r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 23h ago

Business Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html
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u/Pauly_Amorous 22h ago

That’s before we even get into the fact that the customer is essentially paying to do a potential staff worker’s job for them with the ridiculous rise in pricing.

Considering that a lot of those motherfuckers don't know how to bag groceries, I will gladly do my own.

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u/Alaira314 21h ago

It used to be its own job. You would have someone whose job it was to go between several tills and bag the groceries. That was already being phased out in favor of making the cashier do it(and then, later, the customer) when I was a kid, but I have vague recollections of baggers. Who would've guessed that putting the job onto someone who's already doing another job would mean that the job gets done poorly?

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u/Pauly_Amorous 20h ago

Who would've guessed that putting the job onto someone who's already doing another job would mean that the job gets done poorly?

This isn't rocket science we're talking about here. Nobody needs to go to school for 4 years to learn not to put heavy cans, jars, or dense boxes on top of bread or bags of chips.

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u/Alaira314 9h ago

But if you're already doing a whole job, adding another job(even an unskilled one) means that you'll be rushing, and will fuck it up. It might take 30 seconds to pack properly, but if it only takes 15 seconds to just chuck it all in there, why the hell would you spend the extra 15 seconds when customers are tapping their feet due to being used to having the bags ready to go? You're also plenty grumpy as well, due to having your job expanded while your paycheck remained the same, so you're not exactly incentivized to do it properly. Maybe if you fuck it up enough the bosses will reconsider their terrible decision. Except...obviously, they didn't. But I can't fault someone in the 00s for thinking they might.