It began, as these things so often do, with the banks. “Bank tellers cost money”, they realized, so they looked at the data: which showed that something like 95% of a teller’s job involved handing cash to customers.
So: ATMs. And instead of talking to a human when collecting your money, you had to rely on remembering a personal identification number and hoping that the mechanized teller wouldn’t screw up the money count. Of course, there was a “benefit” to the customer: 24-hour banking (provided there was a working ATM where you needed it). So one more little dent in human interaction, because who doesn’t want convenience?
Supermarkets did the same thing, eventually, when scanning systems became good enough to work more or less unsupervised — well, one supervisor to oversee eight checkout terminals was cheaper than paying eight checkout clerks, after all.
Here, the benefit was not customer convenience, because it takes the average customer much longer to process their own transaction than it does a trained cashier. But screw the customer’s time and inconvenience, as long as we don’t have to pay for it, went the retailers’ thinking. (I know this, because I was there when the self-checkout systems were first tested.)
But what about the long waits in line we had to put up with before self-checkouts? Well yes, there is that; except that the long lines were caused by supermarkets not having all the registers manned in the first place — the first of such cost-cutting measures, you see.
In both cases, fewer human employees meant lowered expenses and higher profits. (It may have been sorta-kinda-excusable for retail supermarkets, who run on impossibly-tight profit margins — but far less so for banks, who have no problem charging usurious rates on credit card balances, for instance, in an industry which has never had to deal with tight profit margins (remember: pay 5% on customer investments, charge 12-19% for loans and 27% for credit card balances — and those are just the most obvious ones).
Anyway, some folks in Britishland, of all places, have decided that enough is enough:
Campaign by senior citizens to boycott automated tills aims to protect local jobs and fight isolation in the community.
Myself, I use cashiers most of the time, provided that I won’t have to wait for too long in line.
But what really gets up my nose is when there’s a waiting line in both automated and cashier points. That is when I go all Old Phartish and find a manager to yell at. And I mean yell, because frankly, it’s past the time for politeness and it’s what they respond best to.
My line: “I was in the supermarket business for over thirty years, from stock clerk to cashier to store manager to senior executive in Head Office. I know how supermarkets run, and you’re running this one really badly. Now are you going to open another register or must I get in touch with your district manager or Area VP?”
And if he whines that there just isn’t another cashier available, I yell: “Then YOU open the till and run it until one does become available.”
Sometimes I just identify as a woman. Named Karen. And it doesn’t feel too bad.
Finally, from the above linked article:
The backlash appears to be even bigger in the US. Under new laws proposed in February, supermarkets would have to comply with rules that would limit self-checkout use to when a regular manned lane is open. Major supermarkets including Walmart, Target and Costco have begun limiting or banning self-checkouts.
That has not been my experience locally, but I wish it was. I’d better end this post before I get really cranky.
Sometimes when I go to Walmart the fuckers running the store have zero regular check outs open, only the SELF ABUSE line aka ring your own shit out.
I will do it if required as I need the stuff but it is bullshit.
Even if there are a few people in line at a regular check out I go there whenever possible. I thank the cashier for ringing me out.
I’ve seen Too many horror stories online of people using the self abuse line and a glitch happens and then the store calls the police and the shopper gets charged with theft.
Also the self abuse line is slow as fuck.
I don’t even understand how a dozen kiosks that have to be serviced and have a few people
Watching them are cheaper and more efficient than just having 2 or 3 regular lines open.
Samuel L Jackson once said in a movie “This is some fucked up repugnant shit”.
Are you allowed to buy alcohol at the self-abuse kiosks? In California you have to use a real checker, at an old-fashioned checkout line if you have alcoholic beverages in your cart.
I don’t drink, However I have seen people bring dirty water to the self abuse line. They have a clerk come over when they try to ring it (as an alert comes up) and the clerk brings the customer to a sub register and checks id and rings them up separately.
You can NOT buy ammo in the self abuse line. One time sporting goods register was closed. So some fool (who did not have a Massachusetts ltc license to carry) walked me and another customer up front. The manager, front end manager and the cashier (3 people) checked my and the other persons gun license. Then they said “we need your drivers license” we asked why almost in unison. “So that we know this ltc is actually yours. You need a GOVT ISSUED ID”.
We are both like , first the ltc is government issued and second fuck you we are not showing you anything else. Either sell us the ammo or keep it.
The argument went on for a few minutes until they did it and the manager then chastised us both for “being rude and difficult”
I called corporate and their response?
We’ll look into it
A few days later I got an email
“You were buying items that needed to verify you were 18. You were asked for ID. We complied with all applicable laws “
I replied
“No that’s not true. You demanded a 2nd id and accused me and someone else of being rude. Do you check 2 ids for people using snap and welfare cards to verify that those cards are actually theirs”
Reply to that a few days later
“No. We do not. We are not allowed by law to discriminate. “
Fuck the self abuse line.
Fuck people on welfare as well.
Self-service gas stations started the trend and showed supermarkets the way. I’m old enough I remember a gas station attendant pumping the gas, and while that was happening, he cleaned your windows. I’m not old enough to remember him checking your oil, although I’m told it happened in my parents generation. Then the ’74 gas crisis hit and gas stations transitioned to self-service. Other commercial sectors took notice and it’s boomeranged from there.
Now we’ve gotten to AI self-service kiosks at the fast food joint, where we put in our food order while it constantly tries to upsell us on our order. And I find the “suggestions” for additional items quite annoying. But they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t profitable for them.
You can still get the experience of having someone pump your gas for you in Oregon, where by law you’re not allowed to pump your own gas in most places unless your vehicle is diesel. But don’t expect the often stoned attendants do anything else than stand there after taking your credit card and sticking it in the gas pump’s card reader. It’s a bullshit make-work jobs program for stoners and retards too fucking dumb to do anything else. Kind of like YSA.
Sorry, TSA, not YSA.
“And if he whines that there just isn’t another cashier available, I yell: “Then YOU open the till and run it until one does become available.”
Sometimes I just identify as a woman. Named Karen. And it doesn’t feel too bad.”
That’s NOT a Karen. That’s common sense. And the world since Covid is really lacking common sense. Many people since Covid are lazy, stupid, and just plain fucked up. I don’t even enjoy going out places anymore. It’s just an exercise to get what I need and get back home with the stuff I need.
Allow me to play Devil’s Advocate.
I preferentially use self checkout. My local supermarket has two types, the little ones suitable for a couple items and ones with a belt like the cashiers use for larger orders. I’ve gotten scanning and bagging down to a science and can do so much faster than the supposedly trained cashiers.
Last time I went on a line with a human cashier there were two people in front of me on line. The process went:
beep
10 seconds of chatting between customer and cashier
beep
rinse repeat for two carts full of stuff.
Plus I don’t have some yahoo putting a cantelope on top of my bread, all the frozen stuff goes in one bag so I can get it in the freezer when I get home, etc.
Maybe it’s because I worked professionally with computers for 37 years. You know, when people first meet me they think I’m a grouchy, cantankerous, anti-social old bastard. Once they get to know me they realize they were mistaken. My parents were married.
Mark D
I welcome self-checkouts because I despise human interaction in shops. Automated systems don’t engage in banal conversation and they get me on my way more quickly. My only exception to this is for grocery runs that involve numerous items without barcodes. A trained cashier can ring those up in a half second where my having to poke through touch-screen menus is much slower.
I had the misfortune of being trapped into going to Walmart with my wife last week. Thankfully, she is a quick shopper. With a cart full of essentials, we present to the long (12-15 people and growing) line at THE SINGLE open lane with a cashier. The self-serve line is doubly long.
My wife is a sweet, patient, delicate little flower. I am not. I lasted about 30-seconds before I confronted one of the many dozens of employees who were milling about, acting busy but not actually checking people out. First one says, “I’m on break.” Second one says, “I’m not trained on the register.” I spy with my one good eye a management looking chap, talking to some vendors. I query, “Are you the manager? “Yes I am.” I said, “As much as I respect your company hiring the disabled and infirm, you have the oldest and slowest employee in the history of Walmart on the only register open, the line is building as we speak and I’m very curious as to your action plan on this increasingly serious issue.” He responds, “We don’t have any staff available at the moment.”
I said, “See this cart full of perishable food and sundry items? What do you think will take longer, you putting it back on the shelves or you finding me someone to take my money for it as Mr. Walton intended?” Two minutes later, 3 cashiers appeared to the ready.
The brief round of applause was just a bonus for a job well done.
A line I used in a job-employment interview a half century ago seems to have been totally forgotten in todays business economy:
Q- Define “Management”?
A- The successful accomplishment of tasks through others!
Today, we have too many people posing as Management, and too few actually accomplishing it.
Hot. Button.
I worked for a MAJOR grocery retailer for twenty-five years here in the southwest. It was a union shop in a right-to-work state. I joined the union to get better-than bare minimum wages, insurance, and a retirement plan. My choice, and I have no complaints there.
Until Major Retailer decided that self-check was the next big thing. I watched as the union workforce was decimated. Union workers were declared “surplus” as the self-check scanners were installed. they were given the choice of finding alternate employment, losing their full-time status and all the union contract benefits that went with it, or being transferred to another store thirty or more miles away where in less than a year they would be put through the wringer again. Being a union shop was little help. Contract renewals would take over a year instead of the month or two that precious negotiations took. Benefits were minimized. Pay raises didn’t keep up with inflation. Then came the “two-tier” contract, where new hires were brought in at less than half the pay rate of the “old contract” employees. Those of us who were “old contract” found our hours cut once again, or we would be “disciplined” out of our jobs and replaced by new hires at lower pay rates. Stores that used to have a dozen or more registers would have half or more of them replaced overnight with self-check. Old contract employees found that there just weren’t any hours available for them to work. They weren’t fired, they just never got scheduled anymore.
What about your union, you ask? In a right-to-work state, the employer doesn’t have to negotiate when contracts come up for renewal. The sessions would open with the union listing their requests. Then the retailers would reply something like “Oh, go f*ck yourselves.” Then the union would say something like “We’ll strike!” The retailers would have a good laugh and walk away. Eventually, if the union ever did call a strike, the retailers would start running full page help wanted ads and replace the strikers.
I went through that once. When it started up three years later for the next contract, I took my retirement. Over the years since, I have watched the retailers’ profits climb slightly as they used the money they saved from payroll and benefit expenses to cover the money they lost by lowering their prices to try and keep customers from going to the big box stores. I suppose, all these years later, now that I see the self-check registers being removed, I can take a little joy in knowing that the corporate world is finally figuring out that human interaction with their customers can’t be replaced by technology. It’s too bad that so many good people got screwed over in the learning process.
Karen du Toit has a nice ring to it.
Personally, I like the self checkout for when I have a couple items or want to use it as an ATM.
I don’t like standing in line to self checkout or using one when I have a cart full. In that case, I prefer interacting with a cashier.
When there are lines backed at them all, maybe the thing to do would be to load the cart with expensive perishables and leave it at one of the unmanned checkout isles.
Dick move? Sure, but losing profit on the spoiled items and having to pay an employee to clean it up might just get their attention if enough people did it.
If they force you to be an asshole and be all the asshole you can be. >:-[
While I think stealing is wrong , I applaud those who put different bar codes on more expensive items , and ring the items up at a cheaper rate.
Yes I know stealing is wrong
But so is slave labor.
I was a cashier many years ago. I got paid to be a cashier.
I’m not interested in doing work for free
Let’s see now, if you went to a party and proctologist there, would you say “hey I got this wart growing off of my asshole sideways can I drop trou right now and have you take a look no charge?
# Self checkout is slavery
# Fuck working for no money