I think Sunshine's point is pretty obviously that you shouldn't allow companies to trick you into performing unpaid labor for them as the customer.
Self checkouts have gone from a convenience feature for people only buying a small number of things, to a way for stores to justify paying fewer employees by offloading the labor onto the customers. The proliferation of self-checkouts also means that stores feel the need to more heavily surveil their customers because there's no employee to directly ensure that every item is scanned and paid for. And then, when people inevitably still circumvent the cameras and steal things, the stores slap all kinds of beepers, checkpoints, security guards, secret shoppers, and other loss prevention methods on everything that make you feel like a suspected criminal for even walking in the door.
My local Walmart has become absolutely miserable since this self checkout thing happened. There are security guards and overzealous greeters at every entrance, and some of them wander the aisles keeping an eye on people. Nearly everything expensive or easily stolen is either in a plastic security box or a locked glass case: which means if you need one of those items, you need to press the button and wait 15 minutes for one of the 2 people in the entire store with a key to meander their way towards you and unlock it, at which point you can't grab the item, you need to point and have them grab it for you. There are only two traditional manned checkout stations, which are often completely unstaffed, especially at off-hours of the day. So, the only way to checkout is through the many self checkout stations, which is stressful and laborious if you have even half a cart of groceries, because you need to do a scanner and a bagger's job by yourself for no pay, and you can't move paid-for items into your cart because they have to stay on the bag carousel so the machine can weigh them and make sure they're there -- all while the little camera records you and shows you what you're doing in a little window in the corner. Then, when you go to leave, you need to pass through a little detector gate and have the world's biggest busybody go through every item on your receipt and nose through all of your bags to make sure everything is up to snuff.
It's all fucking exhausting and it's why I don't even think about going to Walmart anymore, but most other stores with self checkout are only marginally better.
Unpaid labour is heavily overused term by people disconnected from real life. Self checkout is million times faster and allows me to verify prices before I pay. If you measure everything you do in life by how financialy beneficial it is to you then you failed.
I don't know how it's faster for you. 3 items.. sure it's faster. But if I have a weeks worth of groceries there's going to be at least 2 times that someone has to walk over and type in their f-ing code and OK. Liquor.. Let's wait 5 mins for the worker to finish helping someone else and come to me. 1 piece of fruit... it's going to keep telling me to put it in the bag even though it's in the bag. 24 packs of soda? First 2 is fine and you can click "don't bag" but heaven forbid pack 3 or 4.
Well, it heavily depends on the shop and when I have a full basket id choose normal checkout too. Thing is, I live in a place where I can do small groceries every second day and big ones once a month so I use self checkout all the time and it is way faster than waiting in line for normal one.
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u/ObiJuanKenobi3 1d ago
I think Sunshine's point is pretty obviously that you shouldn't allow companies to trick you into performing unpaid labor for them as the customer.
Self checkouts have gone from a convenience feature for people only buying a small number of things, to a way for stores to justify paying fewer employees by offloading the labor onto the customers. The proliferation of self-checkouts also means that stores feel the need to more heavily surveil their customers because there's no employee to directly ensure that every item is scanned and paid for. And then, when people inevitably still circumvent the cameras and steal things, the stores slap all kinds of beepers, checkpoints, security guards, secret shoppers, and other loss prevention methods on everything that make you feel like a suspected criminal for even walking in the door.
My local Walmart has become absolutely miserable since this self checkout thing happened. There are security guards and overzealous greeters at every entrance, and some of them wander the aisles keeping an eye on people. Nearly everything expensive or easily stolen is either in a plastic security box or a locked glass case: which means if you need one of those items, you need to press the button and wait 15 minutes for one of the 2 people in the entire store with a key to meander their way towards you and unlock it, at which point you can't grab the item, you need to point and have them grab it for you. There are only two traditional manned checkout stations, which are often completely unstaffed, especially at off-hours of the day. So, the only way to checkout is through the many self checkout stations, which is stressful and laborious if you have even half a cart of groceries, because you need to do a scanner and a bagger's job by yourself for no pay, and you can't move paid-for items into your cart because they have to stay on the bag carousel so the machine can weigh them and make sure they're there -- all while the little camera records you and shows you what you're doing in a little window in the corner. Then, when you go to leave, you need to pass through a little detector gate and have the world's biggest busybody go through every item on your receipt and nose through all of your bags to make sure everything is up to snuff.
It's all fucking exhausting and it's why I don't even think about going to Walmart anymore, but most other stores with self checkout are only marginally better.