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Feb. 20th, 2008 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiI really don't approve of those self-scanner thingies at the supermarket. Please consider not encouraging your local supermarket to invest in such things.
What is the goal of the self-scanning? It's to put cashiers out of work. Yes, you still need a cashier to check out, but one cashier can do all the cashing out if everyone has already totaled up their own purchases. Ah-hah, unless you use the self-checkout lane! I don't approve of those either, for all the same reason.
Plus, consider the plight of your fellow shoppers who have small children. I don't mind grocery shopping with my small child because it's something I can do with her. (Unlike work, gym, studying (usually), sleep, or watching adult television, for which I need her to be otherwise occupied.) But to multi-task between shopping and having Sophia, I need the store to provide some level of service. I have to talk to and amuse the kid to keep her from climbing out of the cart and getting hurt; while I do that, I can manage to push the cart around the store and fling some not-entirely-random selection of food-like items into the cart. I can eventually manage to navigate to the cashier. Sophia "helps" me put the items on the belt, and I can put the ATM card in the card reader. If I have to scan the items myself-- looking for the bar code on each one, checking what gets rung up-- forget it.
Some people are better at multi-tasking child care and other things. Some people are better at multi-tasking, period. YMMV. I am not going to shop at a store that won't ring up my purchases for me. I don't think they will ever entirely eliminate cashiers, but it's like Fast Lane-- I think that as the self-scanning technology improves, they are going to make cashiers scarcer and scarcer to hassle us into using self-scanning.
What is the goal of the self-scanning? It's to put cashiers out of work. Yes, you still need a cashier to check out, but one cashier can do all the cashing out if everyone has already totaled up their own purchases. Ah-hah, unless you use the self-checkout lane! I don't approve of those either, for all the same reason.
Plus, consider the plight of your fellow shoppers who have small children. I don't mind grocery shopping with my small child because it's something I can do with her. (Unlike work, gym, studying (usually), sleep, or watching adult television, for which I need her to be otherwise occupied.) But to multi-task between shopping and having Sophia, I need the store to provide some level of service. I have to talk to and amuse the kid to keep her from climbing out of the cart and getting hurt; while I do that, I can manage to push the cart around the store and fling some not-entirely-random selection of food-like items into the cart. I can eventually manage to navigate to the cashier. Sophia "helps" me put the items on the belt, and I can put the ATM card in the card reader. If I have to scan the items myself-- looking for the bar code on each one, checking what gets rung up-- forget it.
Some people are better at multi-tasking child care and other things. Some people are better at multi-tasking, period. YMMV. I am not going to shop at a store that won't ring up my purchases for me. I don't think they will ever entirely eliminate cashiers, but it's like Fast Lane-- I think that as the self-scanning technology improves, they are going to make cashiers scarcer and scarcer to hassle us into using self-scanning.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 07:05 pm (UTC)Square (I think it's a Shaw's now? I'm not sure).
I looked around for someone managerial and asked if there was
a discount for using them, and they looked very confused. I explained,
"The cost of clerks is rolled into the prices for the goods. Since
those things don't require a clerk, is the savings passed on to me?."
Blank look from manager, and he's starting to look annoyed. I get the
feeling he's been blindsided by similar conversations in the short
time since they were installed , and is beginning to have second
thoughts about this new-fangled tech getting rolled out in a town like
Cambridge where many shoppers are smart enough not to fall for
it. "Look at it this way; for the length of time in which I'm
processing my own order, I'm in effect working as a clerk for the
store. Call it five minutes for a moderately full cart. At the minimum
wage of $8/hr, call it about $.60 worth of my time. So you're making
overhead markup PLUS sixty cents every time you get someone to use one
of these; how does that benefit me?"... Glare, muttered response about
how it helps people get through the line faster (inner voice comment;
"oh, so *skilled* labor for free."), and handwave towards a supposed
suggestion box at the returns desk.
Nope, I can' stand 'em either.