645
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
645 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
58302 readers
3176 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
yeeeeah. They'll have to hire people to work the checkout lanes in that case... which means paying enough to compete with other employers who offer more. Case in point, here it's like 12/hr here to work in a grocery, vs 16/hr at Amazon. But even if they do this, people will still shoplift. Self checkout didn't create the problem, it rather treats everyone like a suspect.
The grocery I go to never has more than one staffed checkout lane at any time, typically a very long line of people too old, too stubborn, or with too many items to do it themselves. During the day it's 8 or 16 self-checkout lanes (minus broke ones), and they close in the evening, so everyone is forced to use the slow staffed checkout.
I fundamentally hate self-checkouts because they were an attempt to eliminate an essential job in the company. I refuse to use them. Frustrares my wife and stepdaughter, but it is my little way to give the corporations the middle finger and force them to have to employ people.
I don't get what the issue is with eliminating unnecessary jobs. It doesn't create any extra work for the customer (you have to place all items on the conveyer and put them back into the cart either way), it isn't offloading any extra work to the other employees and it saves anyone involved a fuckton of time.
Technological advancements have the unfortunately intended side effect of corporations having less people they gotta pay to, because machines are quite the competitor sometimes. While I think OP is being a bit pedantic here, efficiency in and of itself is not inherently good – the question should be who's extracting the profit. If the increased efficiency translates into less working hours... hell yeah. If it translates into record megacorp profits, then... I see no need in eliminating these unnecessary jobs for now – the worker gets their bread and that's what I care about
This. They may be unnecessary for the company, but they are necessary for society to maintain function and for the economy as a whole to continue smoothly function. Consider an analogy for the economy to a food chain, you have to have the bottom rungs of the food chain that are plentiful and prosperous to continue to maintain the larger predators. If you start taking out the bottom rungs, it may take a while, but the apex eventually starves. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The more money the poor make, the better the economy will function.