Comment on The way "self-checkout" has been pushed on us is nothing short of injustice
OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 month ago
One of the main reasons why I refuse to use self-checkout.
A few more reasons:
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In some stores, gift cards, discounts, coupons, etc can’t be used in self-checkout.
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It’s essentially making me do the job of the cashier for free. Fuck that noise. They want me to do it, they can pay me.
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The line for real registers is sometimes a bit longer, but it tends to move much faster, because it’s not full of a bunch of grandmas having their first experience with a robot accusing them of theft.
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Gross germs all over the self-checkout machines, which I’m sure are never cleaned at all.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
To you point 1: all those cards etc are just provided to tie you in, to increase the margin of the store. Reject them (2) products will be more expensive in stores that use more expensive cashiers (3) the grandmas tend to pay with cash, taking ages to search their wallets for red coins (4) you don’t want to know where those red coins have been.
I have a hard time believing they would pass the savings on to the buyer. At least not any big chain.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I know the retail industry well, professionally. It is a low margin, high throughput industry, meaning that you want to tie in the customers as best as you can. The best tie in is price; Walmart, Kroger, Aldi, Target, Costco, they all fight for audience, in the end by lowering the price points. The most expensive “parts” in a store are the employees, and if you can reduce those numbers, you can lower your prices too. So the automation helps these retailers to keep the customers from wandering off to cheaper stores, while increasing the margins.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 month ago
Nah, fam. I’m getting that 10% veteran’s discount.
All stores have at least some cashiers. At least, all the ones I ever go to.
And I’m going to need a source about those self-checkout stores being cheaper, because I sure haven’t seen that.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
We haven’t seen a drop in prices, as inflation is way up, thanks to the Orange Chimpanzee. Yet, a store with 100% employees and 0% automation will always be more expensive than a store with 30% employees and 70% automation- that’s the reason humans invent machines…in the end machines and robots are always cheaper than humans. Those profits will not be passed on 100% to consumers, but parts will be, to draw more people into the store.
123@programming.dev 1 month ago
That is completely false. Safeway is 25-40% more expensive for basic items like limes, onions and tomatoes compared to the Mexican market right across the street.
The Mexican market always has 2 butchers, 1-2 cashiers and 1-2 people stocking items. Safeway maybe has 50% more staff for a store that takes up like 10x the amount of space once you add in the parking lot.
Economies of scale would say Safeway should be able to obliterate the smaller store in price but that has never been the case in the 6 years I’ve lived here. They do have more items and longer hours (3 extra hours in the evening with a skeleton crew), but at the prices they demand, you are better off going to the Mexican, Asian and Indian markets while accounting for gas and wear and tear on a car and still have a better experience and overall cost.
Large corporations are just syphons of local money into offshore accounts at this point.
OwOarchist@pawb.social 1 month ago
Really, though, got any data on that? Because what’s to stop a store from passing 0% of that onto consumers and thus increasing their profits?