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> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots ta
by phyzome 9y ago
> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers.
...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.
- JSONwebtoken 9y agoFor the foreseable future, robots and chatbots will be poorer UX than speaking to a human. Since it's not adding value to their product it's obviously being done for cost cutting and scale reasons.
- jdietrich 9y agoI rarely get useful assistance in large chain stores. Asking "where is the pesto?" usually gets an answer like "I dunno, somewhere in aisle 7 maybe" with an indifferent shrug. I'd happily make three attempts at using a clunky voice interface if I got the answer "Aisle 7, bay 11, shelves 3 and 4. We have 18 different kinds of pesto currently in stock. Would you like me to take you there?" It almost seems too obvious to say, but computers have different strengths and weaknesses to humans. There are also social factors involved that may be advantageous to machines. Self-checkout machines offer an objectively worse experience most of the time, but a lot of shoppers prefer them. Some customers don't want to interact with a human cashier. Some will be buying embarrassing items and prefer the apparent anonymity of self-checkout. There's also a subtlety in how the self-checkout machines are arranged - because there's usually a common queue for several machines, customers don't feel pressured to finish their transaction quickly. Shoppers may prefer being assisted by a robot for a variety of reasons, even if the robot isn't quite as good as the average human worker.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI already choose grocery stores with ample self checkout, which is so much better to me than waiting in line then interacting with a clerk. I for one welcome our robot service providers.
- monk_e_boy 9y agoIt does raise the question of what jobs are worth saving? So a robot takes someones job, but it was a crappy job that they hated anyway. But they needed the money. Tough.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThat is a generic end-of-work question. Ideally, everyone would have jobs they liked, and all the dull stuff would be automated (Star Trek outcome). Pessimistically, the machines will become better than humans at everything and we will just become obsolete (Terminator outcome). If automation picks up, we will have to deal with these questions sooner rather than later, but it will happen eventually.
- DougWebb 9y agoLet's be optimistic and hope for the Wall-E outcome instead of the Terminator outcome. The robots will keep us around and take care of us as pets.
- dmoy 9y agoThere's a middle ground portrayed in the Culture Series novels. Everything is run by machines for the most part, and in some situations humans just tag along for the ride. At the same time though humans can basically get whatever they want whenever they want it, and do whatever.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoErm, if we create robots better than us, they are our legacy, our homo superious, why should Homo sapiens continue? You don't see Neanderthals running around today for a good reason.
- freehunter 9y agoIt’s easy to look back fondly on genocides that have already happened. No one shed a tear for the long lost Neanderthals. The Estruscans were wiped out by the Romans with almost no recorded history left behind. Native Americans, First Nations, and Aborigines suffered horribly at European hands, but we never entertain the idea of moving back to the Old World. Things are different for genocide that hasn’t happened yet. If people have left the UK and formed the United States which is far more successful currently, why not just kill all the citizens of the UK? Obviously the US is homo superious. Would no one shed a tear?
- foota 9y agoAn aisle number is all I'm really looking for when I ask imo. I can scan a shelf about as fast as I can walk.
- derefr 9y agoBut if I’m asking, it’s because I already looked on the shelf and I didn’t find the thing after looking for at least five minutes. I want to know, at that point, whether they carry the thing at all; whether it’s just in a crazy place (e.g. honey in the bakery in a little spreads display, instead of in the baking or condiment aisle); or whether my eyes are failing to do their jobs properly and I’ll need to look again.
- Trav5 9y agoI can't find it if I'm looking at it. I long to photograph the shelf and then search it with OCR.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- improv32 9y agoTrader Joe's is excellent about this. I'm not sure if it's explicit policy but every single time I've asked an employee where something is they dropped what they were doing, walked over to the exact spot and literally handed me the item I was looking for. I guess that's only possible in a small store though.
- heartbreak 9y agoWegmans employees do the same thing, and my Wegmans is bigger than some Walmarts.
- ISL 9y agoMany stores do this. Our local grocery store, QFC, frequently does it, Home Depot does it, etc.
- thenomad 9y agoThis is absolutely standard in the UK in all the supermarkets I'm aware of. If a member of staff doesn't know where the item is, they'll go and find someone who does.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoI've found that too. TBH I just want them to tell me which aisle it is, and will ask "which aisle are eggs on, please?" or whatever. But they insist on walking you there and done are seemingly instructed to hand you a product too (which usually I replace). Mind you, if they didn't insist on moving everything to increase customer circulation ...
- ensignavenger 9y agoWalmart used to do this, back in Sam Walton's day. (I grew up and live in Southwest Missouri, and remember Walmart as our small, regional competitor to the big national giants like Kmart :)
- daveguy 9y agoAll grocery stores I have been to are like that. They will drop what they will tell you where to find it off the top of their heads and offer to take you to it. Publix, Piggly Wiggly, Winn Dixie. This is why I still do most of my grocery shopping in grocery stores and not big box.
- napa15 9y agoYes, I think the social factors are underestimated. I actually believe that most people by default would prefer to interact with a robot rather than with another human. Humans have different speeds, moods, knowledge and expertise. When you shop, you dont do it to have a social experience, you do it to get a very specific job done and in my opinion this makes humans a variable that is desireable to be removed.
- radley 9y agoI've almost always had the opposite response, ranging from briefly informative directions to someone guiding me all the way to the item I seek. (Edit: But I don't shop at Walmart...)
- torgoguys 9y agoI have the opposite experience. Pretty much any store around here, Walmart included, the employees are very willing to help you find stuff, and if they don't know where something is, they will find or call to an employee that does know.
- wavefunction 9y agoI am very impressed with folks at home improvement stores. I walk up, ask them where X is and they say 'ahhh, it should be over in aisle 17, towards the end past the Ys.'
- drewmol 9y agoHome depot lists aisle and bin numbers of inventory on their website once you've selected a local store as you're default store. After asking an employee and them pulling out their phone to check online for a products location, I've never had to ask an employee again. Surprised they don't advertise this on in store signage
- guelo 9y agoItem location could be provided by a phone app today. My feeling is that they don't do it because they don't want you to know the exact location because they want you to browse the aisles in hopes that you'll throw something into your cart that you weren't planning to. Same reason that supermarkets put milk and eggs at the farthest corner away from the door.
- nitrogen 9y agoWalmart actually used to list exact shelf location for items on their site. Maybe they still do, maybe desktop only?
- lucasverra 9y agoI've been in a retailer hackathon. This is true. (ratailer is a worldwide actor french born)
- 9y ago
- IIAOPSW 9y agoPart of this has to do with demographics. We prefer to deal with robots and order stuff on web interfaces. I was talking with my aunt and uncle the other day. They were telling me that they prefer to bring their paper checks to the bank and interact with the teller rather than scan it in the app from the comfort of their home. That blew my mind. I think there's a huge age gap when it comes to preference for human vs mechanical interface. Until the older generation dies out these sort of redundant service jobs will exist. As they say, sometimes progress only happens one funeral at a time.
- jdietrich 9y agoRobots aren't going to replace all of the service jobs, but I think they're going to replace more than we might imagine. Over the last 30 years, more than half of bank branches in the UK have closed. Many older customers have been substantially inconvenienced by these closures, but they're on the wrong side of economics. Beyond a certain point, it's just no longer financially viable to keep a branch open. A lot of older people prefer DVDs to online streaming, but good luck finding a rental store in most towns. The social effects may well be very ugly, but I think that most businesses will be quite ruthless about their deployment of automation. They clearly have no qualms about the impact on jobs and I don't think that they'll care if some proportion of their customer base is marginalized.
- nitrogen 9y agoThere's good reason to prefer a disc over a stream, especially if you use player software that lets you skip the unskippable previews. The audio is better, the bitrate is higher, and you can rip the disc and store it somewhere safe.
- ilaksh 9y agoIt's not really human vs mechanical in the teller example despite what they say. They are just keeping their long running habit rather than having to learn how to scan it on their phone which is work and risking that their money will disappear.
- paulryanrogers 9y agoWalmart employees used to be trained to always escort the customer when they ask for help finding something.
- racl101 9y agoWhat's worse is that a lot of Walmart employees don't speak English. They can barely understand what you are saying, much less, conjure up a response. Usually they have to go and fetch a much smarter or knowledgeable person to help out. Terribly inefficient. So Walmart Employees, if this is you: I'm sorry but if you want to keep working at Walmart, time to step up your game, learn some English and be more responsive. Otherwise, I'll happily accept a response from the robot over your indifference if it helps me get to the product I need to find quicker.
- colejohnson66 9y agoWhat Walmart do you go to? The one in my town, everyone seems to speak English fluently
- racl101 9y agoCalgary Alberta. Any Walmart in town.
- hourislate 9y agoYou're being junked because most of the folks in the US haven't experienced what you're referring to. Here in the US everyone speaks English. I understand it's a little different in Canada because there are many more immigrants working at grocers and stores like Walmart that may not have mastered English yet.
- ksenzee 9y agoI think it's more because "smarter and more knowledgeable" is being conflated with "speaks English." That kind of casual ignorance doesn't elevate the discussion here.
- dao- 9y agoSo someone speaking English is "a much smarter or knowledgeable person" than someone who may have immigrated recently. Yeah, makes perfect sense. > I'm sorry but if you want to keep working at Walmart, time to step up your game, learn some English and be more responsive. I'm sorry but it's not your place to threaten Walmart employees. You'll have to leave that to Walmart management.
- red75prime 9y ago> Would you like me to take you there? You see another robot going in the direction of aisle 7, but forget it immediately as unimportant. While following the robot something catches your attention (slight disorder in neatly ordered merchandise? You don't reflect on that because...) you see a thing you didn't bothered to search for, but... To the robot: "Organic food is healthier, right? Let's go."
- hkmurakami 9y agoThat's if you can first locate a warm body in your geographical vicinity in the first place.
- speedemin 9y agoI wonder if we could use a dewey decimal system style lookup service for stores?
- ColanR 9y agoYa, they're probably desprate to find a way to compete with Amazon right now. AMZN's been killing them on price and convenience, afaik.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y agoAKA perfectly reasonable economic reasons.
- RKearney 9y agoSure, you think that, but the last two times I went to Walmart and needed help finding something, the first person I went to at each store didn't speak any English at all. This was in the middle of Tennessee, not Texas or Miami.
- fixermark 9y agoKeeping the prices updated and correctly tagged adds value to the product. Walmart in particular seems (from my observation relative to other stores in my town) to have a bad track record of updating their stickers and keeping their shelves sorted.
- paulddraper 9y ago> which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here Some would say the "robots taking our jobs" angle is also bullshit. Damn tractors/threshers/combines, taking all of our jobs....
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoIn UK the initial industrialisation of farming forced people to migrate to the town's to seek work. Their standard of living declined considerably; great news for the mine & mill owners though as they could grow richer and fatter with no dearth of cheap labour, particularly children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Great_Britain_during_the_Industrial_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Great_Britain_during... Living standards did rise eventually, but there was a considerable lag. Initial income rises were at costs of health and of hard work, at a pace dictated by the master, for all the family. I fear we'll see very similar patterns again.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoOn the other hand, Walmart is certainly feeling the pressure from Amazon and improving customer interaction is likely high on their strategic radar. To wit: AMZN revenue +33% to a $170 Billion run rate, vs. WMT revenue virtually unchanged over the last 4 years at $485 Billion. Walmart recently introduced their own version of Prime, and AMZN is now in the grocery business, two more differentiators that have been closed off between the two. It doesn't take too many 30% years to go from $170 to $485 Billion (not that they'll continue at that pace, but shit, this is year 23 for AMZN, and their growth is still incredible, [AWS, AWS, AWS]).
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI love the marketing angle. Just two days ago, our internal company newsletter announced a purchase of another industrial robot, and the newsletter said it is meant to "help/relieve our employees with doing monotonous tasks". In the office, we all read this and were "yeah, right; what you actually mean is 'let us get rid of those employees who are currently hired for doing those monotonous tasks'...".
- PeterisP 9y agoAnd that's a good thing. We should be relieving humans of all kinds of monotonous jobs, which means that yes, we'll not have those jobs, and people won't be able to get this work; and again, that's a good thing - a job isn't some kind of gift or value by itself; if some task isn't intrinsically fulfilling for humans, then we should be working to get humanity rid of such tasks. Coincidentally, "tasks that aren't intrinsically fulfilling for humans" is pretty much synonymous for work, if it would be fulfilling by itself then quite likely that it'd be or become an unpaid hobby instead of a paid job.
- xg15 9y agoThis is good for bitcon
- TeMPOraL 9y agoI strongly agree, but that's a conditional agreement - I believe we should relieve humanity of the very concept of earning a living, but at the same time we also need to do it in such a way that the whole civilization won't collapse in the proces. My only complaint in the previous comment is about the PR double-speak. We all know that when a company purchases automation, it's meant to replace human workers. But companies won't honestly admit it.
- profalseidol 9y agoProf. Richard Wolff proposed solution to this is worker-owned cooperatives. You'll see a lot of his work on this on his books and in interviews and talks. The Mondragon umbrella of cooperatives in Spain, a multi-billion dollar corporation had to cut down employees during the recession. But instead of simply firing people, they were given options including offers to re-skill and compensation (like commute). The whole corporation paid for this. Even in this ultra hostile capitalist world, we've now a case where a large scale cooperative can survive the cycle of capitalistism's overproduction and over-exploitation. Ofc this is all work in progress, and nobody knows what problems it will face. But certainly we need to do something about the current Capitalism.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoOr they're doing the "harbor freight" method of having ~3 employees in the store at all times. When there isn't a rush at checkout you actually get good service because under-staffing means people don't specialize so every employee probably knows the answer to your question.