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It's probably because stock checking is a simple repetitive task that humans tend to fail at due to boredom and mental fatigue while robots would accel at it be

by decker 9y ago

It's probably because stock checking is a simple repetitive task that humans tend to fail at due to boredom and mental fatigue while robots would accel at it because of the fact that it's simple, well defined and boring.

stephengillie 9y ago
It's traditional to spend 45-180 seconds in the back room, staring at your phone or talking to a coworker, before returning to the sales floor to tell the customer that you're sold out. It's like the Hello World of stocking product.
- mattlondon 9y ago
  In my experience about a 10-15 years ago when I worked in a super-market there was no "back room" really - it was just a staging-post for getting stuff off the truck, putting it onto trolleys, then taking it out onto the shop floor to put on the shelves as quickly as possible. I dunno if people expect there to be this huge warehouse of stock "out the back" of every supermarket with loads of shelves holding tins of beans or loaves of bread or whatever just sitting there. The shop floor was the "back room"! I used to just tell folks that what they see is everything we had, so if they cant see it then we dont have it. Even with fancy modelling and "just-in-time" delivery stock-outs still happen - I remember one year working on the last weekend before Christmas. We "sold out" of turkeys - in reality it was just that people had them in their trolleys and hadn't checked-out yet so people were stealing them out of other customer's trolleys when they weren't looking! Happy Xmas! :-)
  - empath75 9y ago
    The exception to this is milk and bread. There’s always more bread and milk in the back.
    - kaybe 9y ago
      Or somewhere else. Some stores have the same item at multiple locations which one may not know.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    Ahh yes.... "Stealing turkeys out of fellow customers trolleys", the TRUE spirit of Christmas.
  - fps 9y ago
    When I worked in a supermarket in the late 90's, we did have a pretty expansive back room filled with stuff that had been taken off trucks but not stocked on shelves. However, it was next to impossible for a front-end person to actually get to any of the products - they were stacked on pallets 3 to 5 rows high and about 5 rows deep with no clearance between them. Occasionally someone would ask me if something was in the back, but unless it was in the dairy fridge, or a case of it was actually sitting on a cart in the hallway, I'd tell them I couldn't find it.
coderdude 9y ago
It's not simple or well-defined from a technical (programming/tech) standpoint but you're right that a person would feel that way.

by decker 9y ago

stephengillie 9y ago

It's traditional to spend 45-180 seconds in the back room, staring at your phone or talking to a coworker, before returning to the sales floor to tell the customer that you're sold out. It's like the Hello World of stocking product.

mattlondon 9y ago
In my experience about a 10-15 years ago when I worked in a super-market there was no "back room" really - it was just a staging-post for getting stuff off the truck, putting it onto trolleys, then taking it out onto the shop floor to put on the shelves as quickly as possible. I dunno if people expect there to be this huge warehouse of stock "out the back" of every supermarket with loads of shelves holding tins of beans or loaves of bread or whatever just sitting there. The shop floor was the "back room"! I used to just tell folks that what they see is everything we had, so if they cant see it then we dont have it. Even with fancy modelling and "just-in-time" delivery stock-outs still happen - I remember one year working on the last weekend before Christmas. We "sold out" of turkeys - in reality it was just that people had them in their trolleys and hadn't checked-out yet so people were stealing them out of other customer's trolleys when they weren't looking! Happy Xmas! :-)
- empath75 9y ago
  The exception to this is milk and bread. There’s always more bread and milk in the back.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    Or somewhere else. Some stores have the same item at multiple locations which one may not know.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  Ahh yes.... "Stealing turkeys out of fellow customers trolleys", the TRUE spirit of Christmas.
- fps 9y ago
  When I worked in a supermarket in the late 90's, we did have a pretty expansive back room filled with stuff that had been taken off trucks but not stocked on shelves. However, it was next to impossible for a front-end person to actually get to any of the products - they were stacked on pallets 3 to 5 rows high and about 5 rows deep with no clearance between them. Occasionally someone would ask me if something was in the back, but unless it was in the dairy fridge, or a case of it was actually sitting on a cart in the hallway, I'd tell them I couldn't find it.

coderdude 9y ago

It's not simple or well-defined from a technical (programming/tech) standpoint but you're right that a person would feel that way.