5 ms·

The Luddite perspective: Anyone using automation is "stealing a job from someone who needs it". Never mind the fact that automation is why we have such wealth

by mikl 8y ago

The Luddite perspective: Anyone using automation is "stealing a job from someone who needs it". Never mind the fact that automation is why we have such wealth and plenty, and why you can spend your time writing Luddite blog posts, instead of hoeing the back forty, desperately hoping for a good harvest, so your family doesn't have to starve this winter. Sure, the people who used to work as cashiers will have to find something else to do. But the upside, for everyone, is that it becomes cheaper to run a supermarket, and thus competition can give us even cheaper groceries.

slothtrop 8y ago
> competition can give us even cheaper groceries If only it were so competitive. But that's spot on, automation will remain a constant at any rate. Whatever the solution to structural unemployment it won't involve hampering innovation.
lawlessone 8y ago
it's not really automation though. The shop have found a way to make you do the work they previously paid people to do.
- sevensor 8y ago
  Including the part where you have to flag a manager because the POS terminal is a POS.
- binarymax 8y ago
  This is exactly right. They just lowered the barrier and hardened for wider use of point-of-sale machines. And some of the hardening is very annoying. True automation would be something that actually saves time. It takes me longer to self-checkout than it does for a professional cashier.
- mikl 8y ago
  The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    > since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around. This is 180 degrees from my experience. Whether it's Home Depot, Safeway, Walmart, Target, etc, the self-checkout lines are always longer and take more time. The thing is constantly beeping at you or telling you to take things off some weight sensor or another. It barely takes cash that is not fresh out of the mint and the coin slots are filled with gum. Since the card machines are different tech than the self-scanners, their interface time is measured in minutes, not seconds. I have to tap a nearly endless amount of buttons to get the chip readers to recognize that my card had been in there the whole time, usually re-inserting twice will work. Trying to find the exact code for my zucchini takes clicking through pages of touchscreen menus. Each time I'm never sure if the screen has registered my touch, so it can take up to 3 taps to go to the next page, or will just jump two pages, each time taking a few seconds. I know, I know, first world problems, but come on, it's super frustrating. The scale on the things are never up to calibration. So when I put in my own bags, half the time an attendant must come over to clear the warnings. Even when I don't use my own bags, the scales will report errors and cause the whole thing to go into the warning mode, causing an attendant to come over anyways. When I want to buy beer or cigarettes or cold medicine, I have to scan it in, scan my drivers license in (Passports?! Ha!), wait for it to ping the attendant, wait for them to come over or finish helping everyone else, and then it takes them up to 3 tries to get their codes in and working (usually it does go the first time, though). It takes forever. The machines are constantly asking for my rewards card info. It's not a real time waster, but the near endless reminders that I have not yet done so are very annoying. When it's busy, any one of these issues is happening, and the attendants are rushing everywhere. Anyone with the slightest disability is hosed. Have vision problems? Have hearing problems? Have mobility problems? English not your first language? Have memory problems? It'll take forever and it's super frustrating to not just the old lady in the walker, but the whole line of folks just trying to get dinner on the table. Look, I'm not going to say that a lot of these issues never come up with an actual cashier. They of course, do. But with a person that has keyed in wheatgrass a million times, it does take a lot less time. When the SNAP card is a bit of a hassle, they know what to do. They already know how to get you past all the alerts for the beer and the cold medicine and actually look at a passport. There's a person there to help grandma with her bagging and groceries and out to the car. Where I live, the people are friendly enough and don't set watermelons on my eggs too often. Personally, via my anecdata, I vastly prefer the cashiers. Now, if I was a teenager buying my first prophylactics or hygiene products, sure, the machines are WAY better. But for me, I prefer the nice smiles and chit-chat to that dumb machine.
- goldcd 8y ago
  That's just a tiny incremental change to the supermarket you're already in. The idea of 'pre-packed food, with a bar-code you have to pick up yourself' - quite a leap from standing at the counter asking the aproned worker to cut, weigh and wrap your piece of cheese. Then possibly wait for them to open the barrel for your next item etc.
  - telesilla 8y ago
    I really enjoy shopping at smaller markets in Europe that still have counter staff. Spain in particular still has many of them. It's much more pleasurable but I wonder, if it's because of the lower wages there that they can still afford to do this, as in northern europe I can't remember the last time I saw anyone except a shelf-stocker in the big supermarkets.
- drcube 8y ago
  That's no different from showing yourself to your theater seat replacing ushers, or throwing your hamburger trash away replacing busboys. Pumping your own gas. Or bagging your own groceries at some grocery stores. This is a very old trend and self-checkout is nothing different.
- adrianmonk 8y ago
  I agree it isn't automation, but it doesn't really bother me to do it. With the traditional arrangement, I'm standing there doing nothing while I watch the cashier. It's kind of boring and the time is lost anyway, so scanning stuff is not necessarily a worse option. I guess my main concern is really the time it takes to get out of the store. If self-checkout has better throughput, great. I'm saving time and my ice cream is melting less. If it has worse throughput due to badly-designed machines or other customers being clueless and slow, then not great. On a side note, I feel like a weakness for self-checkout is stuff that is more complicated than scanning. If I buy a lot of produce, I have to figure out the code for lettuce, tomato, etc., which is tedious and slow. A cashier who does this all the time has them memorized, so it's much easier for them.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Well, the total work is less. From "cashier scanning while customer stands there waiting" to "customer scanning". No second person occupied.
- metalliqaz 8y ago
  Yes it is. Two scenarios: 1) I pick out what I want to buy. I give those items to a person, who adds them up and takes my money for them. 2) I pick out what I want to buy. I show them to a machine that totals the price and enables the credit card scanner. You have automated the process of summing the total prices of my groceries. The only job that I'm doing is bagging, but that is a completely different job. I already do that work myself because the grocery store usually doesn't have a separate bagger. I pack my own bags even when there is a cashier.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Self-checkout is less work for me as a shopper. I don't have to unload everything onto a belt, hand it all over to be scanned, and then re-pack it all. And I don't need to respond to small-talk.
sidlls 8y ago
This isn't automation. Shoppers are performing the labor that cashiers performed previously and they aren't getting paid for it. The real automation will come out of things like Amazon's work in this area.
- mikl 8y ago
  The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.
  - tzs 8y ago
    > Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively That was probably true 20 years ago, when your time waiting for the cashier to scan your goods was just idle time for you. But now we've got smartphones with internet access. We can be productive on our phones while we wait. We can manage investments, research things for work, read email, read news, and so on. I would not be surprised if doing our own manual labor of scanning and bagging groceries is a net loss of efficiency for society, at least for a large fraction of HN's readership when buying more than just a few items.
    - mikl 8y ago
      > We can be productive on our phones while we wait. Theoretically, sure. In practice, it's going to be pretty rare that anyone accomplishes anything of note during those couple of minutes. Especially since you can't just zone out while the cashier is doing his thing, if you're not super rude, you'll probably greet them, and you've gotta listen if they ask you a question, and get ready to pay once they're done.

by mikl 8y ago

slothtrop 8y ago

> competition can give us even cheaper groceries If only it were so competitive. But that's spot on, automation will remain a constant at any rate. Whatever the solution to structural unemployment it won't involve hampering innovation.

lawlessone 8y ago

it's not really automation though. The shop have found a way to make you do the work they previously paid people to do.

sevensor 8y ago
Including the part where you have to flag a manager because the POS terminal is a POS.
binarymax 8y ago
This is exactly right. They just lowered the barrier and hardened for wider use of point-of-sale machines. And some of the hardening is very annoying. True automation would be something that actually saves time. It takes me longer to self-checkout than it does for a professional cashier.
mikl 8y ago
The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.
- Balgair 8y ago
  > since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around. This is 180 degrees from my experience. Whether it's Home Depot, Safeway, Walmart, Target, etc, the self-checkout lines are always longer and take more time. The thing is constantly beeping at you or telling you to take things off some weight sensor or another. It barely takes cash that is not fresh out of the mint and the coin slots are filled with gum. Since the card machines are different tech than the self-scanners, their interface time is measured in minutes, not seconds. I have to tap a nearly endless amount of buttons to get the chip readers to recognize that my card had been in there the whole time, usually re-inserting twice will work. Trying to find the exact code for my zucchini takes clicking through pages of touchscreen menus. Each time I'm never sure if the screen has registered my touch, so it can take up to 3 taps to go to the next page, or will just jump two pages, each time taking a few seconds. I know, I know, first world problems, but come on, it's super frustrating. The scale on the things are never up to calibration. So when I put in my own bags, half the time an attendant must come over to clear the warnings. Even when I don't use my own bags, the scales will report errors and cause the whole thing to go into the warning mode, causing an attendant to come over anyways. When I want to buy beer or cigarettes or cold medicine, I have to scan it in, scan my drivers license in (Passports?! Ha!), wait for it to ping the attendant, wait for them to come over or finish helping everyone else, and then it takes them up to 3 tries to get their codes in and working (usually it does go the first time, though). It takes forever. The machines are constantly asking for my rewards card info. It's not a real time waster, but the near endless reminders that I have not yet done so are very annoying. When it's busy, any one of these issues is happening, and the attendants are rushing everywhere. Anyone with the slightest disability is hosed. Have vision problems? Have hearing problems? Have mobility problems? English not your first language? Have memory problems? It'll take forever and it's super frustrating to not just the old lady in the walker, but the whole line of folks just trying to get dinner on the table. Look, I'm not going to say that a lot of these issues never come up with an actual cashier. They of course, do. But with a person that has keyed in wheatgrass a million times, it does take a lot less time. When the SNAP card is a bit of a hassle, they know what to do. They already know how to get you past all the alerts for the beer and the cold medicine and actually look at a passport. There's a person there to help grandma with her bagging and groceries and out to the car. Where I live, the people are friendly enough and don't set watermelons on my eggs too often. Personally, via my anecdata, I vastly prefer the cashiers. Now, if I was a teenager buying my first prophylactics or hygiene products, sure, the machines are WAY better. But for me, I prefer the nice smiles and chit-chat to that dumb machine.
goldcd 8y ago
That's just a tiny incremental change to the supermarket you're already in. The idea of 'pre-packed food, with a bar-code you have to pick up yourself' - quite a leap from standing at the counter asking the aproned worker to cut, weigh and wrap your piece of cheese. Then possibly wait for them to open the barrel for your next item etc.
- telesilla 8y ago
  I really enjoy shopping at smaller markets in Europe that still have counter staff. Spain in particular still has many of them. It's much more pleasurable but I wonder, if it's because of the lower wages there that they can still afford to do this, as in northern europe I can't remember the last time I saw anyone except a shelf-stocker in the big supermarkets.
drcube 8y ago
That's no different from showing yourself to your theater seat replacing ushers, or throwing your hamburger trash away replacing busboys. Pumping your own gas. Or bagging your own groceries at some grocery stores. This is a very old trend and self-checkout is nothing different.
adrianmonk 8y ago
I agree it isn't automation, but it doesn't really bother me to do it. With the traditional arrangement, I'm standing there doing nothing while I watch the cashier. It's kind of boring and the time is lost anyway, so scanning stuff is not necessarily a worse option. I guess my main concern is really the time it takes to get out of the store. If self-checkout has better throughput, great. I'm saving time and my ice cream is melting less. If it has worse throughput due to badly-designed machines or other customers being clueless and slow, then not great. On a side note, I feel like a weakness for self-checkout is stuff that is more complicated than scanning. If I buy a lot of produce, I have to figure out the code for lettuce, tomato, etc., which is tedious and slow. A cashier who does this all the time has them memorized, so it's much easier for them.
emiliobumachar 8y ago
Well, the total work is less. From "cashier scanning while customer stands there waiting" to "customer scanning". No second person occupied.
metalliqaz 8y ago
Yes it is. Two scenarios: 1) I pick out what I want to buy. I give those items to a person, who adds them up and takes my money for them. 2) I pick out what I want to buy. I show them to a machine that totals the price and enables the credit card scanner. You have automated the process of summing the total prices of my groceries. The only job that I'm doing is bagging, but that is a completely different job. I already do that work myself because the grocery store usually doesn't have a separate bagger. I pack my own bags even when there is a cashier.
chrisseaton 8y ago
Self-checkout is less work for me as a shopper. I don't have to unload everything onto a belt, hand it all over to be scanned, and then re-pack it all. And I don't need to respond to small-talk.

sidlls 8y ago

This isn't automation. Shoppers are performing the labor that cashiers performed previously and they aren't getting paid for it. The real automation will come out of things like Amazon's work in this area.

mikl 8y ago
The customer does some of the work (scanning and handling the goods), and other parts are automated (payment, tallying, etc.). It's a bit like using an ATM instead of visiting the bank to withdraw cash, or pumping your own gas instead of having an attendant do it. The end result is the same, though. Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively, and usually the lines get shorter, so I can get my groceries quicker, spending less time overall, even if I have to take active part in the process instead of just standing around.
- tzs 8y ago
  > Society becomes slightly more efficient, since the time I used to spend waiting for the cashier to scan my goods is now spent productively That was probably true 20 years ago, when your time waiting for the cashier to scan your goods was just idle time for you. But now we've got smartphones with internet access. We can be productive on our phones while we wait. We can manage investments, research things for work, read email, read news, and so on. I would not be surprised if doing our own manual labor of scanning and bagging groceries is a net loss of efficiency for society, at least for a large fraction of HN's readership when buying more than just a few items.
  - mikl 8y ago
    > We can be productive on our phones while we wait. Theoretically, sure. In practice, it's going to be pretty rare that anyone accomplishes anything of note during those couple of minutes. Especially since you can't just zone out while the cashier is doing his thing, if you're not super rude, you'll probably greet them, and you've gotta listen if they ask you a question, and get ready to pay once they're done.