These are a godsend for those of us with picky orders (“No cheese and no mustard but extra onions and kangaroo sauce, large coke bucket, small disgusto-fries.”) At both J-in-the-B and Carl’s Jr. I tend to prefer them. I prefer humans having jobs, too, but having been a cashier I can’t feel too bad for this particular set. I hope they find better.
My hope is that human interaction will not be further reduced in retail stores. Obviously consumers will make the ultimate decision, but given a choice I’ll patronize live checkers and counter help. (OTOH, I don’t seek out full service gas stations.)
I’m not at all sure if the employment rolls for grocery stores and fast food were cut in half that the displaced workers could find jobs elsewhere. There’s a chance it would be a significant move toward third world status, and an increased split between the haves and have nots.
But, hey,OTOH it might be just fine.
They’re pretty expensive compared to cashless kiosks, both to buy and maintain.
Cashless - Touchscreen, computer, card swiper = 0 moving parts, no periodic maintenance other than cleaning
Cash enabled - Touchscreen, computer, card swiper, coin acceptor, bill acceptor, coin dispenser, bill dispenser = 50 moving parts and someone has to load it with cash / take cash away periodically.
Cash recycling - all of the above with complicated mechanisms to sort the coins and bills, putting them into place to be given to other customers as change = 50 more precision moving parts
Back to the main topic, add some kiosks off to the side for folks who can handle automated systems, and you can offload some work from your cashiers. People who want personalization can wait on line for a human to take their order. Hell, write a McD ordering/payment App for your phone, and let people order from the parking lot.
Based on my experience watching families of six staring at the scanner and mumbling to each other in Kazakh and bifocaled octogenarians trying desperately to shove bills into the receipt printer of a machine with a giant NO CASH ACCEPTED sign on it, I am not optimistic either.
Sure, but then you get the Home Depot situation where they have only the self-serve stations open. So, you can use that or get in the long line of the cashier working her station and managing the four self-serves.
-Joe
Came in to mention that. I’ve never had any trouble operating them, and the Sheetz system probably allows a wider range of choices than whatever Mickey D’s will be offering.
On the other hand, I avoid grocery, Wal-Mart and Home Depot self-checkouts at every opportunity. Just a personal quirk, I guess.
I agree with the OP. We shouldn’t allow automation to replace any jobs people hold. Freeze technology where we are right now. We don’t need any new gadgets.
Really still? The grocery store I go to has a bank of 8 self checkouts and they’re now down to one clerk overseeing them and she looks bored half the time. She always goes over to scan any cases of drinks so you don’t have to lift them on the scanner and intervenes quickly when the scales are out of whack. I find that it doesn’t matter if I’m buying a few items or a full weeks groceries it’s faster to use the self scanners than any cashier and I pack the groceries the way I want them. I don’t see the confusion anymore and only rarely the annoying parent who wants to let their child check them out.
The same “self-checkout” thingee came to the markets by me a few years ago. I rarely see them being used, unless the other lines are long. All this is going to do for McDs is create a lot of returned incorrect orders.
In my experience, not that many people make special orders (“no ketchup, extra pickles”) at McDonald’s. I mean, yes, it does happen, but McDonald’s has done its best to train people out of doing this at its restaurants. If you want it “your way” you go to Burger King. If you want to have to wait an extra five minutes standing next to the counter while they make up your special order, you go to McDonald’s. (I know this is not universal, and some special orders are made up quickly, I’m just saying, in my experience both working there and as a customer there, McD’s does not get a lot of special orders.) So I think it probably will save time to have people just be able to tap in “three Happy meals with chicken nuggets and Sprites” instead of having the cashier say, “you want how many? oh, two. Oh, three? Wait, can you restart your order? Oh, a Happy Meal? Do you want sauce for those nuggets?” etc.
That said, I am not happy to see the imminent disappearance of yet another entry-level job that high school students can pick up as a summer income stream.
There’s a McDonald’s near my house where they seem to have phased out the drive-thru intercom during busy times, in favor of a guy standing out there with what looks like an iPad, taking people’s orders directly from their car windows and inputting it. I have no idea what the purpose is. I asked him if the drive-thru speaker was broken and he said “Nope” but did not offer any further info. I wonder if it’s somehow related.
Oh yeah. At the grocery store the lines are invariably long at those machines because either someone doesn’t understand how to use them properly or there’s some prick there with $200 worth of groceries that needed to get into a regular line with a bagger.
From the linked article
Note that McDonalds in Japan doesn’t use touch screens, but a number of izakaya restaurants and conveyor belt sushi places do, and they are always a pain in the ass to use. The major difference, however, is that they are used after a person is seated at a table and can play around with them.
We’ll see how it turns out.
Yeah, you won’t be so smug when they perfect a robot that builds strawmen.
Wendy’s has already outsourced some of its drive through operations…orders placed at the drive through actuallly go to an outside call center instead of someone inside the building.
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/05/15/wendys-outsourcing-for-its-drive-throughs/
I’m over at the Home Depot all the time, and the Self Check out machines are utilized without much issue. I always go there first unless I have some lumber that is too hard to manage on the machine.
At the grocery store, the biggest problem I have is buying wine, and you since you have to get the Self Check supervisor to clear that with the machine, it’s just as easy to go through the check out line with a cashier, so I don’t bother.
Any time I have alcohol I usually try to catch the cashier/attendants eye as I’m walking towards towards the checkout and make sure she sees the bottle. If I can, I’ll try to tell her not to hurry if I have more then a few items. Then I start ringing my stuff up and I’ll keep the alcohol on the side until she has a chance to get to me. It’s faster then ringing up the alcohol and having the self checker lock up until she happens to notice.
IME what really slows those down is when the cashier isn’t paying attention. When one person has liquor, one person has a coupon, one person has some random malfunction and only one kiosk is working. Meanwhile the person who’s supposed to be paying attention is over talking to someone else and didn’t even realize there was that many people over there.
Huh. Not my experience at all. I keep seeing the UScans multiplying every year, so they must be doing great in our neck of the woods. In fact, with the exception of my last grocery trip with a ton of coupons (I’m new at couponing), it’s the only thing I use. Now, my only complaint is if my particular store would institute a policy that whichever cashier is assigned to the four UScans NOT LEAVE HIS/HER GODDAMN POST! all would be good.
“Hey, dipshit! My light is red, come approve my reuseable bags!”
No problem. A few extra screens are cheaper then a few extra cashiers. mD doesn’t care if customers need more time figuring out what to do; it is *their *time and MD doesn’t have to pay the customers for their time. Makes sense as a business model.
I’m torn over self-checkout machines. Such is my life that it’s actually exciting to scan n’ bag my own groceries without the red light flashing once. Winning! But when it does flash and some poor employee has to drag herself over and bail me out, I feel bad for them - must be one of the most boring jobs in the world. … What happens at, say, Walmart, when you scan a six pack of beer? Can anyone do this, a 12 year old? Does someone trained to notice beer on a counter come running to check your ID?