Maine Walmarts May Soon Require a Subscription for Self-Checkout

Over the last few years, self-checkouts have become quite controversial.

I'll admit, I'm one of those people who absolutely adores self-checkout lanes. As someone who talks for a living, there often comes a certain point in the day where I just want to shut my mouth and have some personal quiet time. Or, I just have like three little things, and will be out of there in a minute.

But I also have witnessed several people lose their frikkin' minds over the mere existence of self-checkout lanes. They list any number of reasons ranging from people losing jobs, to them saying they already pay for the items, so you should be paying them to ring in their own items. Weird flex, but hey... people love to be mad about stuff these days.

Walmart and Target have both expressed an interest in no more self-checkout.

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There's been talk online for a while that both big-box giants were looking at limiting self-checkout lanes in their stores. There's a lot of theft that can be incurred in these lanes, because they're essentially unsupervised. At the same time, doing so would obviously require them to open more traditional checkout lanes.

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Many would likely rejoice at this idea. Others, not so much. Self-checkout has become something of a way of life for some people. Granted, it's also frustrating when you have a handful of items for self-checkout and there's someone ringing through $300 of groceries. There are definitely pros and cons to both sides.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Walmart may look to offer the best of both worlds... for a price.

According to WABI, Walmart may require a subscription to one of their paid platforms, to access the self-checkout lanes. Walmart+ customers, as well as delivery people with Walmart's Spark program. People without these subscriptions would have to use a traditional lane to checkout their items. Customers have already reported the changes in some areas.

On the other hand, apparently managers in each store have the power to make changes as they see fit, based on the needs of customers and employees. So some changes may be more subtle in certain areas, and more bold in others. Right now though, everything is in the testing stage. It may be some time before there are sweeping, across the board changes. But expect to see something different...

There might be even more changes at Walmart... Check this out...