Posted on 09/12/2014 8:03:39 AM PDT by ctdonath2
At 1:40, demonstrates using an iPhone to bypass a fast-food cashier entirely: open app, recognizes you're at a restaurant, shows the menu, you pick what you want, tap "Pay", authorize with fingerprint on phone, go to food pickup window.
It's not that employers will dump minimum-wage employees for costing more, it's that clerks' services just won't be needed anymore thanks to an evolved monetary payment system.
Not even replaced with a machine, but with an app!
lol
But who’s going to bag it and deliver it from the prep area to the customer? Or deal with folks who get the wrong thing? There’s still going to be a need for someone up front. Maybe not as many as there were, but there’s still a need. I like the idea, though, no more cashier to screw up my order. McD’s is the worst for that, except one store. I’ve never had a wrong order at the store near my work. Of course, I’ve only been there maybe 10 times in 9 years.
Our local supermarket has 4 self scans open all the time and normally two cashiers during the day, and three or for on a weekend or evening. Keep demanding more more and watch more self checkouts get installed, why pay four cashiers $15/hr when you can pay one to run 4-5 lases.
Stores could encourage adoption of the app by giving a complimentary item or a stipulated dollar discount on the initial order.
And while enriching the top brass at Apple and making life easier for so many caring "progressives".
They will probably still have a expediter as before.
Last person on prep line can just bring it to the counter (”Order #239!”).
This won’t replace all minimum wage jobs, but will devastate the order-and-payment taking clerk jobs.
No problem as long as I can do it in English.
The non English speaking order takers are a true PIA.
I LOVE the self check out at the supermarket, the ONLY problem is if you have produce codes and scales are not provided!!!!!
I hate self checkouts and refuse to use them. They always mess up on me and I gave up on them long ago.
I’ve learned which stores self-checkouts in my area are a PITA and which ones tend to work. I’ve found the scan and place on belt type are more reliable than the scan and bag variety.
Grocery stores are always a PITA, and the monitor spends more time helping me than they would if they were a normal cashier. There are discount stickers on meat, and then it fails to recognize that I put the item in the bag, and a person has to clear the error. And you can't buy beer or other alcohol in the self checkout.
Home Depot's works good, OTOH. However, they can't protect your credit card info, apparently, so whatcha gonna do?
I've been on clerk-attended lines at the supermarkets and have the clerk who runs those banks of four come up and say I can use one of them instead of waiting. I tell 'em I'm not for putting people more out of work and get the "Well, you'll put me out of work" reply - or more often - rolleyes. I tell the first that they put three other people out of work. I'll do that even if I have only one item, just to be cranky, as these self-checkers are an obvious we-dump-our-costs-on-you technique, IMO.
I can see the self-checks for one or two items when there are long lines at the regular checkouts, but when I see people scanning item after item, like 20-30, I have to shake my head. All they are doing is giving management free labor.
The local Albertsons grocery store do not pay workers full time 40/hrs but part time hours. I listened to 2 cashiers discussing their hours and they were happy when they did get 40/hrs (This was during a holiday week.) and were unhappy with the cut back from full time pay.
Thank democrats and obamacare and always asking for higher taxes.
This assumes that the restaurant maintains a current menu and price list with Apple. What does that cost the restaurant? Do you have to rent a whole web site from Apple to have this "service"? What happens if the prices on Apple's system are incorrect?
So....what if I am not a fan of Apple?
Do I become unable to buy or sell?
By the time you make it to check-out, you’ve already given the grocery store management “free labor” by walking through the store and pulling your own items. Piggly-Wiggly was the first grocery store to push that task off onto their customers, in the 1930’s. Before that, you’d go to the counter and present the clerk with a list of what you wanted, like Sam Drucker’s store in the old show Petticoat Junction. :)
Self-service grocery stores like Piggly-Wiggly could trim costs over the old model, and by passing those savings on to their customers, became the new standard business model.
Interesting - I'm 81 and neither my wife or I have ever seen that, so one wonders if was only in the South, at first.
passing those savings on to their customers
A foreign concept to those pushing the self-checkouts. Everything is bottom-line oriented these days and anything saved goes into the corporate pocket. Sometimes they use the lame excuse, "It will keep prices from rising." but since you don't have access to the internals, you have to take their word for it. Yeah, right.
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