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In reply to the discussion: No cashiers, please: Futuristic supermarket opens in Mideast [View all]bigtree
(85,996 posts)9. I worked in grocery retail for 36 years
...eliminating cashiers is a corporate, profit-inflating, dick move.
It's all about eliminating workers and eliminating the labor costs.
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 its not because Im 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 NCRs 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 its 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 checkoutsthe main selling point is lower labor costs, Andrews writes.
https://gizmodo.com/why-self-checkout-is-and-has-always-been-the-worst-1833106695
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 its not because Im 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 NCRs 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 its 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 checkoutsthe main selling point is lower labor costs, Andrews writes.
https://gizmodo.com/why-self-checkout-is-and-has-always-been-the-worst-1833106695
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it was defensible when people could argue cashiers weren't actually losing jobs over this
bigtree
Sep 2021
#7
The thing is, the rate at which this replacement is happening is rapidly increasing
kcr
Sep 2021
#68
I like nostalgia, but I don't cling to the past. Especially when it comes to improved service...
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#24
No. Slow, error-prone, inefficient "service-with-an-attitude" is nostalgia.
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#28
no, I understood, right from the start of your defense of this Dubai abomination
bigtree
Sep 2021
#29
No, I just described embracing the future and not clinging to horse-and-buggy days.
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#54
just a load of naivete to think profits go to consumers, or 'retraining workers' What bs.
bigtree
Sep 2021
#82
I think it's the job of unions to ease the shock of transitions caused by new technology...
Silent3
Sep 2021
#39
if my union presented that as their operating principle they'd be run out of town
bigtree
Sep 2021
#63
I'm not all that speedy either... but unless there are FIVE OTHERS just like me...
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#52
Next up, they'll expect you to pump your own gas and place your own phone calls!
brooklynite
Sep 2021
#26
There's a little sundry shop like that in the old terminal at Washington National.
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#100
Not a fan of featherbedding. But something will have to be done as more and more workers are
Hoyt
Sep 2021
#91
I know they tend to put the most commonly-purchased items in the REAR of the store...
NurseJackie
Sep 2021
#99