Self-checkout seems innocuous but it is not a good thing for two main reasons:
It takes jobs from away from people who need them
It further erodes the human-to-human interaction of the marketplace which fosters basic trust in your fellow man...this is further evidenced by how walmarts increase of self checkouts has been coupled with checking your reciepts as you walk out.
Businesses are not charities. Oregon banning people from pumping their own gas as a way to create minimum wage jobs is just a racket, which ultimately increases the cost of the goods to the consumer because the gas station is forced to hire people for an unnecessary job and then they have to pay them wages... utter lunacy.
Those who need jobs can find jobs that serve some kind of actual purpose that will help them develop in a meaningful way. Cashiering is a great introduction to the labor experience, but should not be a lifelong career path, or at least not for most people. That just turns people into mindless zombies slaving away doing meanial tasks that benefits nobody.
Never said a cashier position should be a lifelong job, but its still an improtant stepping stone for high school and college aged people that is being reduced by self checkout. Pumping gas isnt really a comparison because the person to person interaction was never really there in the first place. The idea of a grocery store originates with the marketplace where you interact with other humans when buying and comparing products. Self checkout erodes that important part of marketplace participation. Anything that makes us interact less, trust each other less and keep us isolated more is a bad thing for us both for the individual and the community
Modern grocery stores aren't marketplaces. The quicker and efficiently a person can get their groceries, the cheaper the costs, and the more free time available for leisure to spend socially interacting.
Again i didnt say they were just like the marketplaces of the past but they still have echoes of those places such as when you head to the meat counter and speak with the butcher about a particular cut or the baker for a certain cake. The cashier is also a part of these human to human interactions that you may not think much of in the moment but that help foster basic trust and friendliness among men. The more we do away with human to human interaction in the public sphere the more we isolate and dont trust anyone outside our circle or trust only ourselves. These changes are incremental but are visible (as i mentioned now Walmart stops you on your way out to check your receipt) but over time it builds and builds the less interaction overall we have with others. As someone once said “You may not have noticed, but your brain did.”
Great customer service is a true value to a a store/company. It gets repeat customers. Bad customer service gets you one and done, and poor word of mouth reviews.
Self-checkout seems innocuous but it is not a good thing for two main reasons:
It takes jobs from away from people who need them
It further erodes the human-to-human interaction of the marketplace which fosters basic trust in your fellow man...this is further evidenced by how walmarts increase of self checkouts has been coupled with checking your reciepts as you walk out.
The lines at self checkout move quick because you don't have to funnel everyone through a handful of open checkout lanes.
Businesses are not charities. Oregon banning people from pumping their own gas as a way to create minimum wage jobs is just a racket, which ultimately increases the cost of the goods to the consumer because the gas station is forced to hire people for an unnecessary job and then they have to pay them wages... utter lunacy.
Those who need jobs can find jobs that serve some kind of actual purpose that will help them develop in a meaningful way. Cashiering is a great introduction to the labor experience, but should not be a lifelong career path, or at least not for most people. That just turns people into mindless zombies slaving away doing meanial tasks that benefits nobody.
Never said a cashier position should be a lifelong job, but its still an improtant stepping stone for high school and college aged people that is being reduced by self checkout. Pumping gas isnt really a comparison because the person to person interaction was never really there in the first place. The idea of a grocery store originates with the marketplace where you interact with other humans when buying and comparing products. Self checkout erodes that important part of marketplace participation. Anything that makes us interact less, trust each other less and keep us isolated more is a bad thing for us both for the individual and the community
Modern grocery stores aren't marketplaces. The quicker and efficiently a person can get their groceries, the cheaper the costs, and the more free time available for leisure to spend socially interacting.
Again i didnt say they were just like the marketplaces of the past but they still have echoes of those places such as when you head to the meat counter and speak with the butcher about a particular cut or the baker for a certain cake. The cashier is also a part of these human to human interactions that you may not think much of in the moment but that help foster basic trust and friendliness among men. The more we do away with human to human interaction in the public sphere the more we isolate and dont trust anyone outside our circle or trust only ourselves. These changes are incremental but are visible (as i mentioned now Walmart stops you on your way out to check your receipt) but over time it builds and builds the less interaction overall we have with others. As someone once said “You may not have noticed, but your brain did.”
Great customer service is a true value to a a store/company. It gets repeat customers. Bad customer service gets you one and done, and poor word of mouth reviews.