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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: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:43PM (26 children)
I never understood why I can't just push a trolley out the store past a scanner. It scans the trolley for RFID tags, grabs all the prices from those. Maybe it takes an image of some kind / weight reading and any discrepancy of what tags / what weight/products show up is flagged.
Push trolley to exit. BBBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBBRBRBRBRB. Beep. 56 items. £155.27. How would you like to pay?
Then get rid of all the checkout staff.
Hire loads of security staff and cameras (to prevent people gaming the system) instead. Suck up any minor losses.
Literally it would shave 20 minutes off my shop, I wouldn't need to repack three times (pack trolley, unpack for checkout, repack into trolley, unpack into car, unpack out of car, repack into house), the trolley could literally be designed to just put it all into my car (reusable plastic boxes that detach or whatever.
All this modern tech and it still relies on a 16-year-old going... beep... beep... beep... GGRRRTtTT! "Er, Dave, can I have a price?" after you lay it out item by item in front of them and keep repacking it.
If you then motorised said carts, I would also buy twice as much shit because it's usually the "it's getting hard to push" that stops me shopping or picking up more heavy items.
Trolleys were invented to make people carry more, buy more and consume more without even noticing (imagine how many baskets it would take to fill a trolley).
If you then make checkout just a push, put a card in, drive it to your car, press "dump it in the back" button, everything becomes so much easier and quicker and profitable. Hell, even in the case of "the store is closing in ten minutes".... I often just abandon my shop in those cases because it's just not worth the mad rush.
The only problem would be restricted items (knifes, alcohol, adult-only items, etc.) but you can just put those in a section that only adults get to (like some stores have/had tobacco, alcohol sections, etc.) and have to show ID.
Every time I shop, it frustrates me that we still haven't removed the BIGGEST time killer of shopping, despite contactless payment, barcodes, little motorised belts, self-service lines, etc. All that fucking unpacking and repacking.
(Score: 4, Informative) by BananaPhone on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:16PM (3 children)
Then when you go home, the RFID tags still work.
They could use them to track people VERY easily.
If you pay with plastic, they know everything about you and link it to the tag.
Even when you donate the stuff to goodwill, they could tell that John Smith bought the item.
You'll see some people just trashing stuff just to keep their privacy instead of donating them to goodwill.
You'll see a new start up called 1-800-GOT-RFID to come to your house to remove RFID tags from your clothes/shoes to prevent Minority Report style ad tracking or to just destroy the item on site.
This will go on until laws are enacted to stop this.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
Rent-A-Cop: Hey Thief! You're under arrest for shoplifting!
Shopper: I didn't steal anything.
Rent-A-Cop: The scanner reported that you stole the jacket you're wearing. The RFID tag didn't go through the check out scanner.
Shopper: I bought this jacket last year.
Rent-A-Cop: A likely story.
Shopper: Yeah, about as likely as management finding a way to screw up IT operations.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday August 17 2017, @08:14PM
Exactly the same burden of proof as is they say the same to you in a normal store now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @04:20PM
You're adorable :)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:24PM (2 children)
How would you like to pay?
With cash? Good luck... And watch that line build up behind you while you try to get the machine to take those wrinkled old bills.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:44PM
Only Luddite shoppers shop with cash! Hip appy appers app their purchases with apps!
Apps!
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday August 18 2017, @01:07AM
Wrinkled bills? Around here they're plastic, saves money as they last and they go into machines nicely. Much better then getting stuck in a line with everyone using cards, shuffling through them to find one that works, screwing up somehow and having to start over, and if credit card, having to sign.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:40PM (4 children)
For one thing, an RFID tag adds 15 cents to a product's price, which can add up for (say) a $1 protein bar. For another, how would this work for fresh produce that needs to be weighed?
(Score: 2) by driven on Thursday August 17 2017, @06:26PM (1 child)
Citation, please. http://www.nano-di.com/blog/how-can-rfid-tags-cost-1-cent [nano-di.com]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:24PM
Google's zero-click result for rfid tag cost states:
Click through to the source it's quoting [barcoding.com], and that's for passive tags that don't have their own battery.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday August 18 2017, @07:17AM (1 child)
I bet, at one point, people said exactly the same about barcode, price-stickers and everything else.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday August 18 2017, @02:22PM
The improvement in product package image quality related to barcodes eventually paid for itself because a packaged good can carry more information, reducing the need for store staff to answer questions. Fresh produce, on the other hand, often doesn't carry a barcode and thus still needs to be weighed at the checkout.
In addition, barcodes are passed over the scanner one at a time. The promise of "just walk out" checkout with RFID implies that some device will read, bill, and deactivate all tags in an entire shopping cart at once.
I'd be interested to see a proof of concept in more than one city of this being made to work.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:48PM (3 children)
American here. Personally I think that everyone having their own trolley is quite wasteful and probably dangerous. Maybe it is just an American thing but for how much Europe bitches about us having our giant trucks everywhere, a 25 ton trolley rolling down the isle is sure to kill the planet faster.
(I realize that trolley is evidently a cart, I just disagree with it)
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @04:39PM (2 children)
In Georgia we called them buggies. I'm sure that helps too :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:32PM
On skid row we call it a moving van.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:15PM
Actually, given TFA, I'm sure there's a joke about buggie whip manufacturers in here somewhere. I'll let someone else figure it out.
(Score: 2) by julian on Thursday August 17 2017, @05:37PM
Alcohol.
In California we passed a law that you can't buy alcohol through an automated system or self-checkout. Since I almost always buy beer when I make my weekly trip to the grocery store, I can never use self-checkout.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 17 2017, @05:40PM (2 children)
My sister pulls up to the supermarket, some guy(s) load her trunk with the items she ordered and paid for online, and she's on her way home. 5 minutes total.
Why is that not available everywhere?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)
It is, but the future not being distributed evenly means its not in people heads like the proverbial 80 year old grannie.
My local employee owned coop does this and it works pretty well. They need 24 hours warning and its "free" over $100 total (which is pretty easy to achieve, and its free only in the sense that employee labor to run this is embedded into prices)
1) I don't need less exercise and the HVAC in the store is almost as nice as at the gym.
2) Sometimes I'm in an adventurous mood and just need to see stuff. Its very easy to handle "I used the last of the simply asia thai kitchen red chilie 4 oz jar and I'm too lazy of a bastard to mortar and pestle my own chile garlic fish sauce stuff". Its very hard to handle "We are having a garden party on Saturday, buy appetizers that would look and taste nice for auntie and grannie"
3) Walmart food aisle is full of "people of walmart" the hipster SWPL organic store by the campus has lots of hotties walking around, why not enjoy the scenery? Kind of like why look at 2/10s at walmart when target sells the same chinese factory crap but the target girls are like 7/10 average. Not a darn thing wrong with enjoying the scenery.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday August 18 2017, @03:52AM
Also, I never remember to add panko to my shopping list, so it really helped to see it on the shelf last week...
(Score: 2) by bryan on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:05PM (4 children)
Around here, the grocery stores all seem to keep 8+ self checkout lanes open and only 1 traditional lane open. I suppose the shoppers that want restricted items (tobacco, etc.) still need to use the traditional lane, but everyone else just checks their own items out already.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:25PM (3 children)
Self-checkout works well until you have more than a dozen items or so and/or actually buy produce (or dry goods or whatever) that needs to be weighed with codes entered and/or buy things with coupons that never seem to scan right (the in-store coupons for a "manager's special" or "quick sale" for a few dollars off are often the worst) AND happen to shop somewhere that doesn't have a machine that throws a fit if you don't deliver the item into the bagging area in under 0.5 seconds... oh, and aren't buying any very light or very large items. Or... I don't know, huge numbers of things.
In many of the above scenarios it is POSSIBLE to self-checkout, but for example having someone who might actually know produce codes or be able to navigate them faster through experience can be really helpful if you buy any significant amount of produce. I made the mistake several weeks ago of trying to go through self-checkout with about 20 items, including maybe 5 produce items and a few other things that didn't want to scan right (store deals, etc.), at a store I was unfamiliar with. I'm certain I spent at least three times as long there as I would have had I just waited behind the one person checking out at the cashier in the next aisle.
I used to shop at a big grocery store that had great prices, so families would come from a distance to shop. The majority of customers had carts that were at least half full, and many were often full or even overflowing. Self-checkout definitely doesn't work there either.
On the other hand, I've been to plenty of stores like you mention, where it seems one or two cashiers is plenty, because the typical person is only buying a few items.
(Score: 2) by bryan on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:21PM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @01:42AM
> 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
The BBC had a story a couple of weeks ago about laser-tattooing grocer codes on avocados...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:05PM
> "the store is closing in ten minutes"
You must not be from USA...where most grocery stores are 24/7 (except a very few holiday times).