I have always been a sucker for shopping, especially as a child because of the adult-like feel that I got from pushing the cart by myself or by being able to scan and bag my own items at the self-checkout stalls. I've been working a lot over the summer and was provided three meals a day where I was, so there was no need for me to drive half an hour to go grocery shopping. It's been quite a while since I was in any store bigger than the local Dollar General.
The other day, I decided to go grocery shopping with a friend of mine at the Kroger in the next town over. We grabbed our cart and as we walked into the store, there was a huge display with individual scanners lined up on it. I walked up to the display and read what the scanners were for. The first thing out of my mouth was, "What? No freaking way!" I grabbed the scanner and then read the steps on how to use it.
Step 1: Grab the desired items, and scan the barcode.
Step 2: Place item into cart or reusable bags.
Step 3: Proceed to check-out.
At first, these little gadgets don't seem like very much and some people may think of them as a nuisance more than a useful tool. Let me tell you just why these little things are the most innovative and magical devices created for grocery shopping.
First things first, these scanners can scan anything and everything that you want to buy. From packaged products to fresh produce, they will scan it all. Produce that needs to be weighed for pricing gets set on the scale, and you scan the scale's barcode, which then tells the scanner the price of the produce based on how much you have.
Secondly, the scanners keep a running total of all the items in your cart. If you decide to put something back after you scanned it, all you have to do it press the remove button, then scan the item again and it will remove it from the total.
The scanners are super easy to use and reduce a lot of time at the end of your shopping trip due to the easy checkout process. My friend and I used the self-checkout option at the end of our journey and went to one of the checkout stalls where we were instructed to scan the barcode on the checkout machine which automatically paired our scanner with the machine and rang all of our groceries up. Then, all we had to do was pay.
Through all of the good things that came out of this shopping tool, the one downfall was that the scanner wouldn't process coupons, and we had to scan those when we were at check out. Other than that, I would definitely recommend this option to shoppers that it is made available to, and I hope it makes its way around to other stores.
