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.”
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.”