Posted on 03/01/2020 12:16:21 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In the 1960s, Milton Friedman reportedly visited a construction site in a foreign country. To his surprise, the canal builders used no heavy machinery and instead armed thousands of men with shovels. He questioned the bureaucrat about this odd choice and the bureaucrat responded that it was a jobs program. “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal,” Friedman said. “If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Friedman’s absurd proposal illustrates the absurdity of make-work bias—the belief that conserving labor makes us poorer. Make-work bias was particularly popular during the Industrial Revolution, when legions of new machines upended the old way of doing things. No one was more famously upset than the textile workers of the early 19th century—Luddites—who railed against the automatic loom, the “job-killing” machines of their day.
Modern Day Luddites
We in the Information Age have our own Luddites. Among their ranks are Las Vegas culinary workers trying to hold back AI servers and bartenders and teamsters opposing self-driving vehicles and delivery robots. Luddites and their sympathizers heap a particularly large amount of criticism on self-checkouts, probably because their ubiquity makes them an obvious target.
Their apprehension is understandable. The proliferation of self-checkouts touches our daily lives so completely that it’s hard to imagine cashiers not losing their jobs or suffering smaller paychecks. Self-checkouts threaten cashiers as surely as excavators threatened shovel manufacturers. It is no surprise that protests erupted after a French supermarket used self-checkouts to get around labor laws or that the Oregon AFL-CIO backed a petition which limits the number of self-checkouts to two per store. Every supplier hates competition.
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Not sure where you’re going that won’t accept cash at self checkout. Every grocery store self checkout unit I’ve seen in the last decade will cheerfully take bills and coins and render change in bills and coins. Perhaps you didn’t see the cash acceptor slots?
I love self checkout stores!
It would be interesting to see if a supermarket chain decided to shun self-checkouts and boast about having human cashiers, how their business would do. I think there are many who would support such an endeavor, as always, the market will decide.
Plain and simple! They can shove self checkout, unless you’re giving me sizable discount. I’m here in West Texas and we have Walmart, HEB and Porters. Porters will have somebody standing in front of their register when you walk up, waiting is rare. HEB isn’t to bad but you will have to wait, Walmart absolutely sucks and I do not shop there.
The cashiers who rang up your groceries never had to look at the register and did the job faster than the cashiers of today. The bag boy filled the bags (paper) as fast as the cashier sent them to him. Nothing broken or crushed. These workers took pride in having a job and generally smiled while doing it. I always relate this to someone checking out my groceries on the rare occasion that I go to the grocery store. I guess I am A Luddite.
I go to my local bank, there is no line.
That’s funny! Although I did have a problem with a few cars with hidden gas fillers. I’d check behind the license plate, behind the tail lights, etc., and then have to beg the driver to show me. Often, it was a piece of chrome that had to be turned a certain way to reveal the gas filler. Aside from that, at one gas station the boss forced me to carry a .32 revolver (had the midnight shift and was the only attendant). So when cleaning the windshield, the revolver in my pants pocket would bump against the fender making noise. Hope I didn’t cause any nicks! Never had to pull the gun on anyone, although I had to toss it to the boss when he was there to chase after thieves.
Preach it!
You took the words right out of my mouth. Arrogant jerks get under my skin.
I like to stand in line and read Free Republic during my wait.
*** “ Perhaps you didn’t see the cash acceptor slots?” ***
Perhaps I didn’t have my glasses with me (which is about 90% of the time)
Until they give me a discount for checking myself out or it takes less effort than going through a regular checkout I refuse to do self checkout. They don’t pay me to check people out (myself) and I dont work for free.
As an introvert I love self checkout. No small talk with the cashier or dealing with people in line trying to wrangle me into whatever they are b****ing about today.
I agree.
Here in Joisey they still pump our gas. But they never clean a windshield.
I’m in NJ, and when I needed gas while in another state, I had to ask someone what to do. Stupid me.
Good point.
As I recall decades ago, when self service gas was introduced, you got a discount of a certain amount per gallon, for using self service gas pumps. There was a period of years in which gas stations offered both full.and self service, and it was your choice which island to pull up to.
If stores with self checkout would offer discounts for using self checkout, the entire discussion here would be different.
I use to never go to Walmart only because the checkout lines were too long. So I went to Target instead. But since Walmart opened up their self-checkout stations a few years ago, I go there now all the time. They have about 20 self-checkout stations, and never a wait, and I’ve never had a need to call for assistance. OTOH the Target I go to has only four checkout stations, and their machines screw up quite frequently. YMMV.
What, you don’t want to hear the latest Dem talking points, Bernie Bro propaganda, or Obama worship from your cashier?
I had to use conventional check-out recently and the cashier was droning on and on and on about how anarchy was the best form of government and how they didn’t understand why people didn’t like it because it meant everyone would be free to do anything forever!
At Walmart now you have to go through a second kind of checkout when you get to the door. They have to see your receipt and then they check anything that is not bagged to see if you purchased it. This happens even if didn’t use the self checkout because they have no way of knowing if you did or not. It is all just a royal pain in the butt.
A lot of people not only don’t want the hassle of self checkout, but they want to interact with the cashier as a way of making them feel human. A computer cannot chit chat or smile.
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