this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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I don't live in America but judging from what I heard, what is up with American stores manning the shops at bare minimum? Like, I heard so many complaints of self-service checkouts having no one staff looking after them, which leads to customers going to manned tills instead, because they couldn't deal with technical issues especially for the seniors. Then when a senior is asked if they want to use automated checkouts instead, they reply with the snarky response "I don't work here." You can't blame people for being reluctant to use the self-service checkouts, if there are no help! Where I live, there is always a staff looking after the self-service checkouts because of the inevitable technical issues or customers not knowing how to use them.
My guess for this poor implementation of technology is because bosses think machines are meant to replace humans as workers, when realistically machines should help people with work. We don't live in yet in a world where there are robots with the artifical intelligence as good as the human intelligence. And we are still way far from having robots with good dexterity skills as humans to completely replace us.
Much like with the locks on the storefronts, self-checkout is obnoxious in large part because the store owners don't really trust you to swipe your own merchandise. The machines are constantly yelling at you for putting things on the wrong side of the machine or putting stuff in your basket before you finished checkout. And if you do anything wrong, the machine locks itself down so you can't finish paying.
Why should you need help at a self-checkout? Its contrary to the very premise of the system.
I don't typically have this issue at Walmart at least. Their self checkout is smooth and effective these days.
That said I still don't use it, because it's still shifting work to me without giving me compensation for it. If I got a discount for using the self checkout, sure, but I don't. So I'll keep using manned registers.
This is such a weird mentality to me. You don't get compensated for waiting in line either. Would you really rather stand in line than do self-checkout? Even if it were faster? Doesn't everyone always say "time is money?" Then you'd be robbing yourself if you don't pick the fastest option.
Edit: I always pick the fastest option. The less time spent shopping, the better. But then, I've never really had bad experiences with self-checkout, so I'm sure I'm a bit biased.