Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
If the self-checkouts cost the company less, then it’d be good for them to pass on the savings - but in a capitalist world, that’s not normal. If a company gets one of its food ingredients cheaper, does it usually drop its prices? Not unless it’s already competing at that price.
Self checkouts are a good thing. They’re not “us doing the shop’s work”. They’re not “free labour”. In fact, they’re a boon to a lot of us as customers, and shops with them still have “traditional” tills you can use if you want (e.g. if you have a huge trolley of things or you want a nice chat)
Gorillazrule@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
In what way are we not doing the shops work? I understand that unnecessary jobs get phased out if there are more efficient ways. For example parking attendants getting replaced by kiosks. Instead of paying someone to stand there all day and take payments for people entering, you have a machine to do it instead. And the experience for the customer is exactly the same. Instead of handing your card/money over to a person, you are now inserting it into a machine.
But in the case of self checkout, the machine does not take your groceries, scan them all, and manually input produce that doesn’t have a barcode. Instead, that burden falls onto the customer. And while yes, for a single person doing a single transaction, that really isn’t a lot to ask. But you are literally doing the exact thing that they were previously paying someone else to do. If what you are doing, is something that they would otherwise be paying somebody else to do, how is that you not doing their work/ free labor? As a matter of fact pretty much all stores still have regular checkouts. Where there is somebody in the store, performing the exact same tasks as you, just on a larger scale. And getting paid to do so.
Would it be acceptable for stores to start asking people to restock a shelf if they go to grab an item and see the shelf is low or empty? I mean they’re not asking you to restock the whole store, just that one item. And it’s really not that much of a burden, and if everybody does it, then the store will always be stocked! Why should they have to pay employees to keep the shelves stocked when it’s more efficient for everybody to just contribute a little bit? It’s hardly even work at that point.
moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Depends what you want to call work. I’m down for these comparisons usually - I count watching adverts as “work”, for example - but in a supermarket with self-checkouts I have to wait for a shorter period before leaving the premises, I don’t have to have any social interaction, I can take my time packing my bag without feeling so much pressure from the person behind me in the queue. These are more spoons than traditional work, but my overall expenditure is lower. I am saving myself time and social cost, which is a discount I would not discount.