Hi,

Would loading items from a customers cart onto the counter for
scanning be the job of the cashier or the shopper?  Or would that be
someone else as well?

Would be interesting to get an idea from various points, specially the
subcontinent.

Also, what's the going rate for cashier jobs in the US and Europe?

What's the fraud/theft rate for them as well in those regions?

Need averages and rough numbers, references would be required.

Thank you.

/Lizardnation

---

Request for Question Clarification by nancylynn-ga on 28 Jun 2003 15:26 PDT

Greetings lizardnation-ga:

I'm sure many of us would be glad to attempt this research for you;
however, I respectfully suggest that you re-post your question about
fraud/theft rates as a separate question. Otherwise, you should
consider increasing the fee you're offering, as you're requesting a
considerable amount of data.

Regards,
nancylynn-ga

---

Clarification of Question by lizardnation-ga on 28 Jun 2003 15:35 PDT

Umm, ageed. :-)

/Lizardnation

---

Clarification of Question by lizardnation-ga on 28 Jun 2003 15:36 PDT

That was agreed. :-)

Hope to get the first portion of my question answered first and then
the rest as clarification would be ideal.

/Lizardnation

Greetings again lizardnation-ga:

Thanks for being kind enough to increase your fee. I have attempted to
answer all facets of your question:

"Would loading items from a customers cart onto the counter for
scanning be the job of the cashier or the shopper?  Or would that be
someone else as well?

Would be interesting to get an idea from various points, specially the
subcontinent.

Also, what's the going rate for cashier jobs in the US and Europe?

What's the fraud/theft rate for them as well in those regions?

Need averages and rough numbers, references would be required."

Loading groceries -- or whatever type of merchandise --  from the cart
to
the counter or conveyor appears to be the customer's responsibility,
the
world over. I've lived in several different U.S. states and have never
had a
cashier unload my grocery cart for me. Nor have I ever heard of a
cashier
unloading the cart for a customer. I have seen packers, and cashiers
who aren't busy, assist elderly or disabled customers with unloading
their carts. The only other exception: if you're buying something
large and heavy, like a TV or a computer, employees will help you get
the item into your car.(Most U.S. stores that sell large items have
corded scanner units, so the cashier can reach over and scan large,
heavy items in your cart.)

The real issue appears to be not so much unloading items onto the
counter, but who packs the bags? That varies from store to store, not
just country to
country. (For example, depending on each week's specials, I shop among
three
grocery stores in my region. Only one of those stores has "packers"
(aka
"baggers"), who pack the scanned groceries into bags for customers AND
then takes the bags out to customers' cars. (A nice service indeed,
but the
salaries for packers add to the store's overhead, resulting in higher
prices.) But the other two stores I shop do bag my purchases.

The only U.S. stores where you can count on packing your purchases 
are "warehouse" type grocery stores, primarily located in urban and
suburban
areas. These stores are predicated on offering foodstuffs in bulk and
at significant discounts, so, to keep overhead low, shoppers in these
kinds of
stores routinely pack their purchases. In the USA it is understood
that if a store doesn't pack your groceries, it's because it's a store
that offers
steep discounts.

Apparently, as alex_p-ga noted, having to bag groceries yourself is
quite
common in Europe. Here's a Web blog from a Swede who visited Miami and
was
stunned to encounter "baggers" who pack groceries:
http://jogin.com/blog/archives/000227.php

Also see "A Survival Guide for Australians moving to Amsterdam," by
Paul
Dwerryhouse:
http://leapster.org/guide/amsterdam/

Scroll down to subheader "Shopping." This section cautions that, when
in Amsterdam, one must pack one's own groceries. So, apparently,
baggers are as common in Australia as they are in the USA.

This travel site:
http://www.slowtrav.com/switzerland/instructions/foodshops.htm
alerts tourists that will have to bag their own groceries in
Switzerland.
(Not only that, you have to pay a very small fee for use of a cart!)

Worth a glance: "Grocery Store Etiquette" (It pertains to what
cashiers are
willing to do -- and not happy to do) was written by a former
supermarket
cashier:
http://www.msu.edu/user/victorjo/grocerystore.htm

And, as jbf777-ga noted, there are emerging technologies to make
shopping
easier. (Or DO these technologies make it easier? That is a point of
some
contention!)

See this article about how the European shopping environment may
change:
"New gizmos to help supermarket shopping go high-tech are being shown
at the
EuroShop conference" at:
http://www.hardwaves.com/display/2002048/2002048105347_0.html

Here in North America there are also efforts underway to make grocery
shopping more efficient with "self-checkout." This process eliminates
the
job of cashier, but "monitors" do hang around the registers to
discourage
theft and to assist shoppers who may be having trouble running their
credit
or debit cards through the checkout pay machine. (I, personally, can
never
seem to scan my cards and, being a hapless schmuck in general, always
need
assistance with this!). You can read a good overview of self-checkout
in this
January 2003 article, "Self-checkout is here," which appeared in the
KioskCom newsletter (appears to be based in Toronto):
http://www.kioskcom.com/articles_detail.php?ident=1656

This Sept. 24, 2002 article "'Have a Nice Day.' Declan's Diary:
Service With
a Snarl, Continental Style," by Declan Curry, appears at:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNN/DailyNews/declansdiary020924.html

If you scroll down to the subheader "Self-Service Shopping," you'll
see that
Mr. Curry is quite unimpressed with such experiments, now underway in
Britain.

half-baked.com offers some solutions for making scanning and bagging
more
efficient, and there are comments from grocers from around the world:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Supermarket_20Tetris

As for the going rate of pay for cashiers in the USA and Europe:

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics:
http://www.bls.gov/
Lets you search and calculate job types and typical wages (you can
also
search by region), at this page:
http://data.bls.gov/labjava/outside.jsp?survey=nc

Using the Dept.'s site I found that for "Level-One" (which I take to
mean
"entry-level") cashier, the nationwide, median pay rate was $6.70, as
of
January 2001. Due to the sluggish economy, pay rates haven't increased
over
the past few years, so that figure is quite probably still accurate as
of
2003.

Here's some close-up, regional views of cashiers' typical earnings:

In the state of Virginia, as of 2001, cashiers made an average of
$14,330
per year, which is not a great income in any part of the USA:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:xKBnbJYQvx8J:www.vec.state.va.us/pdf/ou
tlook_brochure.pdf+%22salary+cashiers%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

The mammoth, international Wal-Mart chain has recently come under fire
for
allegedly under-paying its employees, including cashiers. This
article,
"Wal-Mart Wages Don't Support Workers," by Stan Cox, focuses on the
Wal-Mart
Salina, Kansas:
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_5466.shtml

From that article: At the Salina Wal-Mart, "a cashier earns a starting
hourly wage of $6.25. After Social Security and Medicare taxes, the
paychecks for a month would total $1,016 for a full-time 176 hours.
(That's
40 hours a week, which would put this cashier in a better financial
position
than the many employees who work 32 or fewer hours a week."

This page:
http://www.ccusa.com/WEUSA/summer_ind_emp/s_independent_emps_scvi.html
notes several job listings for cashiers in the Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina,
area. Each pays about $6.75 per hour.

http://www.wages.com.au/
is a valuable site that lists links for many countries. I followed
this
site to several international links, including this one:
http://www.jobs-in-europe.net/
Which lists tons of job search sites across Europe. Unfortunately, I
had a surprisingly tough time with many of these engines, some of
which don't
translate to English. Those that do offer English don't have cashier
or retail clerk among their job categories! (These tend to be
professional, white collar job categories.) But you may want to go
through some of those engines to see if you have any luck.

After striking out at that site, I decided to try another search using
"Europe wages cashier" and I came up with this very handy
international
chart: "A Cross-Country Comparison of Wages: the Big Mac Index":
://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:Z7cuu18QGVYJ:www.wdi.bus.umich.edu/co
st%2520rica/orleyhandout.pdf+Europe+wages+cashier&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

This chart illustrates what McDonald's clerks/cashiers earn in various
countries. Fast food restaurants' pay rates are very analogous to pay
rates
at grocery stores and general merchandise stores, so this chart will
give
you a good idea of cashier wages in various countries. For instance,
in the
USA, the average McDonald's clerk earns $6.00 per hour; in Sweden, a
McDonald's clerk earns $8.09, and in Korea it comes to $1.41.

As to your final question, you mean fraud/theft rates among cashiers?
(If I
misunderstood, please correct me and I'll do another search.)

I couldn't find detailed numbers, but I did find some general
information on
this matter:
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=
cache:ytteFlPmZVwJ:www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/police/Publications/Brochures/shoplift.pdf+cashiers+commit+fraud+theft&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

"Cashiers may use "short ring ups" - ringing up a lower price on the
sales register to cover money they've taken from the till. Or they may
over-charge customers and pocket the difference or undercharge other
employees or friends."

Also, unscrupulous clerks may keep customers' credit card receipts for
use in "identity theft":
http://www.ci.norman.ok.us/identity_theft.htm#HowTheyGotIt
charge customers and pocket the difference or undercharge other
employees and friends.

Here's one set of statistics related to identity theft, from the Feb.
15, 2002 issue of  dcMiliatry.com's "Pentagram":
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/7_06/features/14205-1.html
"In 2001 Virginia had 5,355 complaints of fraud and identity theft,
Maryland had 4,550 while the District of Columbia had 955 complaints.
Virginia consumers paid $4,333,219 in fraudulent charges, followed by
Maryland with $2,180,085 and D.C. with $168,492, according to Consumer
Sentinel Complaint Statistics and Trends data. Consumer Sentinel is an
online fraud complaint database used by law enforcement agencies in
the U.S. and other countries."

I then went to Consumer Sentinel's site:
http://www.consumer.gov/sentinel/trends.htm
to look for general trends. That site is a bit sluggish at the moment
& refusing to fully load, but you may want to peruse it later.

But again, I couldn't find numbers specifically for cashiers who
commit embezzlement or other forms of theft and fraud.

Search strings used:

"cashier loads groceries" (this string did not result in even one hit,
further emphasizing the apparent fact that this is the customer's job,
pretty much worldwide.)

"self-scanning groceries"

"self-checkout"

"pack your own groceries"

"scan your groceries" Europe U.S.

"salary cashiers"

"Europe wages cashier"

"cashier earn"

"labor statistics" (name of country)

"wage statistics" (name of country)

"checkout clerk wages" (name of country)

"statistics cashiers fraud theft"

I hope my research is satisfactory. If I have misunderstood anything,
please clarify and I will try another search.

Regards,
nancylynn-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by nancylynn-ga on 29 Jun 2003 14:36 PDT

Hi lizardnation-ga: 

First, I want to apologize for the bizarre formatting problems I've
been having lately. I'm sorry, as I know it makes it difficult to read
data.

I'd neglected to address your request for information about "the
Subcontinent," a term which usually refers to South Asia: India,
Pakistan, etc. But I wasn't sure if you perhaps meant Central and
South America?

Regarding the Subcontinent, the best I could find was this site on
"Labor Laws in Pakistan" at:
http://www.sweatshops-retail.org/NRF%20Website/pakistan.htm

It notes that "The law provides for a monthly minimum wage of about 42
dollars (1,650 rupees), a maximum workweek of 54 hours, rest periods
during the workday, and paid annual holidays. Although this wage
provides a meager subsistence living for a small family, minimum wage
benefits and other regulations affect only a small part of the work
force, and most families are large. In general, health and safety
standards are poor."

I think we can assume that Pakistani cashiers/ retail clerks fall into
the minimum wage category.

If by "subcontinent" you meant south of the U.S. Border:

According to Mexico's National Commission of Minimum Wages:
http://www.mexicanlaws.com/Minwages2003.htm
Check-out cashiers in that country now earn about 52-56.45 a day. (I
assume this is in pesos.) If you scroll down, you'll see a table
outlining typical pay per profession in Mexico.

You can also refer to the "Big Mac" index I gave you earlier for an
idea of cashier wages around the globe.

Two other tidbits:

Re: alex_p-ga's comment about cashiers being allowed to sit at stores
in Germany, according to this site:
http://www.ncr.com/repository/case_studies/store_automation/sa_heijn.htm
 . . ." differing customs have emerged around the globe. In North
America, Asia, and Australia, checkout clerks usually stand. In Europe
and South America, they customarily sit." (I vote for letting cashiers
sit down!)

Re: your question about theft and fraud, I just found this: 

Supermarket Strategic Alert's Trends & Predictions, issued in 2000:
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:2VlJ7j9ok_oJ:www.supermarketalert.com/pdf%2520docs/1trends.PDF+%22South+America%22+supermarket+cashier+wage+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
reports that the total cost of employee theft in supermarkets now
exceeds that of shoplifting. "Employee theft is up 34% over the past
three years" and amounts to about $13 billion a year. (It's not clear
if that data is global or if it pertains only to North America.)

I hope this additional information gives you a better picture of
conditions for cashiers around the globe.

Regards,
nancylynn-ga

Good job and yes it was the Asian subcontenent. :-)

With the clarification, you covered it well.

Thank you.

/Lizardnation

1) From a practical point of view, it's really the customer's job to
put their groceries up on the counter.  The cashier is physically
located on the other side, so s/he would have to awkwardly walk around
to the shopper.

2) The process is much quicker if the customer is rung up while s/he
is putting groceries up on the counter -- doing two processes at once.

3) Sidenote: Certain new shopper-cashier-combo technologies are
emerging, where the shopper is the cashier by ringing up himself.  Not
only is it the shopper's job to put it up on the counter, it's now the
shoppers job to ring it up.

4) A robotic arm should take care of all this stuff. :)

In Germany the cashier's ONLY job it to scan the item. The customer
must place the items onto the conveyor belt and, once scanned, must
either reload the items into the shopping cart or bag them (with
purchased or saved bags - these are normally not free). Also, the
cashiers sit in chairs or stools. Why do cashiers in America put up
with such back-breaking work? (I suppose the answer is necessity, but
surely providing stools would not be impossible.)

alex_p

Thank you Jb, that does bring in a strong point!

/Lizardnation

Thank you Alex,

German, and I'm presuming a few more regions in Europe, are more
environmentally aware in practice than the rest of the planet put
together.

/Lizardnation

Here in the Sub-sub continent of Australia ;) we've recently been
introduced to the German style of supermarket cashiering through the
Aldi chain. It's a vast change to what we've been used to and it seems
quite good.

Several years ago, I used to go to a supermarket called Jewel where
instead of unloading a trolley onto a conveyor belt, the trolley was
pushed right up to the checkout and the cashier would take each item
out, input the price (before scanning) and then place it in another
trolley. Then I'd go and pack it all myself in boxes. I loved this
system but the supermarket went broke and only then did I learn there
was lots of injury to cashiers with all the bending and lifting.

It is now the usual practice to unload the trolley ourselves and wait
for the cashier to scan the products so that the belt moves and I can
unload more of the goods out of my trolley. At Aldi, they've thought
this through with their extra long conveyor belts. I can unload the
entire contents without the usual stopping and starting and balancing
tricks. I really prefer to have the cashier sitting down as they do at
Aldi rather than the usual standing for hours in the one spot -- I
wonder if there's a prevalence of varicose veins or back problems in
later life among cashiers. With Aldi, we have to either purchase our
plastic or calico carry bags or recycle our own from home. It's
definitely a lot more work for the customer to pack up the groceries
once they been guided through the scanning machine; the cashier
doesn't lift anything, she/he just 'paddles' them throughthe scanner
(the extra long bar codes make this possible) onto the tiny bit of
benchspace at the end of the register which means that I'm frantically
trying to pack my things in some semblance of order (keeping foods
away from detergents, etc) all while trying to keep an eye on the
scanned prices.

This is very different from the usual supermarket practice here where
the the cashier scans the product and then bags it and lifts the full
bag onto the bench for the customer to lift into the trolley. The Aldi
prices are much lower (although their range of products is tiny) and
their employees are paid nearly AUD$20 per hour start off pay. That's
significantly higher than the norm for Safeway or Coles here where I
believe they receive approx. $15 per hour.

I do prefer Aldi, though. I feel a bit less manipulated there than I
do at the Safeway or Coles stores and the cashiers don't seem quite as
unhappy at Aldi as they do at the other stores. Must be the fact that
their legs aren't tired and they're earning a fair wage!

It is not uncommon for grocery clerks in Oklahoma to remove the
groceries from the cart and scan them. Most "Homeland" supermarkets in
my area are constructed with bays for the carts in such a way as to
make this simple.

Well, I stand corrected! 

I didn't find *anything* about cashiers unloading carts, but I guess
the practice does exist. As I noted, I've lived in -- and certainly
shopped in -- several different states, and I've never had a cashier
unload my cart! Maybe I should move to OK. (The heck with unloading
and bagging: what I really want is for stores to send someone home
with you to carry the groceries from your car to your kitchen.)

Regards
nancylynn-ga

> yes it was the Asian subcontenent. :-)

I thought so, but I've had miscommunications before! I did try
searching for cashier wages in Japan, but didn't have much luck. That
Big Mac index shows minimum wage rates for several Asian countries, so
you can get a good general idea from that.

Glad I could be of help,
nancylynn-ga