No cashiers, please: Futuristic supermarket opens in Mideast

Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst

There are fewer better poster children for shitty automation than self-checkout. I have literally never, as in not one single time, successfully completed a checkout at a self-service station in a grocery store without having to call a human employee over. And it’s not because I’m an idiot. Or not entirely, anyway. Incessant, erroneous repetitions of “please place your item in the bag” and “unknown item in the bagging area” are among the most-loathed phrases in the 21st century lexicon for a reason, and that reason is that self-checkout is categorically awful.

Hence, I turned to Alexandra Mateescu, an ethnographer and researcher at Data & Society, and a co-author, with Madeleine Clare Elish, of “AI in Context: The Labor of Integrating New Technologies,” which uses self-checkout as a case study, to find out why.

“We as consumers have been acculturated to the concept of ‘self-service’ for decades, so doing labor that used to be done by workers has largely been naturalized,” Mateescu tells me.

According to a 2009 study by Christopher K. Andrews, the author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy and an assistant professor of sociology at Drew University, NCR claimed that each of its self-checkout lanes, which cost around $30,000 each, would “pay for itself in twelve to eighteen months.” Similarly, PSI “advertises that its machines save businesses up to $225,000 a year.” The cost savings, of course, were to come from automating people out of work.

“By automating labor, self-checkouts may allow businesses to replace cashiers with machines, and thus shed significant labor costs... Most of the self-checkout manufacturers’ websites readily acknowledge their savings in labor-related costs; a report on NCR’s website states that ‘self-checkout…allows stores to cut labor costs, which account for more than ninety percent of the costs associated with running the front end of a retail store.’ Likewise, Optimal Robotics notes that a four-station, one-attendant configuration would require approximately one hundred and fifty fewer labor hours a week compared to the regular checkouts…”

Just to reemphasize, the pitch from the automated checkout makers was and is all about labor savings and much less about any perceptible improvements for customers. The automated checkout companies do try to nod to some consumer benefits, but it’s a distant and deeply secondary tier of the sell. “While the manufacturers also promote consumer advantages that may indirectly affect businesses‚ most commonly shorter lines and faster checkouts—the main selling point is lower labor costs,” Andrews writes.

https://gizmodo.com/why-self-checkout-is-and-has-always-been-the-worst-1833106695

Businesses looking to automate millions of workers out of life-sustaining jobs to feather their billions of dollars in profits, will always get hurrahs from consumers too obsessed with saving a minute or a few cents to consider the livelihoods of workers.

I wouldn't vote for anyone pushing this abomination

workers are 'nostalgia'...got it.

And who are you supporting politically? (rhetorical question) You'd love Dubai.

...you just devalued 100s of thousands of workers because someone 'broke your eggs' and was 'rude' to you.

This is heartless, short-sighted, corporatist claptrap.

According to a 2009 study by Christopher K. Andrews, the author of The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-It-Yourself Economy and an assistant professor of sociology at Drew University, NCR claimed that each of its self-checkout lanes, which cost around $30,000 each, would “pay for itself in twelve to eighteen months.” Similarly, PSI “advertises that its machines save businesses up to $225,000 a year.” The cost savings, of course, were to come from automating people out of work.

“By automating labor, self-checkouts may allow businesses to replace cashiers with machines, and thus shed significant labor costs... Most of the self-checkout manufacturers’ websites readily acknowledge their savings in labor-related costs; a report on NCR’s website states that ‘self-checkout…allows stores to cut labor costs, which account for more than ninety percent of the costs associated with running the front end of a retail store.’ Likewise, Optimal Robotics notes that a four-station, one-attendant configuration would require approximately one hundred and fifty fewer labor hours a week compared to the regular checkouts…”

Just to reemphasize, the pitch from the automated checkout makers was and is all about labor savings and much less about any perceptible improvements for customers. The automated checkout companies do try to nod to some consumer benefits, but it’s a distant and deeply secondary tier of the sell. “While the manufacturers also promote consumer advantages that may indirectly affect businesses‚ most commonly shorter lines and faster checkouts—the main selling point is lower labor costs,”

https://gizmodo.com/why-self-checkout-is-and-has-always-been-the-worst-1833106695

Cashiers provide a valuable service in retail stores, which is why consumers like them.

A cashier can help answer any questions you might have about a product and can direct you towards the item that you’re looking for.

With some of the customers laughing at and mocking the worker.

neglecting to hire enough workers in the communities they serve are just profiteering off of the residents.

you just described profiteering

You're 'splitting hairs' to defend big box stores eliminating workers for your convenience, and corporate profit.

Defend workers.

none of the dollars saved by the companies evident anywhere for customers.

Mocking workers made redundant, as well. Just awful.

and somebody broke your eggs.

So glad most Democrats don't talk this way.

mocking of the unemployed

Go talk to someone else. This is just sad.

The only change here is that the customer does the work for the company for free.

Times do indeed change... But not always for the better or even the betterment of people. Are you also on board with how the times are changing in Texas?

Not in New Jersey.

Such a willing acquiescence to the death of communities.

89. you've taken shots at workers, essentially my co workers

...false, uninformed, broad swipe insults of grocery store cashiers.

And you want me to treat you with comity? You got as much as I can manage, more than you deserve for the hatefulness with which you've attempted to label grocery workers, imo.

and selfish arguments against workers based on your own 'inconvenience.'

'Why,' indeed.