Fun fact: With very little effort, you can give yourself a discount at checkout!
Unethical corporations are humanity’s predators and we should hurt them however we can.
They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
Submitted 13 hours ago by VetOfTheSeas@discuss.online to workreform@lemmy.world
https://discuss.online/pictrs/image/b87ce413-92f2-4249-9dcd-e613cac9280e.png
Comments
Nemo@midwest.social 3 hours ago
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I grab my zero dollar curtesy gum every time I am at one.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
How about food is a human right and should be free at point of purchase, lol.
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 4 minutes ago
I do think that people should be able to line up to get soup/stew/oatmeal/etc. low-cost food as much as they want.
Kids shouldn’t be distracted from their schoolwork and even having their brains and bodies develop poorly because they don’t get fed at home.
Adults shouldn’t be distracted at work and/or committing crime to feed their families.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 1 hour ago
i think it would be better to give universal basic income (money) and people buy food with that. why is it better? because it ensures that while people can afford food, one person does not buy 20 bread when they only eat 2 “because it’s free”.
calmblue75@lemmy.ml 19 minutes ago
The problem with UBI is that the ones who decide the price of things still will have a control over things.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
I don’t care how it happens.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 40 minutes ago
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, son.
Someone has to do work to produce that food. Those people need to be compensated somehow. You can go ahead and make hyperbolic declarations about “rights”, but that doesn’t mean economics just disappears.
dustyData@lemmy.world 38 minutes ago
Yeah, those people doing the work to produce food are starving. What is your point?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Communism Killed 850 Zillion People
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
😦
Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
That many!? Holy shit. I thought people being gunned down on the streets by inbred government goons was bad, but that means if we don’t support that then every single human on earth will die more than once!
froufox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 59 minutes ago
What kind of food? Only the cheapest supermarket type of food or gourmet restaurant too? What about food delivered from another continent? Should all of them be free? How would that be possible?
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 37 minutes ago
I don’t care, lol. We throw out thousands of tons of food every day.
Adalast@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Can we go for upcharges on food items for modifying them next? If you are going to charge me $0.30 for adding tomatoes to a sandwich, you better damn well reduce the price by $0.30 when I remove tomatoes from a sandwich.
This is getting so out of hand in the USA.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Oh that’s one of my gripes. My son likes to get an egg mcmuffin with no meat, extra cheese. You’d think the slice of meat and cheese would cancel each other out. And I think they are up to charging $1 for a slice of american cheese.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
It’s not just the US. The race for the biggest profit has hit its limits on the best value front. Now it’s pretty much all on deception and enshittification.
TheHound@lemmy.world 57 minutes ago
I’m fine not having cashier’s, will happily pay the extra to not have to interact with someone.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 1 hour ago
these things are pay-as-you-want checkout IMO
MSids@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
There may be an unintended consequence of this. Corpos love to optimize to minimize any hits to their bottom line.
I could see any of these possibilities as a reaction:
- Self checkouts become overwhelmed so stores remove remaining paid cashiers to add more self checkout lanes.
- Self checkouts are reduced or removed to avoid giving any discounts.
- I believe I read that grocery margins are thin at the store and are much higher for manufacturers. I could see stores increasing prices across the board to recoup costs.
Hard to know for sure, the people seem to just rarely get a W these days that isn’t immediately wiped out by something else.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Hmm… I’ve read the opposite about margins: grocery store chains centralize purchasing so that they have a huge leverage on manufacturers.
For NY in particular, they shouldn’t be able to raise their price easily as the city will have its city-owned stores to compete with them.
chilicheeselies@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Yes price increases seem the most likely for pharmacies but not grocery stores. There is still sufficient competition in grocery stores, and enough of them without self checkout lanes. It would be hard to get away with a price increase when a cheaper alternative exists.
Pharmacies however… As much as I prefer small pharmacies, they often are tooo small for everything. Simply can’t find everything one might need. There’s basically just CVS and Walgreens, and they both are big into self checkout. Those two would collude for sure.
bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
If a bill requiring 10% discounts at self checkout comes into law, they will all think the same thing: Increase the prices so the price at self checkout is the same, and people have to pay extra for a cashier.
The only way to realistically encourage corporations to reduce their margins within the current system is by establishing an alternative which is cheaper, and thus acts as competition which pushes the price down. So basically what Mamdani is doing with city-owned grocery stores.
The same goes for housing. Provide decent but simple housing at low rates, and the slumlords will either need to lower their margins or compete on quality instead.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There may be an unintended consequence of this.
The consequences will be a flood of lobbying money into the next legislature races
kinther@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Fuck yeah. I can get behind this 1000%
just2look@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
It seems like they will just mark everything up by 10% and then give that discount at self checkout. So they will pocket even more while harming those who don’t use self checkout.
Or eliminating cashiers altogether.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
It also doesn’t really make sense to do it as a percentage. A cashier’s wage is hourly, and the labor market has settled on a particular wage for cashiers in this area - say $15/hr.
If I have a $150 grocery bill, a 10% discount would be $15. For maybe 5 minutes of work. Working out to an hourly wage of $180/hr (60/5 = 12, 12 * 15 = 180).
So if they’re saying “we should be compensating customers for being made to do labor”, they’d be compensating them at roughly 12x the going rate for cashiers in this example, which doesn’t really make sense.
Now if it’s just meant to be punitive, OK. But then why not actually address the real issue: displacement of workers by technology and passing the labor burden on to unpaid consumers - either make that illegal or tax the company to help mitigate the harm it’s causing by eliminating jobs.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
For the last point, it is easier to tax unfavored behavior into the ground than it is to outright forbid it. That’s why sin taxes exist after all.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
If I have a $150 grocery bill, a 10% discount would be $15.
If you have a $150 grocery bill, it’s being hiked to ~$166.66 before you get to the checkout. Then the 10% discount is bringing it back down to the $150 you were paying before. The net discount is zero: you’re paying exactly what you’re paying now.
If you keep going to the cashier after this, you’re paying the company the hiked price, which gives them an extra $16.66 for maybe 5 minutes of cashier labor. The company turns around and pays the cashier $1.66, netting an extra $15 from you for their shareholders.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
The problem with your logic is that I can scan the items slower and make the compensation more fair, if I scan the items 12x slower then I’m being paid a fair wage for that 150$ purchase.
So am I being punished for being fast?
queermunist@lemmy.ml 10 hours ago
or tax the company to help mitigate the harm it’s causing by eliminating jobs.
Well. Discounting items in self-checkout is actually a tax on the company for using self-checkout.
Steve@communick.news 13 hours ago
That’s kind of the only way it could work.
Grocery stores average margins of ~3%. They can’t do universal 10% discounts.just2look@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
The CEO of Kroger made $15.63 million in 2024. Pretty sure there are lots of ways they could make it work. They choose not to.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
Sure they can. They hike prices 11.11% and the 10% discount brings them right back to their original price. Their 3% margin stays a 3% margin. They can even post the “discounted” price on the shelves to make it seem like customers are getting a good deal.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
You’re pretending that stores can just arbitrarily raise prices. They already set their prices as the maximum the market will bear. And yes, ultimately the point is to make self-checkout cheaper than regular.
just2look@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
They arbitrarily raise prices all the time. Have you not noticed? And are you going to just stop eating food if it suddenly costs 10 percent more?
Artisian@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Note that cheaper self-checkout means more demand for it (and less demand for cashiers). So we’ll have fewer jobs, and worse service for those who can’t (for w/e reason) use self-checkout.
Most of its happening anyway.
acchariya@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The discount comes from entering the code of the cheapest type of item no matter what item I picked up. Organic lady finger bananas? Looks like bulk Cavendish to me. I’m not being paid enough to know the difference when I’m using self checkout, a banana is a banana.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
this is why the store near me changed the self check programing and added AI
No more codes, point to the picture
matlag@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Great! Now AI is going to hallucinate products and if you don’t pay attention, you’ll be overcharged. Since it’s “self-checkout”, I bet they’ll claim it’s totally your responsibility to make sure you’re not ripped.
0x0@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Most self checkout machines rely on weight, so you have to find two items that weigh the same for that trick to work.
lemonhead2@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
honestly just cap executive pay. nothing they can do then
OwOarchist@pawb.social 11 hours ago
In fact, let’s just screw the whole thing and seize the means of production…
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Bang up idea, when have you ever seen the government run something correctly/efficiently?
jaybone@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Arent they often paid in stock?
krashmo@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Define pay such that it includes stocks, bonuses, rebates, real estate, food, clothing, transportation, or any other item that can be exchanged, borrowed against, or otherwise converted to cash money. When they find a loophole just close it.
The problem with this isn’t the concept. It’s getting politicians to implement it.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 9 hours ago
Surely the us president will get right on it drafting an executive order!
jalkasieni@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
One would think there are better ways of achieving this. How about we start to actually make solutions that make price conciousness easier? Actually enable the ”free market” people are raving about. Start mandating open data standards, make the companies publish realtime pricing information, allow people to build solutions that make consumers aware they’re overpaying.
Fuel stations would be a good example of this, my phone could notify me that the pump price is 10% lower 4 minutes away, if it only had access to that data.
ProdigiousInsanity@lemmus.org 3 hours ago
This already exists for gas stations
Saapas@piefed.zip 5 hours ago
Crying about “free labour” seems pretty silly in this case. You’re already going around the store picking your own shit, usually bagging it yourself, bringing it home yourself etc.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yep. We already had this discourse a little over a generation ago. It used to be you would roll up to a grocery store, hand your shopping list to the clerk, and then wait while they went and grabbed everything for you. Modern grocery stores where you go around and pick out your own items were rejected by consumers at first because they were perceived to have poorer customer service; but ultimately, it was faster and cheaper, so it became the new normal.
kshade@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah, before supermarkets that’s how things worked. I don’t think it was better. The gross profiteering is its own issue. I’d much rather see a crackdown on shopping apps that come with small “discounts” for invasive tracking.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Most people can do a pickup order now anyway. So of you truly want the most value for the least labor, you should only do pickup orders
Saapas@piefed.zip 4 hours ago
Or just get it delivered and save even that “free labour”. I’m just gonna shop normally but use the self-checkout because it’s much much quicker
Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I’m very much in favor of this. They place the burden of work on the customers, so they should compensate them.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
This is a good intentioned, well-principled idea, but it’s a ham-fisted implementation that isn’t going to have the intended effect and extremely easy to work around.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
Doesn’t seem that easy to work around. A checkout is either self checkout or it isn’t. Write the law to define a self checkout as “a check out where the majority of items are scanned by a customer rather than an employee.”
NateNate60@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
That’s because you don’t have the mindset of a sleazy corporate lawyer who is paid $500,000 a year.
Try this: Raise all the prices by 10 per cent. Give the 10 per cent discount to self-checkout customers, as required by law. Pocket the extra for people who are stupid enough to use the self-checkout. Don’t forget to give a middle finger to your local elderly people or disabled people. They’ll now pay extra for the privilege of shopping.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
For ADA compliance purposes, the human cashiers have to give disabled customers the same rate as the self checkout. If I’m running a store, all my staffed checkouts will have handicapped placards, and cashiers will be trained not to inquire as to disability status, but merely “accommodate” everyone in line.
Now everyone is getting the “discount”.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 hours ago
I get the spirit is in the right place, but wouldn’t this just incentivize self-checkout and accelerate the obsolescence of human cashiers?
pulsey@feddit.org 3 hours ago
or increase the normal prices to compensate the 10% discount
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Only works if everyone does it.
sascha_isagirlname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
This seems like populist BS. For one, I don’t think there’s value in preserving jobs like cashiers-almost no one does that job because it’s fulfilling. In a perfect utopia, this would be 100% automated.
The other thing is that I can’t imagine this will have the result the law intends. The companies won’t pay the 10% out of their own pocket-they most likely couldn’t. At least here in Germany, supermarket margins are pretty thin.
So they’d increase prices for all products to pay for this. Nothing would improve. Plus, going to the regular checkout would cost more than it does now.
I don’t get it-this is such a non-issue compared to so many other problems. It’s like they’re trying to show they’re doing something for workers but don’t want to pay for it.
Mniot@programming.dev 4 hours ago
The companies won’t pay the 10% out of their own pocket, as they most likely couldn’t. At least here in Germany, supermarket margins are pretty thin.
This doesn’t pass a quick reasoning check:
- Self-checkout machines cost the store capital investment (they introduce some new technology, there is a larger number of devices)
- Self-checkout machines cost the store operating budget (more devices means more parts to be serviced)
- Stores have added significant numbers of self-checkout machines
So the stores must be getting better margins at self-checkout than at human-checkout, or they wouldn’t introduce it.
sascha_isagirlname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Yeah, they make more profit by introducing self-checkout, but I doubt It’d be 10% or more. I may be wrong. If there is any data on that, I’d love to see it.
But even if they can afford to lower all prices by 10%, I can’t imagine they would just take the financial hit. Why wouldn’t they compensate by increasing prices?
To me it doesn’t make sense in any scenario.
If you believe in the free market, this would lead to nothing, as supermarkets are already providing their goods for the lowest reasonable prices, because of competition.
If you believe that supermarkets are engaging in price collusion, there is nothing that would stop them from just all increasing their prices further.
rapchee@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
ofc, paying people is the highest expense almost everywhere
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
This is why I try to avoid self checkout. If I’m getting like 2 things and there’s already a line, sure, maybe… But if the lines are short, even if I only have a couple of things, I’ll visit a real cashier.
Not because I need help with it, and not because I want to “stick it to the man” or anything. I want to be part of the metric that continues to justify that a cashier is still a position to keep, and pay someone for. I do it so that there will still be cashier’s in the future, and someone can put food on their table because I didn’t choose to do free labor for the 0.1%.
I know, I know. I’m so selfish, I should tHiNk oF ThE sHaReHoLdErS…
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
“Cashier” has pretty much always been a heavily exploited, poverty-wage position. Cashiers might be putting food on the table, but their dickhead bosses aren’t paying them a living wage. They aren’t putting roofs over heads, or kids through college. Turnover is ridiculously, criminally high. People aren’t getting fired when the position is eliminated. They are leaving just as fast as they already were, and they aren’t being replaced.
The position is used to systematically exploit workers. Eliminating that position is a net positive.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
And yet people still work as “Cashier” if they can get the job,
Wonder why…
Oh, wait, it’s because the alternative of having no job and no income IS EVEN WORSE.
Welcome the Capitalism!
ChristerMLB@piefed.social 6 hours ago
I’d say that self-checkouts are fundamentally a good thing, just like other forms of increased productivity are a good thing – but in today’s society they can both lead to unemployment and lower wages. That is unnecessary.
As for this measure… I’d be prepared for the store owners to increase prices by 10% and blame the policy.
moopet@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
Employment for the sake of employment isn’t a good thing, though. The problem that’s trying to solve is people not having enough money to live, which has multiple better solutions than makework.
ChristerMLB@piefed.social 4 hours ago
sure, yeah, I would say that if our problem becomes that there’s too little work to be done, we solve this by having a shorter work week, not by inventing work
Mniot@programming.dev 4 hours ago
I have some similar feelings to AI here. The advantages of self-checkout are only present because we’ve made existing systems worse to the point where something not-great is now a better option.
In the 1980s, a grocery lane would have a check-out clerk and a bagger. Sometimes two baggers. You would put your items on the belt and they’d be scanned and bagged (well, so that eggs weren’t crushed, freezer items were together, etc) about as fast as you took them out of the cart.
By lowering wages and reducing staff, this got worse. Now the check-out clerk is poorly-trained and probably quitting/being laid off soon and the bagger has been laid off. Mysteriously, the human-checkout line is now kind of slow and frustrating!
Having individual customers do the check-out themselves is even worse (so frequently, someone gets the machine stuck yelling about putting items in the bagging area, or just stares vacantly at the screen), but by parallelizing the process it comes out to usually slightly faster.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Personally, I greatly prefer these anyway.
As someone with social anxiety and ADHD, standing in line with a ton of people and then having to interact with a cashier is something I love to avoid.
That being said, I wouldn’t mind a discount at all 😁
elucubra@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
EU should take note.
Unless I’m in a huge hurry I’ll wait in the cashier queue, to do my tiny bit to help preserve jobs.
gabelstapler@feddit.org 1 hour ago
It’s not only the jobs, it’s the liability: if you’re forgetting to scan a product, you’re shoplifting. If the cashier forgets to scan a product it’s the shop’s problem.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@piefed.world 9 hours ago
300 billion in pure profits to executives… that could have ended hunger in the US last year.
So the next time you use the self checkout, remember to glance over at the lone cashier who lives in your neighborhood, look them in the eye and make sure they know about your excitement to be working for the shareholders for free now instead of their former colleagues. And if on the drive home you see their former colleague is getting evicted because they were laid off, make sure to honk, lean out your window and let them know how much you enjoyed the sweet song of “unexpected item in the bagging area.”
WFloyd@lemmy.world [bot] 2 hours ago
$300 billion is complete BS and you know it
Avicenna@programming.dev 5 hours ago
I think companies firing people in favour of AI should also be forced to allocate some generous portion of those salaries back to same level and lower employees as wage increases
moopet@sh.itjust.works 5 hours 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)
Arachnidbrilliant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
Even if a store with self checkout have a 10% discount for people using it. Wouldn’t they just mark everything up by 10% to compensate?
DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Holy shit, that’s more than the employee discount I got working in retail.
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 hours ago
some stores got rid of or reduced them a lot so there must be some downside.
Sirdubdee@piefed.social 3 hours ago
Stores could just add a 10% fee for using a manned checkout lane and make more money instead of discounting merch.
Doublenut@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Not to mention how irrelevant that comment is. He’s talking about grocers in Germany while this article pertain solely to the state of New York in America where grocers have made record profits over the last 5 years.
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world 11 minutes ago
Not to mention some companies relentlessly prosecute “accidental” and accidental mis-scans in self-checkout, so you significantly increase your risk of arrest by using them. I never do.
- Ex-cop, have arrested people for such mis-scans, most frequently at Wal-Mart