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from the who-is-going-to-ask-if-I-want-fries? dept.
72 years after [Clarence Saunders] attempted to patent his idea, advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies are making the dream of a worker-free store a reality. And American cashiers may soon be checking out.
A recent analysis by Cornerstone Capital Group suggests that 7.5m retail jobs – the most common type of job in the country – are at "high risk of computerization", with the 3.5m cashiers likely to be particularly hard hit.
Another report, by McKinsey, suggests that a new generation of high-tech grocery stores that automatically charge customers for the goods they take – no check-out required – and use robots for inventory and stocking could reduce the number of labor hours needed by nearly two-thirds. It all translates into millions of Americans' jobs under threat.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:25PM (4 children)
I'm definitely a small time criminal, but I eat paleo which means plenty of veggies, and when their online produce "code" application takes more than say two minutes of searching the worlds shittiest online UI to find "organic green beans" because its so slow to scroll or its mysteriously not filed under O, G, or B (probably filed under F-ing "haricot verts" just to F with shoppers) a couple times I've said "Life is too short; Fuck this Shit" and after the little old ladies and girl scouts finish looking horrified at me, I type in the produce code for idaho potatoe and call it good enough for supermarket work. I mean, seriously now, I'll scan UPC codes all day, but I'm not gonna do a price check for fucking green beans or organic beans or haricot verts or "freedom beans" or WTF. I paid "something" so its not outright theft, their system sucks ass so I feel the need for compensation, all produce costs about the same per pound as indicated by salad pay-per-pound bars, and I put forth a more than reasonable effort. It should be possible for the last 10 to 20 years to use optical scanning to determine what you're buying instead of legacy UPC and produce numerical codes. Especially since they could optical scan everything entering the store pretty trivially....
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bobs on Thursday August 17 2017, @08:04PM (3 children)
So above you claim "Self-check ... only happens in racially and ethnically homogeneous areas, aka whiteopias, mostly the wealthy ones at that." Because non-white people steal from the stores with self-checkout.
And then you admit you steal from the store using self-checkout. From your various posts it sounds like you consider yourself "white."
Notice a contradiction?
The issue ain't the color of the skin - it is the honesty of the customer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday August 18 2017, @01:03AM
Crooks always dee everyone else as crooked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @07:24PM (1 child)
It's all a statistics game to the corporations. Maybe in his alleged "white privilege" area it costs more to hire cashiers too.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:03PM
On that shelf its code 2581351 for (weird name brand) green pepper, the aisle next to it is the salad bar code 101, I've run a lot of stuff thru as "salad bar" not just "all potato are idaho potato" type of issues.
There's also the good faith issue. There's a big ethical difference between selecting one of three types of onion off the shelf, searching the online database for a couple minutes, finding 17 varieties in the DB of which they're only selling 3 today, and "F it, its a sweet onion" regardless of name brand or whatever, vs sneaking the onion in my backpack and slinking out of the store without paying a dime.
Another aspect of the good faith issue is produce really is roughly constant cost per pound. I wouldn't slap a ground beef tag on a tenderloin, or slap a tag for "bulk wheat flour" on "bulk saffron" (as if such a thing could exist) but eh, their system sucks, I have a work around to make it suck less, they get about the same amount of money and I get about the same amount of food, no sweat.
Where's the paycheck and 1099 for my working as a cashier for them? If they don't like my volunteer cashier work they really wouldn't like my volunteer shelf stocker or floor cleaner work ... they can solve that by hiring a cashier, perhaps. When I do volunteer work I try my best, but, hey you get what you paid for and I didn't sign up to be a cashier anyway...
There is a slippery slope ethical argument where the next step is claiming that checking the produce pile of avocados and not buying the mushy rotten ones is "stealing" from the store because someone has to buy all the avocados and I'm not buying my share of rotten ones. Yeah I'm not buying that argument either.
The store seems very happy to sell all produce for a fixed salad bar price, but for inventory control reasons or whatever BS they want name/rank/serial number of each apple sometimes, but not if I buy it from the salad bar, whats up with that? Their failed inventory control system is not an obligation of mine; we traded my money, for their apple, using a crazy (admittedly knowingly failing) computerized system they devised... not seeing a problem here.
Partial cooperation with a partially operational broken system seems quite fair.