“Nightmare” says you. “The only thing that makes grocery store checkout tolerable” says I. I’ll wait longer for a self-checkout rather than subject myself to a human who will try to make conversation with me (which forces me to take out my earbuds), be annoyed by the fact that I want to use my own bags, underload my bags, take forever, ask me required scripted questions, and put the bread underneath a can.
Frankly this is one of the most disheartening editorials I’ve ever read on Gizmodo. “Cumbersome?” “Confusing?” “Error-prone?” “Terminator?” “Frustrations?” “Wasted time?” Just say you don’t understand how to use them and have no intention to learn. Weird flex for a tech journalist.
“67% of people prefer self-checkout, but based on no data, that’s probably changing, because we think it should and probably a lot of people are upset about the stealing that isn’t really happening!”
Don’t forget the part about how “67% of people prefer this thing, but all companies are quitting that thing because of a lie they cooked up to convince people to accept price gouging.”
The only people upset about the “stealing” are the companies that let it happen.
Said this the other day - 30 years ago I worked retail, our security would detain you in a secure office with cameras, and let the police handle you.
Every security shift had at least one cop working security as a second job, or were retired cops.
These companies stopped detaining shoplifters because their insurance gave them a deal not to. Well, then they don’t get to complain about theft.
Self-checkout likely has little bearing, since the systems use scales, have an attendant watching, and use cameras on your face and the checkout itself.
I smell a lot of bullshit. There’s no way the vendors of these systems didn’t address all this stuff before deploying them - otherwise they could be held contractually liable for failures. No way vendor security leadership, nor the grocery chain security leadership let these systems go out without addressing these concerns.
“Nightmare” says you. “The only thing that makes grocery store checkout tolerable” says I. I’ll wait longer for a self-checkout rather than subject myself to a human who will try to make conversation with me (which forces me to take out my earbuds), be annoyed by the fact that I want to use my own bags, underload my bags, take forever, ask me required scripted questions, and put the bread underneath a can.
Frankly this is one of the most disheartening editorials I’ve ever read on Gizmodo. “Cumbersome?” “Confusing?” “Error-prone?” “Terminator?” “Frustrations?” “Wasted time?” Just say you don’t understand how to use them and have no intention to learn. Weird flex for a tech journalist.
It literally ends with the sentence, “It turns out human beings might still have something to offer.” I hated the entire article.
Yeah, aside from the factual inaccuracies and the axe-grinding so obvious that it may as well be classified as an op-ed, it’s so smugly sanctimonious.
“67% of people prefer self-checkout, but based on no data, that’s probably changing, because we think it should and probably a lot of people are upset about the stealing that isn’t really happening!”
Don’t forget the part about how “67% of people prefer this thing, but all companies are quitting that thing because of a lie they cooked up to convince people to accept price gouging.”
The only people upset about the “stealing” are the companies that let it happen.
Said this the other day - 30 years ago I worked retail, our security would detain you in a secure office with cameras, and let the police handle you.
Every security shift had at least one cop working security as a second job, or were retired cops.
These companies stopped detaining shoplifters because their insurance gave them a deal not to. Well, then they don’t get to complain about theft.
Self-checkout likely has little bearing, since the systems use scales, have an attendant watching, and use cameras on your face and the checkout itself.
I smell a lot of bullshit. There’s no way the vendors of these systems didn’t address all this stuff before deploying them - otherwise they could be held contractually liable for failures. No way vendor security leadership, nor the grocery chain security leadership let these systems go out without addressing these concerns.
Also:
How on Earth did an editor allow an article containing both of those sentences, only two paragraphs apart, to be published?