People are hating the new Loblaws self-checkout system

Robots are increasingly capable of doing human jobs, it's true, but that doesn't mean machines are great at everything they try.

Humans far and wide have been declaring war on the new robo-cashiers at Loblaws since the company started rolling them in place of their fleshy counterparts at many Canadian locations.

Loblaws’s new self-checkout interface is horrible. No text. Just inscrutable symbols.

— Joel Rodgers (@nefariouscarrot) May 7, 2018

It's not that they're snarky like the Shoppers Drug Mart super-villains of August 2017 — it's that they're bad at what they do.

You see, the Loblaws self-checkout machines don't communicate with words or text, only colourful cryptic symbols.

"The self-checkout machines at Loblaws decided words are out and now all the buttons are just symbols and it's gotta be the stupidest thing I've ever seen," announced one customer on Twitter.

Whoever redesigned Loblaws’ self-serve checkout kiosks should be heavily criticized. Simplification shouldn’t come at the expense of clarification. #ux #userexperience #ui #customer #experience @loblaws #digitalmarketing pic.twitter.com/YB19JDTLn3

— TorontoDiary (@TOdiary) May 4, 2018

Others online are calling the new system everything from "confusing" to "literally the worst example of user interface design the world has ever seen."

Apparently it malfunctions quite a bit.

Saw this at Loblaws today when self checkout malfunctioned. Brilliant ad placement by Ontario PCs. #onpoli pic.twitter.com/6Co7EZzOR8

— RandallDenley (@Randall_Denley) April 29, 2018

"Loblaws new self-checkout system is terrible and unusable," wrote someone to us by email today. 

"Around rush hour, the self -checkout area in Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws had people throwing their arms up as they struggled to navigate through a system that makes no sense."

That reader would "would like to know who's responsible for making" the frustrating, crash-prone system, as would some others on Twitter.

@RealCdnSS What were the coders doing when they designed your new self-checkout system. Yikes! Good apps are intuitive. This one needs someone who speaks weird icons. @PresChoice #loblaws

— joy gregory (@joy_joygregory) May 7, 2018

But hey, it's not all bad. One local Loblaws shopper reported last month that an employee gave away an entire bag of rice for free "because it kept crashing all the self-checkout machines."

Robots: Can't love, can't feel, can't even handle rice.