were toxic and no review sites near the top.
The thing I’m not allowed to say instore: You probably don’t want an air fryer. You probably want a convection oven. The technology is exactly the same but a convection oven is larger, giving you more versatility. (edit: Of the products that we sell,) The gold standard is a combi oven. Get some half-decent microwave-safe cookware such as Pyrex, no need to splash out on the premium brands.
I have an oven, a large microwave with a convection oven, and an air fryer. They all serve different purposes.
I use the oven for baking and things like making a full roast (i.e. multiple trays). The convection oven is my “normal” oven as it’s smaller but still large enough to do stuff like a massive lasagne (I have a 4 litre Pyrex dish that fits!).
The air fryer on the other hand is amazing for crispy stuff, reheating junk food leftovers, scorching vegetables, and so forth.
The combi oven is not the gold standard. The smallest vessel for the task at hand is.
I own a toaster oven slash air fryer that makes cooking such a breeze. So so much so. I no longer own a microwave.
Oven has a reheat button that I set for 5, 10, 15 minutes. A little bit slower, but so much better
homemade pizza 12 minutes homemade burritos, 6 minutes homemade cookies, 8 minutes.
This includes prep time.
Can you give me your recipes?
That’s fairly simple. brown a pound of meat chop it up really fine after it cools. Then put it on the freezer.
For burrito, I’ll take a tortilla, spread refried bean on top. Sprinkle cheese. Throw on meat and any other toppings I have chopped up at the time
Put it in the toaster oven air fryer for four and a half minutes. Add salsa hot sauce. Perfection.
For pizza, I’ll use pita bread or naan-bread.
apply pizza sauce cheese maybe some pepperoni sprinkle on the meat a little pizza seasoning about nine minutes in the air fryer toaster oven.
Slice and eat. Maybe dip the crust in my choices of sauce. Who knows?
To make it even easier and quicker, I keep all my ingredients on a small sheet pan so I can just grab it out of the fridge all at once
…and a kitchen oven is larger still giving even more flexibility.
Or maybe the reason people find air fryers so useful is because they are small, fast and energy efficient.
I can only speak for the products we sell and precisely zero of them are energy efficient in any meaningful way.
An air frier is energy efficient in the sense that it makes a pizza in 7m total, no preheat, while the oven needs to preheat for 5 mins and then 12 mins of cooking. Size matters a lot in terms of efficiency. Being bigger is not always a plus.
Sure, but by the time my convection oven get to temperature I’m already serving at the table with my air fryer.
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That’s makes no sense at all.
So run a bigger appliance for longer?
uh, preheating an oven still takes time. I could take 10 minutes to preheat my oven, dirty up a tray to put whatever thing I’m cooking on, then spend 20-30 minutes baking it, or I could pop it in the air fryer, use less dishes, and have it ready in 15 minutes
an air fryer being smaller is actually part of the appeal for me! I live alone in a tiny apartment, so all I need is something that can cook single portions and fit on my limited counter space jaja
If you live in a region that’s hot, like I do, air fryers are better than conventional ovens for cooking one item to chuck on top of your salad. Air fryers put out way less hot air when you open them, decreasing the likelihood of heating up the kitchen
They said convection
That’s a conventional oven…
Nope. Why be so confident when you are incorrect?
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/convection-oven-vs-conventional-oven-explained
I mean you are not wrong. It’s just that my ovens oven is dead. So I figure I really need something half the size/cost of a oven.
It’s crazy to me that a younger generation will never know that google was once a good search engine. Like i could just google serial numbers of equipment, or anything that was on it and you would find the part first try. If you knew just a little bit how search engines worked, you could find ANYTHING. now, not so much. I was looking for so many things where i was shocked how bad it’s gotten. Like i couldn’t even find something remotely close, because google sniffed out a word and would rather sell me something
I feel like every search engine is shite now.
I tried searching for a food place near me that has “Istanbul” in the name and even searching for the full name with my town, I was only getting results for restaurants IN Istanbul
What a weird way to do it. Suppose some sales person sold them on a “”shortcut””.
Offer great semantic search on a site/app, show only items that exist (with clear markings when in-stock), add pin to store map. Home Depot, Target, Walmart… they’ve all figured it out.
Exactly, this isn’t a difficult problem to solve. If it’s even a problem in the first place, because a sensible layout with good signage is enough for 99% of customers. A website to navigate a store is probably not even worth it in terms of net time savings, but it’s convenient for customers and makes them more likely to go to your store if they can see something is in stock before they even leave their home, which is where the real return on investment is. An LLM can’t give you live stock updates, so that’s half of the value proposition gone.
This is another case of really not needing ai 😅
Target literally tells you what aisle everything is on in the app. Just put the data in your website or some shit and then put kiosks around with the website
Or people can just talk to an actual human being and ask them instead. I kinda hate that society is being increasingly designed around people being antisocial. I have social anxiety, I don’t need help with not talking to humans, I need help with talking to them more often
I mean… this. Supermarkets aren’t that big. If you’re recording where everything is shelved (and that’s a big IF, I doubt it’s worth it), then a good old search will do the trick just fine.
But also, forget even asking. I would assume supermarkets want you to roam around the store looking for things, because… well, that’s how you bump into crap you don’t need and buy it anyway. Seems like a weird lose/lose.
About the “wanting” you to roam. I don’t know if it’s practice everywhere, but my old supermarket reshuffled their sections every year or so (not majorly, just a little but) to make you look again for the product you wanted and encourage you to try out new stuff you hadn’t noticed before. While I felt it was a hit manipulative, yes, supermarkets want to you search for items.
I did this job once long ago… but it has more to do with the companies and how much they paid to have a certain amount of space and at what level, and to add and remove new products… but yeah sometimes they just moved a whole section to another isle that wasn’t fun…
If you’re recording where everything is shelved (and that’s a big IF, I doubt it’s worth it),
Last summer my cousin worked the night shift stocking shelves at a local “superstore” and yeah, they have some database that printed out sheets telling them where a given pallet needs to be shelved. Dunno about smaller stores.
I kinda hate that society is being increasingly designed around people being antisocial.
I like it in some ways, but in many it’s just freaking sad. Every time I go to my local grocery store, people would rather wait 5 minutes to start self checkout rather than zero wait to have a person check them out. I find it really bizarre. I highly doubt most of those people have the levels of legit social anxiety I have. I don’t really have an explanation other than they’re used to avoiding people. Maybe COVID has a lot to do with it.
I think it’s just becoming more and more normal for people to find it slightly more stressful, draining, or mentally demanding to interact with other people, and so avoid it kinda reflexively when they can
And perhaps it’s not until that feeling gets to a point of causing impairment (as is the case with social anxiety) that you’re forced to grapple with how much is lost when you don’t interact with others
where are you going that the self checkout lane is longer than in person? a lot of people seem to hate self checkout for no good reason
At my supermarket 5 minutes before closing time. Because the glory coin counters take time to clean/close, they close them ahead of time, so the self checkout lane has only one unit to use while all the human cashier are free
I personally hate the self checkout if it’s one of those with the super sensitive scale where if a particle of dust lands on the item shelf, it then complains “put back the item on the shelf” and I’m forced to wait 2 minutes for the operator to unlock it. If I buy deli items It Always fails because it reads from the barcode it’s 200 grams but with the package it is actually 210 grams
Why does it matter where? The grocery store has usually about 4 humans running cash registers yet the several self checkout machines cannot keep up with the demand. There will be a line of 20 people at pretty much all times.
Also I think people hate self checkout lanes for good reasons but I’m not sure why you bring that up as I’m pointing out that this isn’t seen by people’s actions in my experience
i was asking where because I’ve literally had the opposite experience. people will line up for a human and ignore the open self checkouts at all the stores I’ve been to here in the Midwest lmao
Yeah that used to be common but it’s not what I’m seeing recently
Shit was the highlight of my day when I worked retail.
That’s shitty.
Is it this one ?
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2025/06/24/walmart-unveils-new-ai-powered-tools-to-empower-1-5-million-associatesAI-powered translation tool helps eliminate language barriers
Walmart has created a real-time translation feature, available in 44 languages, to facilitate multi-lingual conversations among associates and customers. The tool enables conversations in both text-to-text and speech-to-speech formats and is enhanced with Walmart-specific knowledge. For example, if the customer asked for something more specific — like “Where’s Great Value Orange Juice?” — the tool would recognize “Great Value” as a Walmart house brand and keep it properly translated or referenced.Sure isn’t!
Honestly, that is not a bad use of AI. It’s close to what I would consider the “ideal” use of the technology.
I cackled loudly irl.
Your supermarket should be restocking after hours when there are no customers in the aisles.
Your supermarket should be restocking after hours
So, you’re saying that I should be working nights.
Have a magical Disney day, @reddig33@lemmy.world.
Stocking before the store opened or after it closed used to be the norm. As did cleaning the store.
Stores also used to (a) be much smaller, and (b) open for shorter hours. We open at 7am and don’t close until 10pm or later. We’re also open all night on Fridays. If something runs out on Friday morning do you really expect customers to wait until Sunday?
So if something g runs out the customers have to wait until tomorrow for it to be restocked on the shelf? Great idea.
Yep. Pay staff nights/overtime to do a job that could be done during normal hours. That’s a definite recipe for success.
Stocking at night doesn’t equal overtime. It used to be the norm. Doing it during customer hours means you’re blocking aisles, creating a hazard, and probably violating fire code (and ADA if you’re in the US). It also doesn’t help that the aisles are now filled with personal shoppers (who should be pulling from back of store) and promotional displays.
