I would guess that while the kind of people who are afraid of self-checkout (and technology in general) represent a small percentage of the overall population, they are a much larger percentage of "people who call their representative".
When I interned for my hometown congressman, like half of all of the constituent mail and calls we got were from one small town I had never heard of that was basically a glorified retirement home.
> Again: The grocery store’s business is to give customers what they want.
C'mon, you're not this naive. The store's business is to turn a profit for its owners, giving the customers what they want is a secondary concern at best.
I was a pimply teen working at a grocery store when they first introduced self-checkout. Customers HATED them: "Unexpected item in the bagging area: please remove item; Item removed from bagging area: please replace item."
Maybe times have changed and today's shoppers fear human contact more than they resent taking orders from a machine, but let's be honest here. Stores want self checkout because it saves them labor costs.
Everyone's gotta eat; grocery stores have tight margins and often local monopoly power. Having worked in one, I don't think there's anything we could have done to alienate our customers so much that they'd drive an extra 30 minutes to our competitor (who also added self-checkout machines at nearly the same time).
Not sure where you live. And I’m sure it’s true in more remote areas. But I live in a relatively suburban area and um. There’s like 15 big grocery stores within like 15 miles.
TH3 R3X: And I have a friend who is gnashing her teeth b/c the convenient grocery store next to her work is closing (lost lease) and now she has to drive an extra 2 miles. Those people exist.....
The local monopoly power comes from entry costs. Imposing this stupid restrictions raises entry costs, resulting in fewer stores, and even more local monopoly power.
Yes. And what do they do with that saved labor cost? Nothing? Anything? Pack their purse? Give more deals? Compete harder? What does compete harder mean?
Again. I think Jeff has a note about people who really don’t study economics weighing in on economics. Which is fine.
As the child of parents who owned a small restaurant I will say 100% that surviving to buy groceries for their kids aka “profit” was definitely at the forefront of their mind. They usually made this magical “profit” (should I spell it pr@f!t thus censoring such a dirty filthy disgusting cus word?) by delivering customers better service. There is literally nothing wrong with profit.
I order you to go read bastiat’s book “that which is seen and unseen” https://a.co/d/02RPnyAM it’s quite short but can take some work to wrap your mind around.
Did prices go down when they brought in self-checkout? If the stores are saving on labour, shouldn’t some of those savings be passed on to the customers? I resent being unpaid labour for the big grocery chains. There is also evidence that the stores lose more in theft than they save on labour. Now they have to invest in surveillance to combat theft. I live in a small city, and like seeing the same clerks in the stores and chatting with them, be they pimply teens or adults trying to make a living.
I always lament that people make economic conclusions without having read Bastiat.
Is there a difference between lowing prices now and simply not raising prices as quickly in the future? I ask because you seem
To think there’s some lever in the causal chain here that says “well. We got rid of two cashiers. Now we can lower the cost of cheese by 10 cents”. How and why would that work that way. The benefit is the mostly. “Staying open to compete”.
There’s probably also the component that we have forcibly priced out this labor from the economy with our “oh so noble” minimum wage hikes, less designed to help the poor than it is to make sure people with regrettable degrees can’t fall that far. There is a point at which an accountant looks at something. And says “nah. Not worth the money”.
Are you an economist? If a company saves money, it should not pass on some of the benefits to its customers? It should just take as much money as possible from them? During the pandemic, the grocery stores upped their prices due to supply chain issues, they told us. They made record profits, and when the supply chains were reestablished, did the prices come down? No.
I agree that companies have to make a profit to stay in business, but price gouging is not a good practice, especially if you want to keep your customers long term. Not paying your employees a living wage is also a poor practice.
Your contempt for people trying to make a living working in jobs that don’t pay well and are physically demanding is showing. The minimum wage was designed to guarantee workers enough purchasing power to stay out of poverty, afford basic necessities, and maintain a decent quality of life. As FDR said, "no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country".
Executive pay has increased 20 times faster than general worker pay. A small cut in their compensation would easily pay for a couple of cashiers. Any accountant could tell you that.
The minimum wage was invented by racists in unions who don’t want this new desperate labor in black and poor communities outcompeting them by forcing companies to pay more for labor thus making them make the choice between upstanding trained white labor and untrained unknown black labor. Sweden has no federal minimum wage. The minimum wage helps all the people it was always designed to help. The already well off enough who want a few bucks more.
You also don’t have the courage to extend the minimum wage to the self employed
Like artists imagine forcing bars to pay bands a minimum fee. You’d crush band culture.
Again. Read economics. I mean it go find as much as you can and literally read it. Not articles. Not the times. Not YouTube videos read the sources. Come back. You’re talking smoke and mirrors I’m talking bedrock code.
The Retail Council of Canada is calling grocery store theft a national crisis, with losses now approaching $10 billion annually, and growing. People are scanning low cost items while taking higher priced ones, skipping items, keying in lower cost produce codes for higher value goods, etc. Self checkout lanes have a drastically higher "shrink rate" at 3.5-4% of total sales, compared to 0.21% at cashier staffed checkouts. Because grocery stores operate on thin profit margins, a 4% loss rate completely wipes out the financial gains from not having human cashiers. The cost of the losses is passed on to honest consumers, with retailers adding an average 2.2% price increase across the board.
When CVS introduced them in DC, customers wanted to use them, while cashiers kept on making stupid new rules to try to force customers not to use them. I remember cashiers at CVS screaming at people in the face for trying to use them.
For once, I absolutely disagree with you. I will happily pay more so that other humans can have jobs. I avoid self-checkout if at all possible. I enjoy talking with other humans while in line. Try it.
I think one of the big disconnects here is the belief that requiring a human to do a job that machines can do “creates jobs”. I don’t think that’s true — the efficiency gained from the machines inevitably shows back up in the economy somewhere — and if it was true, then we should demand the return of phone operators, bank tellers, and typists. But societies that embrace technology have an excellent record of creating new jobs and having low unemployment.
Agreed. The broader economic benefits of accepting the automation are more likely helpful than harmful. At least, the economic downside is not certain enough to warrant legislation. Insofar as there is personal taste, that taste shouldn't be legislated. I shop at Trader Joe's. I like the checkout people and would be upset if the legislature tried to make them illegal, but it's not the government's job to make sure Trader Joe's keeps its checkout people, either.
Rhode Islanders need to decide if they agree and if they don't ... well, the elections are right around the corner. But, if they do, then that will be the way things are in RI. I still can't pump my own gas in NJ. I like NJ.
Neither of us live there. We're discussing the merits of the policy in a thread started by talking about personal political preference. Of course people who do live there can decide if they change their vote based on this, but the point of the article, the point of the discussion, remains the merits of the policy that now exists.
Yeah but the phone company didn't make me do their job for them. Bank tellers still very much alive and well BTW. Typists, I'd love to have one if I were an executive who needed one and I bet I would have one. Those too, still exist under a different title but their job is much different as they are now word processors. I see where you're going with your arguemtn but you didn't really make any good points supporting it.
This is a guy living in some delusion where grocery stores still primarily employ teenagers and not desperate adults scraping by on the capitalist dregs. He has no good support because he is basing his thesis on his feelings instead of data
Why not instead implement a grocery tax that pays for a government crew of ditch diggers and a government crew of ditch fillers? That would also allow humans to have jobs but at least wouldn't affect my shopping experience.
So why do you need a law? If a grocery store can make a profit by marketing itself as the "no self checkout" store, and then jacking up prices, I'm pretty sure one will do so! Hell, you should go out and do it, and get in on that sweet grocery money.
Most people can correctly call out micromanaging when it's done by "corporate" or "middle management" (look at reddit's "malicious compliance"), but for some reason when it's done by a legislative body with the force of the state behind it, it's totally cool?
I agree this is a silly law, but there's all kinds of collective-action problems that won't be solved by market forces alone. Ideally, legislation would be an expression of democratic will and a way for the people to come together and make choices that individuals can't (or won't) make on their own.
If healthcare is provided through a public option, than smoking in workplaces carries externalities that make sense to regulate for. That being said, yes. Right now I think a smoking ban at the legislative level isn't necessary, because customers can choose which bar to frequent (and plenty of people don't want to smell like smoke)
This was a rare case where government actually did know better than the private sector. When the first smoking ban was implemented in NYC the bar and restaurant industry thought it signaled their death knell, but in fact it was a net positive for the industry -- it turned out there were more non-smokers who had avoided going out due to smoke than there was smokers who stopped going out because they could no longer smoke.
I agree. Sometimes industry needs a big nudge to get off of their local maximus. But now that they are, I'd be surprised if, en mass, they went back to smoke filled rooms.
Okay? Were you also one of the people on the 1910s who kept paying for their “knocker-upper” instead of buying into that new anti worker technology. The alarm clock.
But why I really prefer a real-live cashier is because I can’t stand being watched by the self-checkout monitor-person as I’m performing a cashier’s labor. Plus the stupid cameras.
If you’re really worried about me stealing, I might as well stand in the line and put my three items on a conveyor belt while I wait behind the person whose 65 items are being checked out. It’s a much more pleasant experience.
I think your position is commendable, but the people demanding and passing these laws should be honest about their intentions, rather than saying "we're doing it to improve your shopping experience by making it take longer and cost more".
Reminds me of when my country passed its smoking ban. The government, and supporters of the ban, pretended it was to protect people who work in pubs etc. from passive smoke. This was self-evidently bullshit, because any suggestion of a compromise that would protect workers while still allowing smoking rooms was carefully ignored. The government wanted to do it for rather paternalistic public health reasons; the supporters wanted it because they didn't like the smell of smoke. Which is fine! But the pretense rankled.
I also prefer human checkouts over automated ones. But that’s a consumer choice the market can respond to—I don’t need the government trying to compel the grocery store to adhere to my personal preferences.
Various issues with this. People feel embarrassed about receiving handouts, whereas a make-work job provides enough cover to give them the money. People don't like their tax money going to handouts. Handouts attract free riders (fake benefit claimants and so on). It's one of those situations where the seemingly logical solution is actually a harder sell.
Harder sell, sure, but "work 8 hours a day at an unnecessary job to maintain your dignity" isn't the best use of anyone's time and money. We still have jobs we can't outsource (caring for the elderly, which is underpaid) and I'd rather subsidize those than keep jobs that we can move on from.
I don't disagree with any of that, but it's not me you need to convince. Your issue isn't the merits of your position (like I said, it's logical), it's that it doesn't tend to play well with voters, and at least some of the people who benefit fiscally will feel humiliated by it.
There's some pretty big assumptions there- for example, how does a law mandating at least one staffed check-out LIMIT choice? How does having all auto checkouts give MORE choice? So a choice of checkout options is....less choice? Ok. And, of course, theres the old claim that every element of a business operation is purely an expression of consumer preferences- as if saving money on staffing wasnt a thing businesses push for, given that shoppers, in your view, shouldnt be allowed to demand a choice. Then of course there's all the boring old, confused and generally less than competant people who might want staff help processing their shopping. Yes, boring I know, but these people do shop, whether we kikecitvor not, and are their preferences really so irrelevant?
The law is one human checkout lane per three machines (plus one person working the machines), which might make the machines not profitable to operate, which might cause the store to stop operating the machines. Which is exactly what happened in Long Beach.
If my local grocery is any indication, all the people 'demanding' staffed checkouts will be dead in a couple of months, so the problem will solve itself. Just like the 'no checks please' policy, which seems quaint now.
I am ancient, a real fossil, and Shop and Scan is heaven sent for me. I know the price of everything as I take it off the shelf, can keep an eye on my running total bill so I can limit impulse buys, and best of all, I pack everything into my bags as I shop just the way I like it. The fossils can learn. The bill is for those who don't want to, and that's fine too. It's America.
Some won’t be dead, some awful disabled or confused people might still be around, clogging up the world with their uselessly inefficient consumer habits.
Progress is relentless. I was told, over and over again, that American drivers would never learn how to navigate roundabouts, that they would all be torn out because they were impossible for our traffic. They are everywhere now, and people zip through them - or avoid them, I suppose. Hell, I remember when shoulder belts were first put in cars. No one would figure them out! People will never use them!
I am wary of the argument that people will never figure things out. It change their ways.
John: It's all good John! I could claim I was using "awful" in the same way but I'm not that clever lol. My reply to you should have been kinder so my apology for that.....
"People born after something has faded away never know it and don't miss it". Like the natural world, I guess. It'll be gone, but no-one will miss it after the oldies have died.
Well maybe not! You could be like Levis 501s, without the stretch fabric. Apparently they are making a big comeback with the youngs. That a vinyl records! You could be the vinyl record of mankind.
Nothing bad about adapting or preferring new technology. But many people prefer things as they are and I think there's a limit to how much people can adapt to change.
There are some aspects of this new world I genuinely like. I mean just cashless payments (using your card or whatever) are incredibly practical. No change, no worrying about how much money you've got in your wallet, etc. Then again, automated phone customer service is often pretty aggravating (to be fair, so are foreign human agents who are forced to stick to a script instead of actually helping you). On any phone call I would prefer a human agent.
State power is based on a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. All laws implicitly are based on that. It’s not the first step, but at a certain point, if you keep defying the law, men with guns will be involved. If you, for instance, don’t follow this dumb law as a grocery store, the store owners are fined. If they don’t pay, the fine goes up. At a certain point, the city might padlock the store or arrest the owners for contempt of court, seize assets, or garnish income.
Now, is this an extreme example? Sure. But when the City of New York banned the sale of loose cigarettes, they wanted the NYPD to enforce it. This was one of the points that I think George Will made after Eric Garner’s death. If you make something a crime, at some point, you may have to enforce the law using violence. That’s a completely legitimate use of state power, but don’t assume all laws will be followed enthusiastically by everyone all the time, even when it’s a completely anodyne law with wide support.
And if the city/state/locality passes a law but doesn’t really plan to enforce it, that’s a great way to breed contempt for the law.
That's what a law is, though. It is a statement by the government that if you do/do not do X, it will apply force to you, potentially lethally, if you do not comply with its demands.
Yeah. If you use an automated checkout, the government will shoot you. Thanks for sharing your, er, ‘thoughts’. Look up the phrase ‘reducto ad absurdum’ if you have time.
(Rolls eyes) The person the government would go after would be the grocery store owner who failed to comply with the law. And no, they wouldn't shoot him for it--but they would fine him, and if he did not pay the fine would arrest him (an application of force).
I realize that you do not want to understand that there is a reason that Louis XIV inscribed "ultima ratio regum" on his cannon. That is not my problem.
I mean since you purposefully misunderstood. Yes. We get turns now. This was also explained wonderfully later. I want fewer Eric garners. Not sure why you want more.
I grew up in New Jersey (speaking of mobbed-up), where it’s still illegal to pump your own gas, so I laugh at Rhode Island’s attempt to limit self-service checkouts.
But if you really want a demented anti-self checkout take, check out (ha) anger management course dropout Erik Loomis, professor of labor history at the University of, wait for it, Rhode Island:
Maybe I've lived in Rhode Island too long, or maybe I'm just evil, but this makes total sense to me. I was an honest person all my life, never stole anything... then self-checkout came along. After the first few glitchy attempts, when after a long wait someone had to fix it anyway, I did get the hang of self-checkout and... the urge to steal became overwhelming. I didn't work for the store, after all, but they wanted me to work for them for free. They weren't looking, couldn't be bothered, didn't give a shit, so why not.
Dostoevsky would have had a lot to say about self-checkout.
I didn't have fond memories of my teenage cashier experience (which was dispiriting enough to make me enlist in the military) and the "human interaction" stuff is mostly lost on me, but self-checkout for me is scarier than a casino. Plus, now I'm probably old-looking enough to get away with the Uncle Leo defense from Seinfeld: 'Hey, I'm old, I'm confused.' That is, if I ever actually got caught, which apparently would never happen.
Since becoming car-free and discovering the awesomeness of grocery delivery for $6.95 + tip, I've pretty much avoided ever entering a supermarket and wrestling with that demonic temptation!
Did you know that you used to go to the counter and tell the shopkeep what you wanted and he would get it? But now they want you to work for them and fetch the items yourself!
Yes, I've read that was how grocery stores worked in the old days, pre-supermarkets. And at some stores you could give them your list and they'd deliver it. I guess going thru my grocery list online and having them deliver it is like that in many ways. Never thought about it that way before!
Yes, I prefer self checkout. Though I'm not sure the cashier jobs are boring. I've done some retail cashiering and wasn't bored, you are encountering real live human beings and in a way it's better than any movie. And challenging. Most are pleasant. Others are not in a variety of ways.
And you actually have the opportunity to make a person's day better by being pleasant yourself.
My thoughts on this are influenced by the fact that I spent 90 minutes this morning with Microsoft's "help center," which is now entirely done by chat since they stopped having a phone option. It was among the most frustrating experiences of my life, and I used to work at a school that could be the setting for "Dangerous Minds 2: Michelle Pfeiffer ain't fixing THIS place." I only decided not to become the Unabomber afterwards because 1. the problem eventually got fixed, and 2. I realized that it would take a further 90 minutes of Kafkfaesque hell to learn whether an off-the-grid cabin could get ESPN+. So while I do agree with the basic points here (including the characterization of my neighboring state of RI), I also have some sympathy for anti-automation sentiment.
This. I'm all for an automated process if it works, but nearly all automated chats are an experience in frustration. You want badly to quit in disgust but you know you're just moving to the start of the process again if you do.
Once in a while an automated process surprises you by going well.
What's not given enough airtime in these discussions is whether or not the tech works. It's generally taken for granted that it does or inevitably will.
For the self-checkout, I think it's fair to say that they do, on the whole, work.
I scan both ways. But anymore I get irritated when a grocery doesn't have a self-checkout area. The ultimate to date were the experimental Amazon stores where you could log into the cart, do all your shopping, and just roll out the door. Say what you will about Amazon, but I kinda loved those.
Bill Smith: SNL had a hilarious skit years ago where the black cast members were very nervous shopping in one of those b/c they thought it was a trap set up by the police.....
I understand that our economy is moving away from the "brick-and-mortar stores staffed by humans ostensibly hired for their customer service skills" model in its inexorable march towards the "app that usually works but if it doesn't you have literally no recourse" model, but I question your belief that this is all driven by customer preference.
Econ professors in the future, by which I mean an AI app called "Econ Professor," will describe our current economic moment as the Early Enshittification Era.
Yeah, the choice to go into the mine every day to earn CompanyBucks to spend in the Company General Store did not reveal a "preference" of the workers in Company Town in any way helpful to actually understanding what people want from an economic exchange. It's fine if we understand that "revealed preference" can encompass the logic that led people to stay instead of try to flee a plantation, but then you can't use "revealed preference" as a defense of a business's behavior.
I use self-checkout all the time, but there's hardly ever a time when the nearby human attendant isn't helping someone when something goes sideways with the self-checkout. While union protectionism may be trying to maintain the traditional checkout line in Rhode Island, there is no state that allows alcohol purchases through self-checkout for abundantly clear reasons. There are fewer paid supermarket employees than ever, yet food prices keep ratcheting up, so it's a stretch to blame Luddites and Unions for this one.
It's probably bad to make a regulation that grocery stores can only have x amount of machines per worker - but honestly I don't think I've ever heard someone describe the self checkout as preferable or more or a choice for the customer. I hate going into grocery stores with more security guard than check out people. Self checkout is slow and tedious
Rhode Island has also passed a GOOD law about supermarket chains to prevent their bizarre restrictive covenants on store buildings they leave abandoned for 30+ years (I'm not exaggerating). These covenants not only prevent any food-related business from opening in the building, ever, but invariably tack on a lot of oddly puritanical concerns: why the fuck should Stop & Shop care if a bar, music venue, liquor store or cannabis dispensary opens up in a building they moved out of THIRTY YEARS AGO? All over northern Rhode Island there are abandoned supermarkets that literally cannot be used for much of anything else. Is this one of those 'only in RI' things, or does this happen all over? Well it won't be happening here anymore and I'm glad to see our legislature do something useful for a change!
This is happening in Oakland California and I can't imagine the reason for it. They are taking away our Trader Joe's and not letting any grocery store take its place. People are as up in arms as I've ever seen them.
Having at least one staffed register at a grocery is a basic courtesy to the 80% of customers who don’t want the self checkout aisles jammed with senior citizens who are totally confused by the process. And I’m not saying this out of annoyance at the seniors-I probably cuss out the self checkout computer once a month!
I would guess that while the kind of people who are afraid of self-checkout (and technology in general) represent a small percentage of the overall population, they are a much larger percentage of "people who call their representative".
When I interned for my hometown congressman, like half of all of the constituent mail and calls we got were from one small town I had never heard of that was basically a glorified retirement home.
On their rotary phones.
Hah. That's a good point. We're all ruled by people who are constantly petitioned by the Retired Colonels and Mrs Grundys of the world.
I love self-checkout, but I hate the shelf stocking robot. I want to push it over when I see it roll by me.
> Again: The grocery store’s business is to give customers what they want.
C'mon, you're not this naive. The store's business is to turn a profit for its owners, giving the customers what they want is a secondary concern at best.
I was a pimply teen working at a grocery store when they first introduced self-checkout. Customers HATED them: "Unexpected item in the bagging area: please remove item; Item removed from bagging area: please replace item."
Maybe times have changed and today's shoppers fear human contact more than they resent taking orders from a machine, but let's be honest here. Stores want self checkout because it saves them labor costs.
Yes, they’re trying to turn a profit, but they won’t turn a profit if they alienate their customers.
Everyone's gotta eat; grocery stores have tight margins and often local monopoly power. Having worked in one, I don't think there's anything we could have done to alienate our customers so much that they'd drive an extra 30 minutes to our competitor (who also added self-checkout machines at nearly the same time).
Not sure where you live. And I’m sure it’s true in more remote areas. But I live in a relatively suburban area and um. There’s like 15 big grocery stores within like 15 miles.
TH3 R3X: And I have a friend who is gnashing her teeth b/c the convenient grocery store next to her work is closing (lost lease) and now she has to drive an extra 2 miles. Those people exist.....
Right, and this stupid law will make it more expensive to run a grocery store, resulting in even fewer stores
An extra two miles? The horror! That’s walkable. Let them gnash away.
I mean unless it’s like LA where 2 miles takes a shorter time to walk than drive.
The local monopoly power comes from entry costs. Imposing this stupid restrictions raises entry costs, resulting in fewer stores, and even more local monopoly power.
Yes. And what do they do with that saved labor cost? Nothing? Anything? Pack their purse? Give more deals? Compete harder? What does compete harder mean?
Again. I think Jeff has a note about people who really don’t study economics weighing in on economics. Which is fine.
As the child of parents who owned a small restaurant I will say 100% that surviving to buy groceries for their kids aka “profit” was definitely at the forefront of their mind. They usually made this magical “profit” (should I spell it pr@f!t thus censoring such a dirty filthy disgusting cus word?) by delivering customers better service. There is literally nothing wrong with profit.
I order you to go read bastiat’s book “that which is seen and unseen” https://a.co/d/02RPnyAM it’s quite short but can take some work to wrap your mind around.
Did prices go down when they brought in self-checkout? If the stores are saving on labour, shouldn’t some of those savings be passed on to the customers? I resent being unpaid labour for the big grocery chains. There is also evidence that the stores lose more in theft than they save on labour. Now they have to invest in surveillance to combat theft. I live in a small city, and like seeing the same clerks in the stores and chatting with them, be they pimply teens or adults trying to make a living.
I always lament that people make economic conclusions without having read Bastiat.
Is there a difference between lowing prices now and simply not raising prices as quickly in the future? I ask because you seem
To think there’s some lever in the causal chain here that says “well. We got rid of two cashiers. Now we can lower the cost of cheese by 10 cents”. How and why would that work that way. The benefit is the mostly. “Staying open to compete”.
There’s probably also the component that we have forcibly priced out this labor from the economy with our “oh so noble” minimum wage hikes, less designed to help the poor than it is to make sure people with regrettable degrees can’t fall that far. There is a point at which an accountant looks at something. And says “nah. Not worth the money”.
Are you an economist? If a company saves money, it should not pass on some of the benefits to its customers? It should just take as much money as possible from them? During the pandemic, the grocery stores upped their prices due to supply chain issues, they told us. They made record profits, and when the supply chains were reestablished, did the prices come down? No.
I agree that companies have to make a profit to stay in business, but price gouging is not a good practice, especially if you want to keep your customers long term. Not paying your employees a living wage is also a poor practice.
Your contempt for people trying to make a living working in jobs that don’t pay well and are physically demanding is showing. The minimum wage was designed to guarantee workers enough purchasing power to stay out of poverty, afford basic necessities, and maintain a decent quality of life. As FDR said, "no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country".
Executive pay has increased 20 times faster than general worker pay. A small cut in their compensation would easily pay for a couple of cashiers. Any accountant could tell you that.
The minimum wage was invented by racists in unions who don’t want this new desperate labor in black and poor communities outcompeting them by forcing companies to pay more for labor thus making them make the choice between upstanding trained white labor and untrained unknown black labor. Sweden has no federal minimum wage. The minimum wage helps all the people it was always designed to help. The already well off enough who want a few bucks more.
You also don’t have the courage to extend the minimum wage to the self employed
Like artists imagine forcing bars to pay bands a minimum fee. You’d crush band culture.
Again. Read economics. I mean it go find as much as you can and literally read it. Not articles. Not the times. Not YouTube videos read the sources. Come back. You’re talking smoke and mirrors I’m talking bedrock code.
Good lord! What a claim! You are a waste of my time. Go away troll…
Oh. I see. Price gouging. I see.
There is no such evidence. Why would they do it?
Look it up.
You made a claim. You support it. Otherwise stop BSing.
The Retail Council of Canada is calling grocery store theft a national crisis, with losses now approaching $10 billion annually, and growing. People are scanning low cost items while taking higher priced ones, skipping items, keying in lower cost produce codes for higher value goods, etc. Self checkout lanes have a drastically higher "shrink rate" at 3.5-4% of total sales, compared to 0.21% at cashier staffed checkouts. Because grocery stores operate on thin profit margins, a 4% loss rate completely wipes out the financial gains from not having human cashiers. The cost of the losses is passed on to honest consumers, with retailers adding an average 2.2% price increase across the board.
That is not evidence that stores lose more in theft than they save in labor. That’s just evidence that yes, theft happens.
Brendan: I remember those times lol. I could never get the items in the bag to the computers satisfaction.....
I love self checkout and won't shop at big stores that don't have it.
Whatever is wrong with American capitalism, grocery stores are not it. Even megacorps like Walmart average a 3% profit.
When CVS introduced them in DC, customers wanted to use them, while cashiers kept on making stupid new rules to try to force customers not to use them. I remember cashiers at CVS screaming at people in the face for trying to use them.
For once, I absolutely disagree with you. I will happily pay more so that other humans can have jobs. I avoid self-checkout if at all possible. I enjoy talking with other humans while in line. Try it.
I think one of the big disconnects here is the belief that requiring a human to do a job that machines can do “creates jobs”. I don’t think that’s true — the efficiency gained from the machines inevitably shows back up in the economy somewhere — and if it was true, then we should demand the return of phone operators, bank tellers, and typists. But societies that embrace technology have an excellent record of creating new jobs and having low unemployment.
^ This is a better argument than "stores just love helping customers!" and should have been the article.
Agreed. The broader economic benefits of accepting the automation are more likely helpful than harmful. At least, the economic downside is not certain enough to warrant legislation. Insofar as there is personal taste, that taste shouldn't be legislated. I shop at Trader Joe's. I like the checkout people and would be upset if the legislature tried to make them illegal, but it's not the government's job to make sure Trader Joe's keeps its checkout people, either.
Rhode Islanders need to decide if they agree and if they don't ... well, the elections are right around the corner. But, if they do, then that will be the way things are in RI. I still can't pump my own gas in NJ. I like NJ.
Neither of us live there. We're discussing the merits of the policy in a thread started by talking about personal political preference. Of course people who do live there can decide if they change their vote based on this, but the point of the article, the point of the discussion, remains the merits of the policy that now exists.
Yeah but the phone company didn't make me do their job for them. Bank tellers still very much alive and well BTW. Typists, I'd love to have one if I were an executive who needed one and I bet I would have one. Those too, still exist under a different title but their job is much different as they are now word processors. I see where you're going with your arguemtn but you didn't really make any good points supporting it.
This is a guy living in some delusion where grocery stores still primarily employ teenagers and not desperate adults scraping by on the capitalist dregs. He has no good support because he is basing his thesis on his feelings instead of data
I’m totally down with bringing back bank tellers.
We still have them where I live in Georgia.
Why not instead implement a grocery tax that pays for a government crew of ditch diggers and a government crew of ditch fillers? That would also allow humans to have jobs but at least wouldn't affect my shopping experience.
So why do you need a law? If a grocery store can make a profit by marketing itself as the "no self checkout" store, and then jacking up prices, I'm pretty sure one will do so! Hell, you should go out and do it, and get in on that sweet grocery money.
Most people can correctly call out micromanaging when it's done by "corporate" or "middle management" (look at reddit's "malicious compliance"), but for some reason when it's done by a legislative body with the force of the state behind it, it's totally cool?
I agree this is a silly law, but there's all kinds of collective-action problems that won't be solved by market forces alone. Ideally, legislation would be an expression of democratic will and a way for the people to come together and make choices that individuals can't (or won't) make on their own.
I said the same thing about the smoking ban.
Let the market decide. (Ehem.)
If healthcare is provided through a public option, than smoking in workplaces carries externalities that make sense to regulate for. That being said, yes. Right now I think a smoking ban at the legislative level isn't necessary, because customers can choose which bar to frequent (and plenty of people don't want to smell like smoke)
This was a rare case where government actually did know better than the private sector. When the first smoking ban was implemented in NYC the bar and restaurant industry thought it signaled their death knell, but in fact it was a net positive for the industry -- it turned out there were more non-smokers who had avoided going out due to smoke than there was smokers who stopped going out because they could no longer smoke.
I agree. Sometimes industry needs a big nudge to get off of their local maximus. But now that they are, I'd be surprised if, en mass, they went back to smoke filled rooms.
What state are you in where a restaurant would have a choice?
Oh, boy. 🙄
Huh?
Not sure what your question is. But I'm happy to clarify.
Okay? Were you also one of the people on the 1910s who kept paying for their “knocker-upper” instead of buying into that new anti worker technology. The alarm clock.
JW, a Walmart near me got rid of self checkout because of theft, not a law. The result? I don't shop there anymore because they took away my choice.
That's interesting. Would you have preferred that they let the theft continue and raised prices to compensate for the loss?
No. There were other reasons too. That was just the final straw.
You can still have a preference though. If they had dealt with theft by raising prices instead of changing staffing, you'd still be one straw short?
Andrew T: Your choice to maybe get free stuff once in awhile lol.....
Amazon Fresh CLOSED 2 stores near me for the same reason.
Guess no jobs lost there, though. Very efficient!
They did you a favor. No one should shop there. ;)
Same here.
But why I really prefer a real-live cashier is because I can’t stand being watched by the self-checkout monitor-person as I’m performing a cashier’s labor. Plus the stupid cameras.
If you’re really worried about me stealing, I might as well stand in the line and put my three items on a conveyor belt while I wait behind the person whose 65 items are being checked out. It’s a much more pleasant experience.
I think your position is commendable, but the people demanding and passing these laws should be honest about their intentions, rather than saying "we're doing it to improve your shopping experience by making it take longer and cost more".
Reminds me of when my country passed its smoking ban. The government, and supporters of the ban, pretended it was to protect people who work in pubs etc. from passive smoke. This was self-evidently bullshit, because any suggestion of a compromise that would protect workers while still allowing smoking rooms was carefully ignored. The government wanted to do it for rather paternalistic public health reasons; the supporters wanted it because they didn't like the smell of smoke. Which is fine! But the pretense rankled.
I also prefer human checkouts over automated ones. But that’s a consumer choice the market can respond to—I don’t need the government trying to compel the grocery store to adhere to my personal preferences.
You could just give money directly to an unemployed person and skip the charade
Various issues with this. People feel embarrassed about receiving handouts, whereas a make-work job provides enough cover to give them the money. People don't like their tax money going to handouts. Handouts attract free riders (fake benefit claimants and so on). It's one of those situations where the seemingly logical solution is actually a harder sell.
Harder sell, sure, but "work 8 hours a day at an unnecessary job to maintain your dignity" isn't the best use of anyone's time and money. We still have jobs we can't outsource (caring for the elderly, which is underpaid) and I'd rather subsidize those than keep jobs that we can move on from.
I don't disagree with any of that, but it's not me you need to convince. Your issue isn't the merits of your position (like I said, it's logical), it's that it doesn't tend to play well with voters, and at least some of the people who benefit fiscally will feel humiliated by it.
I do.
We all do.
There's some pretty big assumptions there- for example, how does a law mandating at least one staffed check-out LIMIT choice? How does having all auto checkouts give MORE choice? So a choice of checkout options is....less choice? Ok. And, of course, theres the old claim that every element of a business operation is purely an expression of consumer preferences- as if saving money on staffing wasnt a thing businesses push for, given that shoppers, in your view, shouldnt be allowed to demand a choice. Then of course there's all the boring old, confused and generally less than competant people who might want staff help processing their shopping. Yes, boring I know, but these people do shop, whether we kikecitvor not, and are their preferences really so irrelevant?
The law is one human checkout lane per three machines (plus one person working the machines), which might make the machines not profitable to operate, which might cause the store to stop operating the machines. Which is exactly what happened in Long Beach.
If my local grocery is any indication, all the people 'demanding' staffed checkouts will be dead in a couple of months, so the problem will solve itself. Just like the 'no checks please' policy, which seems quaint now.
I am ancient, a real fossil, and Shop and Scan is heaven sent for me. I know the price of everything as I take it off the shelf, can keep an eye on my running total bill so I can limit impulse buys, and best of all, I pack everything into my bags as I shop just the way I like it. The fossils can learn. The bill is for those who don't want to, and that's fine too. It's America.
Some won’t be dead, some awful disabled or confused people might still be around, clogging up the world with their uselessly inefficient consumer habits.
Progress is relentless. I was told, over and over again, that American drivers would never learn how to navigate roundabouts, that they would all be torn out because they were impossible for our traffic. They are everywhere now, and people zip through them - or avoid them, I suppose. Hell, I remember when shoulder belts were first put in cars. No one would figure them out! People will never use them!
I am wary of the argument that people will never figure things out. It change their ways.
I still kind of hate roundabouts.
Surely those people would prefer grocery delivery? But then grocery delivery cuts into checkout jobs so we should outlaw that as well.
Does it though? You need packers and drivers; at least as many jobs as tills, I'd have thought.
John Holland: I'm one of those awful disabled people and I wish my vision was still perfect.....
Sorry- my use of the word “awful" was intended to be ironic- ‘awful’ as in ‘inconvenient to streamlining operations’.
John: It's all good John! I could claim I was using "awful" in the same way but I'm not that clever lol. My reply to you should have been kinder so my apology for that.....
Nothing unkind about your reply- I use irony too much probably, it doesnt always work on social media.
"People who don't do what I do are inferior and useless".
No, they are not. People can hold on to whatever they want. Private business should make accommodations for their customers as they see fit.
However, I wasn't being cruel, we all die. People born after something has faded away never know it and don't miss it.
"People born after something has faded away never know it and don't miss it". Like the natural world, I guess. It'll be gone, but no-one will miss it after the oldies have died.
Well maybe not! You could be like Levis 501s, without the stretch fabric. Apparently they are making a big comeback with the youngs. That a vinyl records! You could be the vinyl record of mankind.
Not quite sure how Levis without stretch fabric is analogous to the desyruction of the natural world, buy….yeah.
Nothing bad about adapting or preferring new technology. But many people prefer things as they are and I think there's a limit to how much people can adapt to change.
There are some aspects of this new world I genuinely like. I mean just cashless payments (using your card or whatever) are incredibly practical. No change, no worrying about how much money you've got in your wallet, etc. Then again, automated phone customer service is often pretty aggravating (to be fair, so are foreign human agents who are forced to stick to a script instead of actually helping you). On any phone call I would prefer a human agent.
Susan D: My Mom still writes checks lol. Of course, she is 89 years old.....
She's "grandmothered in".
Actually our Meijer - which I love - usually has two staffed checkout lanes and the customer service desk will still cash your paycheck.
“Demand a choice” at the end of a gun! Do it or else!!!
Yeah. Do it or else is fucked.
Whos mentioning guns? You seem to be getting a bit hysterical..
State power is based on a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. All laws implicitly are based on that. It’s not the first step, but at a certain point, if you keep defying the law, men with guns will be involved. If you, for instance, don’t follow this dumb law as a grocery store, the store owners are fined. If they don’t pay, the fine goes up. At a certain point, the city might padlock the store or arrest the owners for contempt of court, seize assets, or garnish income.
Now, is this an extreme example? Sure. But when the City of New York banned the sale of loose cigarettes, they wanted the NYPD to enforce it. This was one of the points that I think George Will made after Eric Garner’s death. If you make something a crime, at some point, you may have to enforce the law using violence. That’s a completely legitimate use of state power, but don’t assume all laws will be followed enthusiastically by everyone all the time, even when it’s a completely anodyne law with wide support.
And if the city/state/locality passes a law but doesn’t really plan to enforce it, that’s a great way to breed contempt for the law.
That's what a law is, though. It is a statement by the government that if you do/do not do X, it will apply force to you, potentially lethally, if you do not comply with its demands.
Yeah. If you use an automated checkout, the government will shoot you. Thanks for sharing your, er, ‘thoughts’. Look up the phrase ‘reducto ad absurdum’ if you have time.
(Rolls eyes) The person the government would go after would be the grocery store owner who failed to comply with the law. And no, they wouldn't shoot him for it--but they would fine him, and if he did not pay the fine would arrest him (an application of force).
I realize that you do not want to understand that there is a reason that Louis XIV inscribed "ultima ratio regum" on his cannon. That is not my problem.
Life really is too short to halfwitted US anti-guvnmint’ nutters. Thanks anyway- back to your bunker.
Hey chief. Did I say shoot? No I didn’t. But I’ll play your silly game. “Omg. You mean to tell me enforcement agents don’t have guns!”
You’re turn.
Ooh, is it my turn? What fun!
I mean since you purposefully misunderstood. Yes. We get turns now. This was also explained wonderfully later. I want fewer Eric garners. Not sure why you want more.
“Eric garners"? No idea what you’re talking about- have fun.
Yes, I prefer self checkout but I am guessing there are people who enjoy the human interaction of a staffed checkout line.
I grew up in New Jersey (speaking of mobbed-up), where it’s still illegal to pump your own gas, so I laugh at Rhode Island’s attempt to limit self-service checkouts.
But if you really want a demented anti-self checkout take, check out (ha) anger management course dropout Erik Loomis, professor of labor history at the University of, wait for it, Rhode Island:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/09/the-end-of-self-checkout
I particularly love this gem:
“if a store is going to require me to check myself out, why wouldn’t I steal stuff to compensate myself for my labor?”
Maybe I've lived in Rhode Island too long, or maybe I'm just evil, but this makes total sense to me. I was an honest person all my life, never stole anything... then self-checkout came along. After the first few glitchy attempts, when after a long wait someone had to fix it anyway, I did get the hang of self-checkout and... the urge to steal became overwhelming. I didn't work for the store, after all, but they wanted me to work for them for free. They weren't looking, couldn't be bothered, didn't give a shit, so why not.
Dostoevsky would have had a lot to say about self-checkout.
I didn't have fond memories of my teenage cashier experience (which was dispiriting enough to make me enlist in the military) and the "human interaction" stuff is mostly lost on me, but self-checkout for me is scarier than a casino. Plus, now I'm probably old-looking enough to get away with the Uncle Leo defense from Seinfeld: 'Hey, I'm old, I'm confused.' That is, if I ever actually got caught, which apparently would never happen.
Since becoming car-free and discovering the awesomeness of grocery delivery for $6.95 + tip, I've pretty much avoided ever entering a supermarket and wrestling with that demonic temptation!
Did you know that you used to go to the counter and tell the shopkeep what you wanted and he would get it? But now they want you to work for them and fetch the items yourself!
Yes, I've read that was how grocery stores worked in the old days, pre-supermarkets. And at some stores you could give them your list and they'd deliver it. I guess going thru my grocery list online and having them deliver it is like that in many ways. Never thought about it that way before!
Yes, I prefer self checkout. Though I'm not sure the cashier jobs are boring. I've done some retail cashiering and wasn't bored, you are encountering real live human beings and in a way it's better than any movie. And challenging. Most are pleasant. Others are not in a variety of ways.
And you actually have the opportunity to make a person's day better by being pleasant yourself.
Self-checkout means you're working at the grocery store too but unpaid.
You do a bit more labor and presumably that shows up as the company being able to offer lower prices.
As long as I can’t use the store’s employee break room, self-checkout is trash.
My thoughts on this are influenced by the fact that I spent 90 minutes this morning with Microsoft's "help center," which is now entirely done by chat since they stopped having a phone option. It was among the most frustrating experiences of my life, and I used to work at a school that could be the setting for "Dangerous Minds 2: Michelle Pfeiffer ain't fixing THIS place." I only decided not to become the Unabomber afterwards because 1. the problem eventually got fixed, and 2. I realized that it would take a further 90 minutes of Kafkfaesque hell to learn whether an off-the-grid cabin could get ESPN+. So while I do agree with the basic points here (including the characterization of my neighboring state of RI), I also have some sympathy for anti-automation sentiment.
This. I'm all for an automated process if it works, but nearly all automated chats are an experience in frustration. You want badly to quit in disgust but you know you're just moving to the start of the process again if you do.
Once in a while an automated process surprises you by going well.
What's not given enough airtime in these discussions is whether or not the tech works. It's generally taken for granted that it does or inevitably will.
For the self-checkout, I think it's fair to say that they do, on the whole, work.
I scan both ways. But anymore I get irritated when a grocery doesn't have a self-checkout area. The ultimate to date were the experimental Amazon stores where you could log into the cart, do all your shopping, and just roll out the door. Say what you will about Amazon, but I kinda loved those.
Bill Smith: SNL had a hilarious skit years ago where the black cast members were very nervous shopping in one of those b/c they thought it was a trap set up by the police.....
about that... https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4?op=1
Have to say, that does taint my memory of the experience. XD
I understand that our economy is moving away from the "brick-and-mortar stores staffed by humans ostensibly hired for their customer service skills" model in its inexorable march towards the "app that usually works but if it doesn't you have literally no recourse" model, but I question your belief that this is all driven by customer preference.
Econ professors in the future, by which I mean an AI app called "Econ Professor," will describe our current economic moment as the Early Enshittification Era.
I think it helps to take "customer preference" as a term/concept of art.
It doesn't mean people like this, because the store has no concept of liking. It means people like this enough not to degrade business.
Economists sometimes term this "revealed preference", which I tend to feel is more revealing about economists than customers.
Yeah, the choice to go into the mine every day to earn CompanyBucks to spend in the Company General Store did not reveal a "preference" of the workers in Company Town in any way helpful to actually understanding what people want from an economic exchange. It's fine if we understand that "revealed preference" can encompass the logic that led people to stay instead of try to flee a plantation, but then you can't use "revealed preference" as a defense of a business's behavior.
Jeff, you're starting to sound libertarian. You'll lose your liberal cred.
I use self-checkout all the time, but there's hardly ever a time when the nearby human attendant isn't helping someone when something goes sideways with the self-checkout. While union protectionism may be trying to maintain the traditional checkout line in Rhode Island, there is no state that allows alcohol purchases through self-checkout for abundantly clear reasons. There are fewer paid supermarket employees than ever, yet food prices keep ratcheting up, so it's a stretch to blame Luddites and Unions for this one.
Ours (Colorado) allows alcohol purchases through self checkout, but an employee still has to run your ID to approve the purchase ;p
"a series of mafia-run lighthouses" is the best thing you've written this year, even better than the "diarrhea on a zipline"
It's probably bad to make a regulation that grocery stores can only have x amount of machines per worker - but honestly I don't think I've ever heard someone describe the self checkout as preferable or more or a choice for the customer. I hate going into grocery stores with more security guard than check out people. Self checkout is slow and tedious
I prefer it.
Rhode Island has also passed a GOOD law about supermarket chains to prevent their bizarre restrictive covenants on store buildings they leave abandoned for 30+ years (I'm not exaggerating). These covenants not only prevent any food-related business from opening in the building, ever, but invariably tack on a lot of oddly puritanical concerns: why the fuck should Stop & Shop care if a bar, music venue, liquor store or cannabis dispensary opens up in a building they moved out of THIRTY YEARS AGO? All over northern Rhode Island there are abandoned supermarkets that literally cannot be used for much of anything else. Is this one of those 'only in RI' things, or does this happen all over? Well it won't be happening here anymore and I'm glad to see our legislature do something useful for a change!
This is happening in Oakland California and I can't imagine the reason for it. They are taking away our Trader Joe's and not letting any grocery store take its place. People are as up in arms as I've ever seen them.
Having at least one staffed register at a grocery is a basic courtesy to the 80% of customers who don’t want the self checkout aisles jammed with senior citizens who are totally confused by the process. And I’m not saying this out of annoyance at the seniors-I probably cuss out the self checkout computer once a month!