We can’t feasibly stop automation, nor should we. We SHOULD be taking the profits back from billionaires that they’ve stolen since time immemorial. Automation means less work overall. But we need to ensure the workers actually benefit from that.
Self checkout is not automation. It’s making the customer do the work.
Automation would be: Stick an RFID-tag to all your items, make me check in with my phone at the entrance. Automatically “scan” all the items when my cart and my phone leave the store at the same time. Bill me.
Yeah. That’s like saying a buffet automates waiters.
As the customer you’re already taking stuff out of your cart and putting it on the counter. Maybe automation isn’t the right word, but it’s certainly more efficient than having a human clerk. It removes a bottleneck.
But it’s not a bottleneck. It’s the opposite. An experienced human checker will tap in the code for oranges way before you find it in their stupid menu.
It is a bottleneck, because the experienced human checker is only entering orange codes for one person at a time. There could be ten people all checking themselves out simultaneously. Even if one or two get slowed down by a menu, it’s still a net decrease in average time spent at checkout.
And introduces others: “unexpected item in bagging area”
True, but isn’t that an implementation issue that can be fixed, rather than an inherent issue with the concept?
Those Amazon just walk out stores like you’re describing are extremely expensive to setup though. Even a spall space requires tons of cameras and sensors, all items to be placed on shelves a certain way, lots of networking backend, etc. Most business are unable to do so right now and I’d say most buildings can’t accommodate it. My work looked into putting one of those in one of our spaces as a test and the cost/work to make it happen in even a small area of our business wasn’t worth it
So it will take more time until the tech is cheaper. Or, hear me out, this one is crazy: We employ cashiers!
Or a fuckton of cameras: https://youtu.be/NrmMk1Myrxc?si=olYDaZnChc4LN47k
I went to a gas station that had this… it was kind of incredible. Put like 10 items on a sensor and it recognized all of them. Then put them in a bag.
I think in terms is control, more people feel as though they can stop/protest automation more than they can take profits back. I think that was the luddite mentality? I speculate, it’s been a while since i learned it in school.
They tried the latter, and when that failed, they tried the former.
The ‘job killers’ argument is kinda bullshit. I want to kill jobs - I want to eliminate all labor that can be automated, such that in the ideal perfect future, no human ever has to work; they can spend every moment doing things they enjoy without worry.
But self checkout is not automation. No human work has been eliminated. It is the same exact fucking checkout process, only now the customer does it instead, and the store doesn’t pay the cashier. And no they don’t pass that savings on to you because of course they don’t, they just pocket the difference.
That’s all true, but just to be a bit nitpicky I’d argue some human work has indeed been eliminated by self checkout.
Cashiers main job is to scan your stuff, but in order to do that they also have to stand around waiting for you and other customers for hours on end, and when you arrive they have to do emotional labor of acting cheerful and upbeat
Still I wish we didn’t live in a society where increased efficiency leads to people being homeless with no jobs.
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There’s at the very least a lot of social and managerial pressure to act cheerful. Even if you didn’t do it, many people would because it’s effectively required of them. Something being technically a choice doesn’t remove the social pressures that make many feel that it’s not a choice. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been used as rationale to fire people before, which means that for some, it isn’t a choice (and most people are scared of losing their jobs, so won’t try to find out).
In tipped roles, it would definitely result in less pay.
I can’t think of the last time someone working a register was anything more than polite. 99.9% of the time, we don’t speak in any meaningful way. Their work neither adds value to nor takes value from my day. Which, to be clear, makes me want their jobs to be much, much better. At least give them something to sit on, for goodness sake.
It’s a choice right up until you get fired or reprimanded for not meeting some arbitrary criteria
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There will be a screenshot of this comment in a murder documentary someday.
With normal checkout the customer is still the one putting groceries on the belt, and in most cases putting the bags back into the cart. Hell, at Aldi’s you have to bag the shit yourself anyways.
I don’t see how “scan and bag” is any more intensive than “place everything on belt(which is annoying tetris when you have lots of shit), stand around waiting for cashier to scan and bag”.
Aldi backs up that tradeoff with commensurately lower prices, though.
“intensive” isn’t the right term here, IMO. Pushing me to do the cashier work via self-checkout is more effort than what I do at Aldi. It doesn’t need to be “carry this pallet across the Grand Canyon” to be objectionable.
And the cashier is probably going to screw up the bagging. Does the ice cream go in the insulated re-usable bag, or does it go in a regular bag next to the room temperature canned goods? Pretty good chance it goes into the uninsulated bag, the tomatoes end up in the insulated bag with the milk, etc.
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How about universal income, free education, free health care, and free housing?
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I love your spirit, but that world doesn’t exist. Capitalists and conservatives will never allow for a utopian society where people can enjoy their lives on the masses, no matter how advanced production or whatever elses automation becomes. It’s always going to be millions suffering and a small majority having more wealth and power than they can even use in a lifetime.
That’s stupid. Capitalism is the reason why humanity has advanced so quickly in such little time and why we have the technology that we do.
wrong
Such a powerful argument
I presented exactly as much evidence as you did
Good point. :). Btw. Capitalism is shit. It’s not sustainable, and it has to stop.
This is a bad, regressive argument.
We need to legislate the benefit of automation for society.
Trying to bury the technology never works if it is indeed an improvement. Technology is benign, people twist it for malice.
This is the same argument as still using oil based street lamps, just to maintain a the lamplighting jobs that don’t need to be done anymore.
It’s a Bizaare hill to die on to fight to maintain jobs a robot can do faster and better, rather than fighting to make society the beneficiary of such advances through taxation. Either way, you have to fight the billionaires and will probably lose, so why not fight for a better outcome than maintaining shitty, menial jobs?
This isn’t automation though. The self checkout tech is the same tech that a cashier uses. It’s not automated. A human still does the work, they just don’t get paid for it.
I mean, technically the self-checkout package has automation in it, a scale and cameras to “automate” the process of ensuring what was scanned was what was bagged, a process by which the station determines when employee intervention is necessary, etc. Automation tech is in there, things a person used to do are being done by technology, but again it wasn’t created to improve the way it was done before, merely to make the owner more money.
The registers with cashiers also have scales and cameras and systems that are built in to determine when a CSM is required for things like overrides. The tech is not appreciably different. It’s not automation.
Our self checkouts completely abandoned the stupid scales except when needed for fruit and such. Enforcing the packing with scales makes for a fucking horrible experience.
I haven’t seen any cameras though.
Personally I like that they are more space efficient and time efficient.
Here it is also common to carry around a hand scanner in the store and just pay by docking the scanner without having to pack up anything. It’s way quicker.
Seriously, fuck the scales. The grocery store near me recently shut theirs off. I found the manager and thanked him. That thing annoyed the piss out of me.
Here it is also common to carry around a hand scanner in the store and just pay by docking the scanner without having to pack up anything. It’s way quicker.
I don’t have that here but I do have a regional grocery chain that allows you to use your phone as the scanner as you shop, then you just go to a terminal at the end of your trip and scan a QR code to finalize. I love it.
Past advancements in medicine has destroyed a lot of jobs… in funeral business. Some jobs should be let go of, if it makes everyone’s lives easier ultimately
I disagree with your analogy. The death rate has held steady at 100% for quite some time now. The only difference is how wrinkly the corpses are.
Their business is certainly less frequent, though, surely
Lamp lighters, cotton pickers, wooden teeth makers, wool socks knitters, muck rakers, medical leech farmers… the list of jobs and entire industries destroyed in the name of “progress” goes on and on. We’re going to be totally out of jobs any day now!
I always go with buggy whip manufacturers and ice delivery people.
I remembered Mr Omar from Everybody Hates Chris trying to get the mayor that wouldn’t care for safety elected so his funeral business gets more, well, dead people.
Tragic!
I would love a “robotax” where automation is encouraged, but with the caveat that it is also heavily taxed. Not so much that it’s cheaper to have employees, but enough so that the people who’s jobs have been replaced can still get an income. Be it through major subsidies or the ultimate subsidy: universal basic income
Your instinct to use a systemic solution is good. My concern would be the tax gives corporations the wrong incentive (Some percentage of jobs could be automated but would still be cheaper to hire people). As another approach I like worker cooperatives because if they automate some task the financial benefit goes to the employees. The problem is there aren’t enough large scale worker co-ops, so I’d like to see them get tax advantages, preference on government contracts, grants, etc to drive their development.
I think the idea is the tax applies only to any money saved through automation. So if an employee costs $2500/mo and automation costs $500/mo, the company saves $2000/mo. Lets say the tax is 75%, the government takes $1500/mo from the company, but the company is still saving an extra $500/mo from automating, so they are still incentivized to do so.
Then that money from the tax could be used to pay for things like job retraining courses for people displaced by automation, or even maybe UBI.
Tbf, shouldn’t we be doing both? Legislation is slow and in the meantime, people need to be paid. Honestly, to me, this doesn’t feel that dissimilar to the argument around tipping. Yes, we absolutely SHOULD be paying waitstaff a living wage so tipping isn’t needed but in the meantime, you should still tip your server.
Tbf the owners will get 100% of what they want because this country was bought decades ago. I was talking decent world. This will be inflicted on us, and used purely to further satiate the greed of the owners whether we protest for it not to be used and/or to be taxed.
I was just saying it would be stupid to put half our effort into both when one has a much better today outcome in a decent country. But in practical terms? The people are brainwashed, the owners hold all the cards, and this will be used to fuck us all, because the people gave up their voice in the 80s in exchange for the lie that giving the owners everything would benefit everyone. Now we’re trapped in this workcamp of a country until collapse, likely long after everyone alive today is dead, because anyone who lives here paying attention knows the peasants are too chickenshit and/or brainwashed to revolt.
Okay but fuck those stores where the self checkout “bagging area” is smaller than the size of a hand cart. Like what fucking idiot designed those.
Heh. I know that idiot, at least one of them. Personally. At least for some of the major retailers that are making the switch who have very small bagging areas.
It’s not his fault, it really isn’t.
He got a list of requirements. Table is so big, scale is so big, computer is so big, and so many checkouts in so much area.
Every component has a minimum size requirement, and when the client isn’t willing to bend on how many check outs must fit, the only other option is to shrink the one thing that can, and that’s the bagging area.
Then they pile a bunch of shit in the bagging area, they have these giant caddies to hold thousands of bags, and they put three of them up there.
My gripe is there’s not enough room to put items from my bag to scan.
Need to put my bag on the bagging side, but it’s full. Gotta take stuff out until scanned. No where to put the stuff, so I pile it on the floor.
Fuck me for bringing my own bag I guess
My understanding is that it’s about loss prevention.
They think that self checkout is a high risk for shoplifting, so they want it to be a manageable amount. They need confidence in their security monitoring strategy before they go all in.
After a long trial here including employees monitoring and AI monitored video, the store near me now has maybe 30 self checkouts, with 10 having nice big bagging areas. I never have to wait in line anymore.
People who want you to suffer.
“job killer” automation in a reasonable society should mean less need for work and the same amount of resources available (if not more).
But we will never reach the point where we consider picnics, parties and painting more valuable than manipulative marketing, unnecessary polluting but profitable industry, and especially the all-important busywork. Do something profitable. Anything profitable. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a net negative to society, just do something.
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Personal hobbies aren’t valuable to a society, they’re valuable to individuals. A guy playing video games 6 hours a day is probably okay with it, but it’s not contributing anything to society. There’s an argument to be made for people to be guaranteed time to themselves for their well being, but the idea that an economy can function off of picnics and parties is stupid. Automation is not going to make work obsolete, it’ll just shift the economy in a different direction. Just like what happened in industrial revolution 200 years ago.
Automation, AI, should be there to make people have more time doing things that they want to do. Means less “mindless” work, more time for art, reading, philosophy, education, spending time with family, etc. The “banal” work which can be automated should be automated so that more people have more time doing things above. I think the concept of universal income with free education, free health care (and maybe free housing) can work with the automation of work.
A guy playing video games 6 hours a day is probably okay with it, but it’s not contributing anything to society.
Unlike profitable activities like manipulative marketing, unnecessary and polluting industry, and meaningless busywork?
Oh and yeah, mobile game developers. Whale-catching sure is a huge contributor to the rest of us, right? It’s so much better that they’re putting 8 hours a day into catching whales/addicts, than wasting time just chilling. Right?
My argument, since you need it clarified, unlike the majority; A lot of work doesn’t contribute to society. We might as well let them not work.
Saying “You need to work no matter what no matter how!” with our policy decisions and then hoping people will pick something important has so far led us into a civilization of extreme over-production of useless goods, successfully marketed to easily manipulated apes. A civilization of high pressure/intensity and low focus. The amount of stress experienced in video game development studios is a ridiculous example of this culture of ours.
Additionally, I have personally been told by an instructor at a metalworking/welding shop that it’s a huge part of my job to ensure I’m not replaceable, that is my priority. And automation/efficiency will only hurt me by making me and my time less valuable, and I should not pursue it. That kind of cynicism frankly makes me completely disinterested in continued participation.
Self checkout is so much faster than waiting in like with all the other goobers
If self checkout is optional, yes it’s great for small order quick shops. However too many stores are moving to 100% self checkout with just a single lane or two for full service and that’s when it becomes a problem.
Grandma’s got a cart full of clothes, no computer experience, and all day to scan and fold each item one at a time…
100% self checkout with just a single lane or two for full service
It’s not 100% if there are other lanes.
Lol, you’re right. I was thinking how the single lane is usually the service desk, where they are also dealing with returns, online orders, customer issues, etc, I hardly consider it a dedicated lane experience. It becomes clear the intention is 100% self checkout while that lane is for exceptions.
Plus there are some items that are genuinely easier to deal with with an actual human, like anything really light or anything with purchasing age restrictions. If you try and go through a self check with a birthday card and a box of cold medicine it’s pretty much a guaranteed bad time.
Only if the goobers aren’t also using the self checkout in front of you and fucking up every other item somehow requiring assistance.
Some machines will just randomly choke too.
Where I live there’s usually a load of machines in the same space they’d have two conveyors, so even with slow people it ends up being a lot faster.
only if you’re lucky enough to not have to wait in line for the self checkout
Nah, self checkout is WAY faster when there’s no line, but self checkout waiting behind a line of those goobers would be WAY slower. One time I scanned, bagged, paid, and loaded up an entire cart of groceries in the time it took the dude next to me to scan like a handful of items.
I don’t want to interact with a cashier either but fuck if I want to scan my own shit either.
It’s also way more awkward when something goes wrong and now I have to initiate.
“Warning! Shopping bag content is 0.00003pg heavier than expected. Please call an assistant or remove the excess items.”
Thankfully, Walmart stopped weighing items entirely. Not sure how it affects theft, but it sure makes the checkout process smoother. Don’t need to wait after scanning each item. Don’t need take reusable bags out of your cart. And they replaced almost all of their checkout lanes with self checkouts.
Too bad Walmart is evil, because their checkout is 👌 and Sam’s scan-and-go is just 💦. Every other store is just bad UX.
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Doesn’t every store have cameras everywhere recording everything?
These detect extra things you didn’t scan. I had to have an employee come check my items because I was using a cardboard flat to hold the canned goods I was buying. It locked up as soon as I moved the cardboard to the bagging area.
They always had that.
I think that a lot of people here are confusing “introversion” with having social anxiety.
Being an introvert doesn’t mean that you’re scared of socialization. It means you generally prefer quiet time over socializing.
From Merriam Webster:
A person whose personality is characterized by introversion : a typically reserved or quiet person who tends to be introspective and enjoys spending time alone.
You can be both, but they are definitely not the same thing.
Yes! I’m quite an introvert but I prefer a cashier so I can remain in my mind until I need to pay.
I’m an introvert and I prefer self-checkout because I never have to pause my podcast. With regular check-out I have to pause it for a few minutes while they’re scanning my stuff in case they have a question like “do you need bags? do you have a loyalty card?” Other people might enjoy those interactions, or might want to make small-talk with the cashier. I just want to keep listening to the podcast.
I’m willing to do a bit more work and spend a bit more time if I don’t have to stand there being attentive to the cashier.
I’m with you man. I love just listening to music while I scan my items and going away. Entire shopping process without interacting with anyone at all. Amazing.
Exactly. Cashiers are perfectly nice people, but I don’t really look forward to interacting with them. It doesn’t improve my shopping experience in any way. OTOH I really enjoy my podcasts or music, let me stay in my bubble enjoying my thing and my shopping experience is better.
This is a reason I used to admire Japan, before the days of self-check out. Japan had amazing vending machines that would sell you a huge variety of things. Again, get what you want without having to interact with other people. Win!
Most of the cashiers I interacted with years ago weren’t really nice. Not that I blame them, the job is boring, the hours are terrible and some people are horrible to serve. As someone who worked in retail and finished every single shift tired and cranky, I get why cashiers don’t want to interact with you anymore than you do want to interact with them.
So hooray for neither side having to interact!
Also, i dont know any of the produce codes and i have no idea what they have scallions classified under in their search system.
Me too, I feel like there’s too much going on and people watching my “performance” of how well I self-checkout and I worry they’re getting mad at me for not being all smooth about it. It’s always crowed in that area too, not for me.
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Exactly. Generally, I have fun when talking to people, but social anxiety makes me prefer to stay at home and talk to less people.
I would like self-checkout a lot more if those cost savings were passed on to the consumer instead of being hoarded by ownership.
It’s the classic paradox. Technology and automation could be used to reduce the amount everyone needs to work and enrich everyone’s lives as long as those gains are distributed properly. The distribution is the problem.
no one wants to be a checkout clerk at walmart for $6 an hour. This is a good thing. The problem is that the people displaced aren’t taken care of. We should be pushing for ubi instead
I prefer self checkout but I do feel you should be getting a discount for using it.
You can give yourself a discount, if you know what I mean
If I try scanning something 5 times and it doesn’t register, I’m moving onto the next item. It’s a discount for not teaching me how to use the machine properly.
Me ringing up my PS5: I think this is the right button
Scanner: Weigh your ONIONS… place your ONIONS in the bag
Now just gotta find a store that keeps consoles unattended on the shelves…
Weird how often my thumb lands atop the barcode…
They should also give me a discount for my travel to the store and taking the items off the shelf.
I feel like that’s a bit different.
Grocery stores used to get your items off the shelf for you but now we do that. I think we’re just used to a cashier scanning the items, so it will obviously take time for people to adjust.
At least the latter is a similar sort of change. Cashier/storekeep work is now something the customer does.
I dunno about this one, like what kind of a discount would apply here? How big?
I think in a vacuum a self checkout saves a buck or two per purchase for the store. But that is in a vacuum, you still have a cashier assisting the checkout, maintenance for scanners, probably security watching the scanners etc. I don’t doubt it saves cash, but like probably cents per purchase.
Eh, you have one cashier watching like 7 checkouts. Security would be a thing regardless, because they’d otherwise be watching to make sure nobody walks out with an item or steals from the register.
I’m not really convinced they do a lot of maintenance on those things, for how well they function, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the machine at its best.
Wouldn’t know how much they really cost per machine in order to account for that, either, but the Walmart near me only ever has one person watching the self-checkout, doesn’t even always have anyone on an available lane, and they’ve had those things forever.
That one, at least, didn’t buy more tech for covid. They just fired some people and redirected the customers. They’re saving more than enough in wages.
The fact that, from experience, my average customers per hour divided by pay (and thus, the rightful customer discount for doing my job) still adds up to a matter of cents probably says more about how much I was being paid.
I wonder, what was your average customers/h assuming non-stop traffic? I don’t remember how fast it went, I was doing shelves and warehouse, subbed in register only a few times when work was basically done in the evening.
Gotta say tho, can’t imagine why someone would go cashier in a supper market, it is the most brutal place for sure. Working shelves and warehouse was pretty chill all things considered, at least we could go pee and have smoke breaks, as well as eat on our own schedule.
Fuck me I love self checkout.
Makes stealing so much easier too.
I would too if they offered lower price on items. But they don’t so I am not doing their work for them and paying the regular price. Same thing with gas stations. It’s a way for owners to earn even more money on top of premium they are already scalping off of us.
Gas stations do not make money on gasoline. They only get a few pennies per gallon. They make their money on the inside sales of pop/beer/twinkies/roller dogs. The oil distributors set the gas prices, not the station, it’s real time pricing. The station doesn’t even own the gas, until it comes out of the pump. While it is in the tanks in the ground, it is still the distributors. It’s one of the few real Just In Time pricings you will see.
Perhaps where you live, here it’s a different matter. They have quite a nice margin.
I use it because it’s faster.
I’m not waiting in line for someone else to scan my 5 items.
Exactly. With with self checkout, customer throughput is increased because if you have 2 cashiers and 20 customers, you’re being limited by the 2 people doing all the work while everyone else waits. If you have 6 self checkout instead, average wait time is 1/3.
It’s faster when you have 5 items. When you have like 100 items, it’s not faster.
It’s definitely still faster, even more so if you didn’t go to the store alone.
I use it even if it’s slower because I don’t have to pause my podcast to make smalltalk or answer questions like “do you need a bag?”
The real job killers are the employers
The irony
I’m so tired of people with social anxiety always trying to appropriate introversion. Introverts don’t have that kind of phobia of personal interaction.
