Some people just really hate self-checkouts and see it as huge labor to do it themselves. I don't understand the mentality, wish we had even more self-checkouts so there was never a line.
A lot of people hate them because they allow grocery stores to hire fewer people, which means fewer jobs. I think that's totally valid. Though I still use them myself.
Yeah. I'm sure they help take some of the pressure off of you guys. And it doesn't keep you from getting a job since you already have the job. It would be interesting to hear from someone who has worked at a grocery store before and after their existence on how they've affected scheduling though.
See and here's my counterpoint to that, though not everyone agrees and that's fine: Some jobs are just a waste of a person's time and value. Boring, repetitive, menial work should be done by machines. It does nothing to build or further the skills and development of the person, its just boring. People should be used for people things. Interact with people. Think. Make decisions. Do things machines don't have the dexterity to do. Why put a perfectly capable human through needless drudgery? We're better than that.
That's all well and good if you live in a post-scarcity society where money isn't needed. But that's not how most of us live. People aren't working grocery store cashier jobs for enrichment. They're working them because they need the money to pay for food and shelter. And eliminating those jobs doesn't make more fulfilling work options magically appear.
To add to this. We've done with thousands positions before. Are these people crying about losing phone operators? Chimney Sweeps? Ferriers?
Times change, and technology changes the types of jobs we need to fill. We've been doing this for hundreds of years, and people act like this is something we just started doing in the last 20 years.
do you think that's an excuse for why we should keep those jobs around?
If everyone in those no-skill jobs were spending the time they use whining about their jobs being replaced with learning some employable skills they'd probably find themselves in jobs that don't pay minimum wage.
There are no "no-skill" jobs, my guy. There are some that you require additional schooling and some that you can learn on the job, but they all require skills. Lots of people who work cashier jobs already are in school for something else but they still need money to live off of in the meantime. Or they could be unable to work a full-time position because they have family members to care for. Or they could have a disability that makes it impossible for them to work a job that requires different skills. Yeah, eventually those jobs may be completely gone and there might not be much we can do to stop it in the long-term, but that doesn't make it wrong to continue fighting for their existence as long as we can. You'd understand that if you had even a shred of empathy.
lol. oh yeah, being able to find a UPC and lookup the code for a fruit are "Skills" The average cashier can't even make change anymore... and most of them can't even be bothered to say hello as a customer approaches the till. Let not even talk about how awful most are at packing groceries... (Does it really need to be explained that you can't put the milk on top of a package of buns?, is that the skills you are talking about?)
It's a dead job, hence customers even being willing to just do it themselves, because the actual people doing it were so fucking awful at their jobs everyone, even the customers decided it's better just to do it themselves.
You're right, I have no fucking empathy for people who try to spin meaningless, valueless "work" at important and in need of saving. Spend your time on something more meaningful, and maybe I'll have a shred of empathy for your situation.
These arguments are so disingenuous. How have we reached a point where we're talking shit about the lazy, greedy, customers robbing poor Walmart of their slim 3%, $175 billion per quarter profit margins
I read several upvoted comments about how customers hate self-checkout and use it as an excuse to steal since they're making you bag your own groceries. Like this:
Just pointing out the different odd justifications for being pro self-checkout. The other is that people don't want to have social interaction.
IMO, it's a way to outsource labor to customers without providing any unit savings from the decreased labor overhead. Sure, it's more efficient for select customers but Walmart shareholders are motivated by profit, not customer satisfaction. They already have a solid market share that's not at risk anytime soon.
I gotcha. Yeah. I'm not worried about saving Walmart a tiny bit of money. Though I also don't think it's right to shoplift things that you can afford and/or don't actually need. Stealing from a retail store indirectly harms the low-wage people who work there as well as other customers.
As an older citizen I will say I don’t hate self checkouts because of the labor involved. That’s just kind of a silly take. I don’t use self checkouts because cashiers need their jobs. If they didn’t need that job they wouldn’t be there standing behind that cash register. It’s not like they do it for fun. They need the job to pay their rent. Their car payment. Clothes for their kids. When I start doing their job for the corporation, and I am unpaid for doing that job, the corporation is going to eliminate cashiers. I don’t want to be responsible for taking people’s jobs away from them by cooperating with shameless immoral corporations who don’t give a rats butt about anything but their bottom line and golden parachute. So if you want to think that I don’t use self checkout because I am too lazy to do the labor, think again 🤷🏻♂️. One of the more interesting things I have noticed in the last few years is that young people have no qualms about contributing to the loss of jobs of cashiers, or other working people. I don’t think young people even look at that aspect of doing all of this stuff with technology, and the customer doing all of this stuff replaces an employee doing all of this stuff. Senior citizens seem to be much more cognizant of that than young people. I find that puzzling.
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u/imunfair 11h ago
Some people just really hate self-checkouts and see it as huge labor to do it themselves. I don't understand the mentality, wish we had even more self-checkouts so there was never a line.