Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
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@alice some time ago I went shopping in a drugstore where they had just introduced self-service kiosks, 4 people worked there. I went to the regular register and said I prefer to shop from a human, because the company will use this as an excuse to fire people. The cashier said that this was a huge time save, not needing to serve customers, and they weren't worried about that they'd lose their jobs
2 years later only 2 people work there
@webhat @alice A lot of the moral argument against automated checkouts depends on a neoliberal austerity model where chatting with the cashier is the only form of social contact some people get, and it is accepted as Morally Wrong that society should provide them with more funded by the Hardworking Taxpayer. I.e., the Market accidentally provides universal basic social connection, which is under threat from improved efficiencies, so they must be stopped.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
I've done such a good job ringing up all my own groceries that I think I deserve a 20% tip.
@alice the comments make me sad. I somehow thought people on the fediverse could agree on the absolute minimum, like not being a class traitor and not using the self checkout*
*Unless there is a health, safety or other import reason
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@webhat @alice A lot of the moral argument against automated checkouts depends on a neoliberal austerity model where chatting with the cashier is the only form of social contact some people get, and it is accepted as Morally Wrong that society should provide them with more funded by the Hardworking Taxpayer. I.e., the Market accidentally provides universal basic social connection, which is under threat from improved efficiencies, so they must be stopped.
@acb my argument against automated checkout is that it isn't automated. It's that it's removing a paid employee and replacing them with me. On top of that, they're now filming my purchases, selling the data, and using a fraction of the profit to pay armed security to check my receipt at the door to make sure I'm doing a good job of filling in for their employees.
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@alice some time ago I went shopping in a drugstore where they had just introduced self-service kiosks, 4 people worked there. I went to the regular register and said I prefer to shop from a human, because the company will use this as an excuse to fire people. The cashier said that this was a huge time save, not needing to serve customers, and they weren't worried about that they'd lose their jobs
2 years later only 2 people work there
@webhat @alice except self-checkous have one advantage:
People can shop without direct judgement.
- May it be care products for trans* and nonbinary folks.
- Or some dude with fragile masculinity that can't handle putting a pack of tampons or condoms on the conveyor.They incentivize small & single-item purchases, reduce queues on those and increase the conversion rate (from walking-buy to paying)…
- And with the absurd rent prices on commercial real estate, there's absolutely incentive to maximize that rate.Stores not only optimize staffing to peak efficiency (see ALDI) but also being a discrete one-stop-shop is what made Amazon so big:
- The packaging doesn't tell if one's ordering a pack of shampoo or lube nor whether there's a flashlight or dildo inside…Besides most people are pragmatic and would rather have a cheaper product without frills than paying extra on everything.
- Again: ALDI principle… -
@acb my argument against automated checkout is that it isn't automated. It's that it's removing a paid employee and replacing them with me. On top of that, they're now filming my purchases, selling the data, and using a fraction of the profit to pay armed security to check my receipt at the door to make sure I'm doing a good job of filling in for their employees.
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@acb my argument against automated checkout is that it isn't automated. It's that it's removing a paid employee and replacing them with me. On top of that, they're now filming my purchases, selling the data, and using a fraction of the profit to pay armed security to check my receipt at the door to make sure I'm doing a good job of filling in for their employees.
@alice @webhat Maybe I’m wrong, but I prefer the automated checkout. It’s usually faster, and I don’t need a chat with the tired stranger operating the till. And I’d rather pay direct taxes from my paycheque to fund social workers (as is the case in Sweden) than pay the indirect, stochastic tax of some of my grocery-shopping time going to waiting in a slow queue with a modicum of social contact at the end.
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@webhat @alice except self-checkous have one advantage:
People can shop without direct judgement.
- May it be care products for trans* and nonbinary folks.
- Or some dude with fragile masculinity that can't handle putting a pack of tampons or condoms on the conveyor.They incentivize small & single-item purchases, reduce queues on those and increase the conversion rate (from walking-buy to paying)…
- And with the absurd rent prices on commercial real estate, there's absolutely incentive to maximize that rate.Stores not only optimize staffing to peak efficiency (see ALDI) but also being a discrete one-stop-shop is what made Amazon so big:
- The packaging doesn't tell if one's ordering a pack of shampoo or lube nor whether there's a flashlight or dildo inside…Besides most people are pragmatic and would rather have a cheaper product without frills than paying extra on everything.
- Again: ALDI principle…I always do shopping late in evening to avoid crowds of people (and busy car park with bad drivers), I've not noticed any major reduction in headcount in the supermarkets, I've got friends who work in them who have said the same and have worked in retail myself in 1980s.
What happens instead is staff are tasked with restocking and tidying up shelves (which in smaller shops they had to previously do *as well* as serve people on checkouts, which was always a pain when working in such places) and monitoring the village shop over 20 years (which recently got self checkouts) they have same number of staff as before.
But this is in a European country with some better employee protection legislation..
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I always do shopping late in evening to avoid crowds of people (and busy car park with bad drivers), I've not noticed any major reduction in headcount in the supermarkets, I've got friends who work in them who have said the same and have worked in retail myself in 1980s.
What happens instead is staff are tasked with restocking and tidying up shelves (which in smaller shops they had to previously do *as well* as serve people on checkouts, which was always a pain when working in such places) and monitoring the village shop over 20 years (which recently got self checkouts) they have same number of staff as before.
But this is in a European country with some better employee protection legislation..
something else I've noticed (and confirmed by my friend who works in the supermarket) is a lot of staff who would previously have been on tills are now picking groceries for home deliveries, especially in evenings (for deliverynext day)
In Britain supermarkets themselves more often arrange this rather than having Doordash and similar - so some jobs removed from tills are replaced by driving delivery vans (which is better paid, although maybe more intense/stressful and you would need a driving licence and to be slightly older).
I do still see the smaller supermarkets hiring teens, seems no fewer than before and if I were young again I'd prefer this method of working rather than the constant interruptions of moving from shelves back to the till..
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Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
I've done such a good job ringing up all my own groceries that I think I deserve a 20% tip.
@alice and when do not do a good job, are you prepared to pay 20%extra?
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I always do shopping late in evening to avoid crowds of people (and busy car park with bad drivers), I've not noticed any major reduction in headcount in the supermarkets, I've got friends who work in them who have said the same and have worked in retail myself in 1980s.
What happens instead is staff are tasked with restocking and tidying up shelves (which in smaller shops they had to previously do *as well* as serve people on checkouts, which was always a pain when working in such places) and monitoring the village shop over 20 years (which recently got self checkouts) they have same number of staff as before.
But this is in a European country with some better employee protection legislation..
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I think NL also automated food sales since decades (with those machines still selling snack food from the wall, something which most other European nations tried and abandoned by the late 1960s), so the precedent of using them to reduce headcount may already have been set..
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@acb my argument against automated checkout is that it isn't automated. It's that it's removing a paid employee and replacing them with me. On top of that, they're now filming my purchases, selling the data, and using a fraction of the profit to pay armed security to check my receipt at the door to make sure I'm doing a good job of filling in for their employees.
@alice "automated" checkouts bother me so much. The *only* time I actually want them is I've got 3 items or less to quickly scan and don't wanna wait in line.
When I get off school and work and finally have time to go shopping, I'm dead-tired, don't want to be there, and I genuinely cannot stand the idea of actually checking out all my own crap. Isn't this the whole point of a grocery store is that somebody who knows better can help me out?
I always go in the cashier lane. Luckily, in my town, those lanes have actually been making a comeback over the past year or so.
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@alexadeswift I used to avoid them like the plague, but now my local store basically offers a 1-2 minute wait for self-checkout, or like a 10 minute wait for one of their two cashier lanes. I hate it and still opt for the human as often as I can.
They can be useful, for example in a very busy urban shop full of workers purchasing lunch, in other cases they seem not so much to be employed to decrease queueing times for those with small baskets, as to take cashiers off the tills and reduce headcount.
At least I can rest assured that both of the Supermarkten I use are part of the same coop, so hopefully headcount is less of an issue.
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@vfrmedia @webhat @alice Granted, the recent boom & collapse of vending machines in Germany did in part also cement that.
- Obviously all for-profit businesses are incentivized to reduce costs and increase revenue and profit per employee.
And shifting personnel hours works, as it's just neither practical nor feasible to automate shelf-stocking with the chaotic and irrational nature of humans.
- Heck even in Warehouses full automation only works for pre-packaged goods and with custom-built systems which are very inflexible compared to forklifts, industrial high load capacity shelves and pallet (form factor containers and boxes)…
The reason pharmacies in Germany adopt robot shelves is because the pharmacist's time is too expensive to let themcwalk around and fumble in shelves instead of talking to customers.
- Plus the bot can effectively deny ejecting boxes of prescription drugs without a proper prescription and unlike a pharmacist won't budge when held at gunpoint! By the time anyone would've broken into the robot shelf and found the correct shelf with what they came.for, police would've already surrounded them.
- Similarly there are now cash handling machines at my local bakery cuz those reduce insurance premiums against theft and robbery (like CCTV cameras)…
Self-checkouts thus aim to reduce the cost of dealing with smaller purchases by incentivizing those with a few items to use them with dark patterns like less open cashiers and wait times…
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@connynasch here in the US, we have things like:
- self-checkout kiosks that ask for tips
- POS systems that ask for a tip before you get served
- default tipping amounts of 18%, 20%, and 25%, or "no tip" on most services
- a 5% "built-in" tip on all sales at a lot of restaurants (that doesn't go to employees)
- a 15% built-in gratuity for groups (usually of 6+)
@alice
eek! -
Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
I've done such a good job ringing up all my own groceries that I think I deserve a 20% tip.
@alice
Feel free to give yourself a tip, just remember to report it as income for tax purposes
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Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
I've done such a good job ringing up all my own groceries that I think I deserve a 20% tip.
@alice +9001%
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@alice the comments make me sad. I somehow thought people on the fediverse could agree on the absolute minimum, like not being a class traitor and not using the self checkout*
*Unless there is a health, safety or other import reason
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Self-checkout kiosks should allow tipping.
I've done such a good job ringing up all my own groceries that I think I deserve a 20% tip.
@alice Do you greet yourself and tell yourself to have a nice day?
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@acb my argument against automated checkout is that it isn't automated. It's that it's removing a paid employee and replacing them with me. On top of that, they're now filming my purchases, selling the data, and using a fraction of the profit to pay armed security to check my receipt at the door to make sure I'm doing a good job of filling in for their employees.
Fair. But similar arguments can be applied to elevators and elevator operators. I am old enough to remember when every commercial building with elevators that was older than about (SWAG estimate) 15 years old had them.
