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posted by martyb on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:27PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2) by bryan on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:21PM (2 children)

    by bryan (29) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:21PM (#555616) Homepage Journal

    a machine that throws a fit if you don't deliver the item into the bagging area in under 0.5 seconds...

    Agreed! Half of my frustration with self checkout lines are their insistence to "weigh" an item in the bagging area after you scan it. I normally bring my reusable bags with me, and even the slight weight of placing these cloth bags in the bagging area is enough to freak the machines out and scream "Remove item from bagging area!!!" Heavy items, like milk/juice/soda, will also throw off all future readings and don't always fit very well anyway.

    RFID tags, needed for the Amazon style no-checkout-at-all method, seem a little overkill IMO. Are you really going to slap one of these big tags on a banana? Practically all cardboard boxes already have perfectly acceptable barcodes already. Simply remove the bagging area weight-check and the existing self check out lines will be much nicer.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @01:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @01:42AM (#555665)

    > even the slight weight of placing these cloth bags in the bagging area is enough to freak the machines out

    This one has a solution -- scan item, put on bagging platform (but not in a bag). Once everything is scanned and paid, then move items from platform into your cloth bags.

    I do this with my small-wheel "shopping" bicycle that I bring into the store (instead of shopping cart)--items are all put into the bike bags, after I'm done paying.

  • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday August 18 2017, @03:55AM

    by darnkitten (1912) on Friday August 18 2017, @03:55AM (#555697)

    The BBC had a story a couple of weeks ago about laser-tattooing grocer codes on avocados...