I think they’re great once they’re not on the fritz. Presumably one day you’ll just be able to walk out without scanning the stuff. RFID or whatnot.
Not necessarily. I haven’t found a way to include a direct link to a Bureau of Labor Statistics chart, but here is generated graph of “Employment Level - Civilian Labor Force - LNS12000000” from 1989 to 2009. Here’s the same chart from 1969 to 2009. As you can see, the growth rate has slowed, which is why the last two recoveries were described as “jobless recoveries”. But both of these charts show the number of jobs, not job growth indexed to an ever growing population.
“There are always new jobs” is a religious affirmation not necessarily supported by objective facts. New jobs will continue to exist, but there is no guarantee that they will provide enough hours or pay well enough to provide for a family. The link from that notable leftist organization the New York Federal Reserve Bank includes this bit:
People can work harder, but steadily growing productivity without concurrent growing employment indicates that automation is responsible. Human beings are a constantly increasing business cost, while technology is a constantly decreasing one. Companies add self-checkout systems for one reason - reducing the payroll.
Bridgestone Tyres are closing their Australian production facility down, which means 600 people out of work. According to one news story on the matter, around 200 of them “will probably not find alternative jobs”.
OK, so 400 people can go and find another job. But 200 people can’t, which means 200 people on the dole and completely unemployed. 200 people who previously had perfectly good, respectable jobs.
This sort of thing (jobs just evaporating with no replacement) is why I’m not prepared to endorse or support self-checkouts, and why I support “inefficient” things like having human cashiers in supermarkets and other “vaguely socialised” things you lot in the US seem to hate so very much.
Yeah. I think that in order to use them, you must first pass a rudimentary technology skills test, so I don’t have to wait 15 minutes while Gramma tries to figure out how to pay for her cans of pea soup. Express Lane is over there, lady!
I don’t view it that way at all. First of all, the machines require an attendant with a handheld device to help people, so it’s not entirely a humanless process. Secondly, most of the places where I’ve seen/used these machines have a limit on how many items you can purchase using them (although the rules aren’t enforced and not everyone obeys them, hence the frustration at having to wait for some bitch that decides she’s more important than everyone else and has a full cart of stuff and makes everyone wait longer).
The idea of these things is to speed up express checkouts. Most grocery stores have one, maybe two express lanes (15 items or less, usually), and the rest are usually filled with people that have a decent to huge amount of groceries. Waits in manned express lanes can be very long sometimes, because there are so few of them. The self checkouts are an attempt to alleviate that. Grocery stores aren’t in a hurry to add extra manned lanes for express checkouts as they need the other ones they have to handle large orders.
I don’t see the issue here. In fact, you could say that the machines create a job. They have to have a human minder, and grocery stores aren’t taking out manned checkout lanes to put them in.
As I’ve said a couple of times already in this thread, I’m speaking from an Australian perspective, where express lanes typically have three or more staff in them. By replacing the express lane with self-checkout lanes, two of those staff are no longer needed.
There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence that self-checkouts are not a supplement to regular human cashiers, they’re replacing them in some way (ie by not having as many manned lanes open as they used to). Not very successfully at the moment, because of problems with technology. But give it a few years until they get the bugs ironed out, and then don’t come crying to me that your kids can’t get an after-school job at the local supermarket anymore.
It certainly would depend on the size of the store as to whether or not they are actually replacing human cashiers, and the volume of business the store has. My local grocery chain, Kroger, has stores that are always busy. Normal Kroger stores around here have about 12-14 lanes, two of which are Express lanes. They are almost always packed during daylight hours. Lots of teenagers bagging groceries, too.
IDK…maybe it’s trending differently Down Under?
As stated earlier in the thread, the whole method of optical scanning of UPCs (bar codes) is is stop-gap. They will be completely replaced with RFID tags, small passive radio devices that respond to a pulse from a radio transmitter by echoing back a very long number that identifies that specific item - not just brand and model, but that individual item. Every Snicker’s bar in a box of Snicker’s bars will have a unique number. No handheld scanner will be needed.
It’s very early in the development of the technology, and the technology is on the computer development track, so it’s going to be improving at the pace that has moved computers from room-filling behemoths to something you can hold in your hand in a decade or two.
No, the idea of these things is to cut the size of the payroll. Any talk about “improving customer service” is just soothing Public Relations speak. They will have an additional benefit of providing better inventory control.
Again, when RFID tags are fully deployed, the whole concept of removing every single item from your basket or bag to run it over a scanner will seem downright quaint. It will seem as bizarre as toggling 8-bit code code into a computer via switches on the front panel. That was where computers were in 1975. A couple of years before that, a “computer” required a staff of people to maintain and operate it. In one decade they had shrunk in size and increased in power an order of magnitude. This is the world we live in now.
Then, all I can say is that you aren’t paying close attention. The OP mentioned a store where they are the only choice. The “minder” was previously doing a job where they ran one check-out stand. Now they are “checking out” four or more people at a time. Soon, they will not be needed at all.
I like the idea in principle, but those durned scales they use on the bag stands aren’t sensitive to really light items, so after 3 repeats of “Yes, I don’t want to bag this item,” I have to have the attendant reset things so I can finish my order.