There was also a time when people would get pay to press an elevator button for you. But we don’t do that anymore because those things are super easy and having someone doing it for you won’t make the process faster.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off the most about the self-checkout is that people take forever to scan their stuff. When I was working as a cashier I would have an average of 50 clients/hour. There ain’t no way those self checkout are more efficient considering the time people take.
From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.
The majority of these self checkouts also rate limit you intentionally or otherwise (likely due to weight checking on the bagging area). I know I can scan a lot faster than they let me given a proper setup
And why is that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the business benefits by making the customers the employees, too? Would a business be in any way incentivized to make paying customers also perform labor for them?
So? I get through checkout faster because I don’t have to wait behind old people who take a fucking eternity to find their wallet. For me it’s a win/win.
It sucks that some people will lose their job to it, sure. But that’s what happens literally every single time society progresses. I’m also not sad about the manual telephone exchange lady losing her job.
That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.
I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.
The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.
People working those jobs aren’t from a passion for registers or retail commerce. They don’t have many options or can only work part time to accept a low paying job with few responsibilities other than keeping accurate count when making change. I’ll prefer cashiers until we have better social support for people that need those jobs.
I don’t “want” my job either, but I do it to make a living. If local jobs disappear from the community so some rich guy can add another million dollars to his pile, that reduces the number of entry level jobs available locally to people getting into the job market with no safety net in place for them. Just so they can not pass the savings along to us.
The grocery store in which I used to work has been desperate to hire cashiers for years, really since the start of the pandemic. There were some days that we had only two lanes open because that’s all the staff that we had. During busy times, the store manager, the store owners, and sometimes the managers-on-duty would go up to the front to do check-out. The store installed more self-checkout lanes out of necessity.
Nowadays, I go shop there only in the evenings, and there are enough cashiers because they’re all high school students. But the help-wanted sign at the front of the store is still offering open cashier jobs. They’re certainly not eliminating jobs that people desperately need.
To me, this has always been more of a boomer complaint.
The things boomers complain about aren’t always wrong. I ain’t their damn employee.
I’m also not an employee of the vending machine company. I’m also not an employee of the gas station.
I don’t really see what added value a cashier checking out my items for me has.
There was also a time when people would get pay to press an elevator button for you. But we don’t do that anymore because those things are super easy and having someone doing it for you won’t make the process faster.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off the most about the self-checkout is that people take forever to scan their stuff. When I was working as a cashier I would have an average of 50 clients/hour. There ain’t no way those self checkout are more efficient considering the time people take.
From what I’ve seen, the slower average time is made up for by having more of the stations. Depending on arrangement, you can fit three self checkouts in the same area as one traditional checkout. In my experience, the self checkout line is always moving faster overall.
The majority of these self checkouts also rate limit you intentionally or otherwise (likely due to weight checking on the bagging area). I know I can scan a lot faster than they let me given a proper setup
They are quite a bit more efficient when you consider that there’s only 1 staffed register open, but 8 self checkouts open.
And why is that? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the business benefits by making the customers the employees, too? Would a business be in any way incentivized to make paying customers also perform labor for them?
Of course they are. What of it?
So? I get through checkout faster because I don’t have to wait behind old people who take a fucking eternity to find their wallet. For me it’s a win/win. It sucks that some people will lose their job to it, sure. But that’s what happens literally every single time society progresses. I’m also not sad about the manual telephone exchange lady losing her job.
That’s not an apples to apples comparison. I am buying a single thing at a pump: fuel. I boop my card. I stick nozzle in hole. I pull lever until it stops. Vending machines? Second verse same as the first. I boop card. I push button. I take chippies, I walk away. Vending machines specifically are purpose-built for self-service.
I spend maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes at these things. The only work I do is tapping my payment and pressing a button or two. Groceries are a whole different animal. It’s scanning, weighing, coding, bagging, loading, and paying. It’s a fuckton more involvement by the customer. I don’t think you can in good faith compare self-checkout to a vending machine.
The business is incentivized to trick you into performing labor for them. Part of the cost of my groceries is for someone to have a job doing that. If I’m gonna do that labor for the store, I should get an employee discount, at least.
People working those jobs aren’t from a passion for registers or retail commerce. They don’t have many options or can only work part time to accept a low paying job with few responsibilities other than keeping accurate count when making change. I’ll prefer cashiers until we have better social support for people that need those jobs.
Those self checkout lanes are only there so they can cut jobs while charging more for groceries.
I’ll defer to @whotookkarl 's comment as they put it best. No one “wants” those jobs.
I don’t “want” my job either, but I do it to make a living. If local jobs disappear from the community so some rich guy can add another million dollars to his pile, that reduces the number of entry level jobs available locally to people getting into the job market with no safety net in place for them. Just so they can not pass the savings along to us.
The grocery store in which I used to work has been desperate to hire cashiers for years, really since the start of the pandemic. There were some days that we had only two lanes open because that’s all the staff that we had. During busy times, the store manager, the store owners, and sometimes the managers-on-duty would go up to the front to do check-out. The store installed more self-checkout lanes out of necessity.
Nowadays, I go shop there only in the evenings, and there are enough cashiers because they’re all high school students. But the help-wanted sign at the front of the store is still offering open cashier jobs. They’re certainly not eliminating jobs that people desperately need.
I’m asking this sincerely: where are those people working now? They gotta be working something, right?
I mean we can agree on some things, no? I literally want to stand there while someone checks out my stuff. I have to work to pay for stuff? Oh sweaty.
If I have to self checkout, I should get a discount since an employee was not needed.
That discount is negated by the higher theft rate.
If you are worried about theft, don’t bake in opportunity.
That’s why they removed the self scan stations. It was a short lived experiment.
Where? My region has only gotten more.