• 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆
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        247 months ago

        You’re either the kind of person who reads their emails in real time and freaks if that little blue number ever reads “2” or you’re the kind of person who selects their entire inbox and marks it as read twice a decade.

        My wife is the former. I am the latter. I get too much junk. I go through my inbox a few times a day, read what looks important, and ignore the rest. I have 2,174 unread emails in my inbox and a folder called “auto junk” with 5,116 in it.

  • @[email protected]
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    1147 months ago

    I’ve never understood the people who seem to not get that some people actually don’t mind scanning their stuff and putting it in bags, and insist that that’s the line between what the customer does and the employee. They also used to carry your groceries to the car for you, and you can also get them to pick everything up, bag it and bring it to your car or house. It’s not like the checkout process is the special part that can’t change.

    Yeah, they want to save money by having fewer people get more customers checked out faster. I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.

      • @[email protected]
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        157 months ago

        so the store won’t need to pay for cashiers just standing around.

        Aren’t walmart employees also required to stand all day? Kinda insane to me that they’re not allowed to just sit down

      • tinyVoltron
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        87 months ago

        I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Walmart cashier without a line. Doesn’t matter how many cashier lanes and self checkouts are open. Find it hard to belief they are ever able to just stand around.

          • @[email protected]
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            17 months ago

            But in the end won’t it be the cashiers who will suffer/be blamed, instead of management hiring another one to help carry the load? I mean, even if you ask to speak to the manager, and wait for them, and say, “obviously you’ve understaffed this shift, so you need to open a register yourself and start ringing people up, you can start with me,” they are just going to blame the poor cashier who got stuck with Grandma’s coupons and check-writing or whatever. Or if they are decent, they’re already working a register, and it’s someone higher up who refuses to hire more staff, despite having a “ghost job offer” that sits out there to look like they’re hiring.

    • @[email protected]
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      287 months ago

      I love self checkout. Conversation with strangers is difficult, slow and often not fun. Separating that aspect from checking out is the best customer service a lot of stores offer.

      Some stores near me are removing or disabling self checkout. Apparently this better serves the customer. Can’t quite see how taking away options improves things, but …

      • @[email protected]
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        147 months ago

        It doesn’t, it’s because people shoplift at self checkout all the time and the big retailers can’t figure out how to stop it. Almost every shop in my town forces you to do self checkout, they don’t even have cashiers most of the time. Last time I was at my local walmart they had like 6 self checkouts and 4 cashiers just standing there staring at everyone trying to find shoplifters. They still can’t find them though lol.

        • @[email protected]
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          77 months ago

          Which is bizarre, because shrinkage due to theft at all major retail chains is at historic lows, but they keep complaining that they can’t make any money due to rampant shoplifting. Then you look at their profits for each fiscal year and wonder what their deal is if losses due to shoplifting have never been lower and profits have never been higher?

          It’s an easy scapegoat to justify closing low performing stores. It essentially shifts the blame onto the community, rather than the greedy suits.

        • @[email protected]
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          77 months ago

          Well, this can’t possibly be the case. The giant corporations who assuredly only have my best interests in mind tell me it’s what I want, not what they want.

        • Aviandelight
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          47 months ago

          I dare say that the shoplifters aren’t even bothering going through the self checkout as a pretense.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Yea the issue is the employer doing it to make more profit instead of spreading the more profit they make to the workers. There is nothing wrong with self check out. There is something wrong with people being paid shit when the company is sending dividends to stockholders instead.

      • @[email protected]
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        7 months ago

        I respect your preference, and for some people it could even be considered a “reasonable accommodation.”

        But I prefer to have the person who does this all day whip through the scanning and bagging while I pay up. It may not be rocket surgery, but good cashiers have an efficiency of eye/brain/hand motion that I can’t match. Especially when there’s multiples of the same item, their machine trusts them to do it the efficient way rather than scanning and weighing each item. Or having the produce codes at their fingertips without stopping to read them. And since all machines have little quirks, it’s helpful to know exactly where to apply “percussive maintenance.”

        I am comfortable speaking with strangers, so I always thank them and wish them a good day. And I don’t stand for entitled assholes giving them shit, either.

        Having both options is best and should be part of ADA compliance.

      • @[email protected]
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        37 months ago

        They have some new AI thing watching the cameras that will make that a lot harder. Like, it wouldn’t let me scan the same item twice instead of scanning both identical items.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          This is why i refuse to use self check out. If they wont trust me to do the job my way i wont do it for free.

          • @[email protected]
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            17 months ago

            For me it’s the damn scale under the bag, and how long the kiosk takes to register the weight of the last scanned item. Then the system “unlocks” and lets me scan another item. This system slows me down to the speed of the worst clerk in the store.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      The check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different from those other services you mentioned.

      Also,

      I don’t really care since the part I like, getting finished at the store, happens faster.

      That was true until they realized they could enshittify by closing all the regular check-outs and force everyone into it. Now it’s just as slow as full-service used to be.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        check out is the part where the actual sales transaction occurs. It really is materially different

        Like a vending machine? Or the gas station? Or the grocery pickup, where I pay online?
        What makes a human being present for me giving my money to a machine different if it’s a grocery store as opposed to one of those?

        Sorry your experience sucks. Stores near me regularly have both open and the self checkout is invariably significantly faster. It’s not like I just didn’t notice that something I do several times a week actually sucks.

    • @[email protected]
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      -17 months ago

      That’s not the actual animosity towards things like self checkout, most of the time. It’s a distaste for a large corporation to replace jobs with automation. Sure, it’s a menial job, but it was still an ability for someone to have a job if they needed one.

      Labor shortages go up and down with time and what a lot of younger people don’t really understand was that sometimes the country would go years with it being hard to find any job. Even a bad one. The last 15 years have been pretty easy to find work, so a lot of the younger people can’t really know what it was like when you could go a long time just trying to find a job.

  • @[email protected]
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    737 months ago

    My parents refused to use the self-checkout because “They take people’s jobs.”

    They were hardcore republicans perfectly happy to make sure those jobs got paid shit.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      Do they also book all their travel through travel agencies, always use full-service gas stations, valet their cars instead of parking on the street, make restaurant bookings through concierge services, etc? Those are people’s jobs too!

      • @[email protected]
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        67 months ago

        Also, let’s not forget that you are doing someone’s job simply for using a shopping cart at all. Traditional grocers didn’t have anything like the aisles we wander through now. Rather, there would basically be a warehouse with a counter at the front. You walked up with your list of items, gave it to the grocer, and they would grab the items for you. Customers gathering goods themselves didn’t come about until the age of the supermarket starting in the mid 20th century.

        This is also why I have zero sympathy for stores that complain about theft and shrinkage. They’re the ones choosing to operate in a business model that makes theft easier. Traditional grocers didn’t have to worry about shoplifting, as everything was kept behind the counter. Sure, armed robbery was a concern then as it is now, but shoplifting wasn’t a concern.

        When the grocery stores abandoned the traditional model, they realized the money they saved on labor would more than make up for the increased losses due to shoplifting. And that was simply a choice they made. And it’s the same with self-checkout. They made a business decision that would inevitably result in increased theft, and they have no one to blame for it but themselves. If they don’t like the increased theft, they can go back to cashiers. Or hell, there’s nothing stopping Walmart from going all the way back to the traditional dry goods store model even. That would work really well with online orders as well. You don’t even let customers wander through most of the store. You just have a very long counter at the front of the store that customers walk up and tell the workers what they want. And the workers gather the order. You either wait for them to gather it, or you place the order in advance and have it ready when you pick it up. If Walmart did this, shoplifting would become virtually impossible. Their labor costs would skyrocket, but Walmart has it in its power to completely eliminate shoplifting if they really want to.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        I’d book a flight through a travel agency if these still existed. Booking online is pure dread to me. I’m too young to have ever seen a travel agency but the concept of not having to deal with Ryanair and Wizzair is very luring.

        • @[email protected]
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          7 months ago

          Travel agent saved my ass about 10 years ago when my connecting flight was delayed in air while I was on it. Completely missed the final leg of my journey because of a storm. Middle of the night and she helped me switch everything over and rent a car to drive the rest of the way and even got me upgraded to a more fun one. This was when I was going to a job interview and flying in the night before.

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      They were increasing demand for labor which pushes up the price of labor.

      Maybe in spite of themselves, they were helping.

    • @[email protected]
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      17 months ago

      IE. We like the idea of slavery! Someone to do the dirty work while we act superior…while shopping at Walmart.

  • @[email protected]
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    657 months ago

    I mean, walmart could easily fix that by having fucking cashiers.

    At the walmart I go to they put in like 60 self checkouts and have, maybe, one cashier running at a time.

    I don’t mind self checkout as a concept. Its fine if you are just buying a couple things, or something you might be personally embarassing for you… but they are not a replacement for cashiers.

    Cashiers and belts are needed to handle bigger purchases like monthly groceries and shit.

    Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.

    • @[email protected]
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      97 months ago

      I’m 100% against self checkout.

      They’ve put the burden of sale on you instead of themselves. If you fail to check something out accidentally, you are liable for theft.

      If they don’t have a cashier, I go to customer service and tell them to ring me up even if it’s one item.

      • @[email protected]
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        37 months ago

        Which is why I’m against making people do big orders through self checkout, cause thats when an accident can happen.

        Not when you’re getting your genital itch cream.

        • @[email protected]
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          17 months ago

          A lot of the grocery stores near me have a limit of 15 or 20 items for self-checkout. Safeway says “about 15 items” which is strangely vague. Any more and you have to go through a regular checkout.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            i would say even 10 items is to much for self checkout, but thats better than walmart expecting you to take a cartful of monthly groceries through self checkout.

        • @[email protected]
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          57 months ago

          I admire your faith in our legal system but despair at you lack of imagination.

          They’ll prosecute a bag of money for potentially being involved in a crime.

        • @[email protected]
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          27 months ago

          Don’t need to get to a judge. They can just tresspass you and then you have to drive 30 miles to another supermarket cause you cant ever set foot in that one again.

          Thats enough to fuck shit up for a lot of people.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        NAL, but i believe that they have to show intent in order to prosecute. As long as the legal system works properly, they would have to prove that you’re lying when you say “I forgot that was down there”

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        Not even cause the checker should have seen it but also what store prosecutes someone over 1 item

    • @[email protected]
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      57 months ago

      Yeah and then I had a lady ask to check my receipt because there’s not enough room to put everything on the fucking thing all at once so I told her no and walked out.

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      Unless you are gonna take 25% off my bill for labor savings, I am not going to take my monthly shopping through a self checkout. I had to once when I had no choice, and I’ll never do it again.

      I also faced that scenario once and walked out of the store leaving my $400 worth of groceries sitting in front of the abandoned cashier lanes. The profit from just my purchase would have paid for a full cashier shift that day. Instead they got to pay for restocking and ruined frozen food and meat.

      • @[email protected]
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        67 months ago

        If you have more stuff than will fit in the weighing platform it’s a logistical disaster. Hence why the belts and bagger system were invented in the first place.

        • Psychadelligoat
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          37 months ago

          I haven’t seen a Walmart with one of the weighing platforms in years, actually

          They all use larger flat plastic coffee-table bits attacked to the machine now, there’s actually about as much room on it as is in a cart, and it’s really nice

          You beep, beep, beep, and never have to worry about UNEXPECTED ITEM IN BAGGING ARE or anything like that

            • @[email protected]
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              27 months ago

              There’s usually a platform you can leave 5-6 bags on till your cart is empty enough to through them back in there as you scan the rest

              • @[email protected]
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                7 months ago

                Yea no shit. Not everyone has the luxury of shopping as often as you do and we have to actually fill our carts. Also it sure seems like you are still using disposable bags which is a shame.

                • @[email protected]
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                  37 months ago

                  You act as if it doesn’t work the same way with a full cart cause it does, so what if I am that wasn’t even the subject

    • @[email protected]
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      27 months ago

      It’s cute that you think 25% of your sale is going towards labour, even before self-checkouts became so commonplace.

      • @[email protected]
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        7 months ago

        Its cute that you are trying to twist what I said into something that I didnt say.

        No wait, not cute. the opposite of that.

        I said I want a 25% discount for doing their job and saving them the labor. Not that their labor is 25% of my bill.

        • @[email protected]
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          07 months ago

          I have no clue. I guess you can look at the profit margin for a supermarket (Walmart is around 2%, I just checked), then figure out the average full food shop spend, and finally see what the average hourly wage is for a worker and how long it would take to ring up a full shop.

          Although, this also highlights why they can’t give OP 25% off as their margin isn’t anywhere near this figure. I guess we should also factor in handouts that companies like Walmart get from the government to subsidise their staff etc.

          • @[email protected]
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            37 months ago

            From reading a few reports, after looking this up, it seems walmart spend about 7% of it’s revenue on hiring, and about 32% on payroll. The other costs towards labor seem to vary greatly from source to source, depending on exactly what they take into consideration as a labor expense. So it is somewhere between 39% and 60% of the revenue.

        • @[email protected]
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          17 months ago

          I’m just basing it off of being married to a Walmart manager for 10 years but hey, maybe outsiders’ anecdotal feelings on the topic are more accurate than observed first hand experience.

          Walmart is ALWAYS hiring cashiers.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            Yeah, and you know where they are? stocking shelves and picking for the online pickup orders. Not running checkout lines.

  • @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    They also don’t schedule enough employees to keep the lines running quickly, they only have 2-3 lanes open most of the time when it’s busy as having another line is 2x $13-15 an hour for a bagger and a cashier. This gets people to either go to self checkout or wait forever. Naturally most people go through self checkout, which they’ll probably use as an excuse to make more self checkouts.
    (talking about the store I work at specifically, which isn’t a Walmart, but I assume Walmart does the same)

    • thermal_shock
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      87 months ago

      I REFUSE to put how many bags I took if I have to self checkout. I also buy less. in many states now there is a bag fee. if I have to scan and bag my own shit, you’re eating that cost and for not paying an extra employee to be there to help. I also don’t frequent you as often.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        you’re eating that cost

        Isn’t the bag fee usually a tax though? By not paying it you’re not screwing the store, you’re screwing whoever would get that tax (e.g. infrastructure, aid programs, etc)

        I also don’t frequent you as often.

        This might actually do something, if enough people are committed to it.

      • @[email protected]
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        07 months ago

        Why would you need someone to bag your shit, lol?

        That is nonexistent in my country except in the single Costco in the entire country and everyone feels pretty uncomfortable about it.

    • @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      “go to self checkout or wait forever.”

      On the unfortunate days I have to stop at the store when myself and everyone else are getting off of work, I’ve seen the lines at self checkout as long or longer than the registers.

      I’m use a self checkout if 1) there are empty checkouts and 2) I only have enough items that I can carry. Sure - then I’m getting in and out. But if I’m pushing a cart, I’m going to a cashier.

  • @[email protected]
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    367 months ago

    Recently had a support call with a woman who was complaining about our 2 factor authentication system because she could only access one web page at a time. When I asked her if she couldn’t just open a new tab, she said she was too old to learn how computers work and couldn’t do that. She went on to claim that there’s a lot of people at her level of ineptitude, and that we shouldn’t have implemented 2fa because “most people don’t have multiple monitors.”

    It was so, so hard not to throw out an OK Boomer as they proudly lectured me on the depths of their ignorance.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      Can be funny for trivial stuff, but in the medical field this type of stuff is pretty messed up in my opinion. Some medical places implement stuff like that just because they refuse to pay people to staff the phones in scheduling.

      Also, if the old lady doesnt want MFA thats her choice.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Mandatory MFA isn’t a bad thing though.

        If an old lady doesn’t want to remember a password, should she be able to enter just her email/identifier without any verification?

        • @[email protected]
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          17 months ago

          MFA doesn’t really help much in the case of a tech illiterate person though, since TOTP codes can be phished just like username and password can. A scammer that calls them will just ask for the code in addition to the username and password.

          My employer uses Yubikeys with FIDO2/WebAuthn for two factor auth, but that’s probably too complex for a non technical person to figure out (even if it’s basically just “press the button when it tells you to”).

          • @[email protected]
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            17 months ago

            Well, TOTP prevents at least these attack vectors, even for tech-illiterate people:

            • Unnoticed data base leaks being used to gain full access to people’s accounts
            • Credential stuffing (using another service’s leaked credentials to gain access)

            With TOTP there must be at least some contact between the “hacker” and the victim.

        • @[email protected]
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          7 months ago

          I just think they should be able to opt out. Its up to the patient what their security posture is. If they don’t want it, they shouldnt be forced to have it. Just have them sign away their rights to sue the hospital or something along those lines.

          I’m open to hearing an argument why it should be forced to use MFA even if the patient doesnt want it. I know at least one hospital my company works with that has it optional for patients who want it.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            I think most people are just unaware of the risk that is involved. Healthcare information is some of the most sensitive data on a person and should be protected at all cost.

            Some older people in particular have as much of a self-preservation instinct on the internet as toddlers in real life. If protecting them takes away a tiny bit of agency from them then so be it because they cannot be trusted with such decisions. I believe any reasonable person would use MFA because trading off a tiny bit of convenience for a significant amount of security is always worth it.

    • @[email protected]
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      37 months ago

      There is a time when every person realizes that things have changed so much around them that they no longer understand how it works. It creeps up on you slowly, but in the Information age, that is accelerated. Every person here will experience some form of that at some point in their lives.

      • @[email protected]
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        67 months ago

        That’s entirely your choice, it’s not a requirement of life. You can continue learning new information, there’s nothing that forces you to give into ignorance. I’d also say there’s a pretty big difference between “I’m not a very tech savvy person” and “I am completely helpless and choose to make it other people’s problem.”

        • @[email protected]
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          17 months ago

          It’s a balance in many ways. There’s some aspect of refusing to do things due to not wanting to learn things. But sometimes people don’t want to adopt technologies simply because they’re unwilling to accept some very glaring downsides. For example, if you demand 2FA, you are demanding that your customers essentially consent to have an ankle monitor and remote audio monitor on their person at all times. Smart phones track your location 24/7, and they seem to track what is spoken around them as well. They are absolutely a huge invasion of privacy, and it’s remarkable we ever let them become as indispensable as we have. They’re basically just ankle monitors we all voluntarily put on each morning. I can absolutely see people just refusing to have a smartphone for the privacy implications alone.

          I also have some red lines on technology. I refuse to use tiktok because of its privacy and psychological manipulation issues. And I’ve moved away from most social media, even if that cuts me off from some very useful communications and conversations in my family and community. I also refuse to buy any appliance with a wifi connection. I try to avoid any device that requires an app to use. If your widget requires an app but your competitor’s doesn’t, I’m buying from your competitor. If your widget requires an app and your widget is just something that would be nice to have, but not life-changing, I’m not going to buy your widget at all.

          It’s a very dangerous thing to simply decry anyone who rejects a technology as ignorant or not tech-savvy. Often people reject particular technologies for damn good reasons. If we just accept the newest thing with zero thought simply for the fact that it is new, we are actually the ignorant ones. Something being newer does not automatically make it better. And often newer things are inferior to old things, like the case of a lot of privacy-violating appliances and companies filling everything with DRM and trying to turn it into a subscription. I don’t want basic household items to require an app to use, as it is guaranteed that the security on that system will be crap, and that the product will stop working after a few years after the company stops supporting the app.

          If I’m buying a physical thing, I want it to be completely stand-alone and require zero continued feedback from its manufacturer in order to continue to function. You can tell me til you’re blue in the face about how spying on me helps improve the customer experience, but I’m still going to tell you to take your privacy-violating, app-dependent widget and shove it up your app-loving ass.

      • @[email protected]
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        37 months ago

        My father was 75 when his finances had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer able to afford a personal secretary.

        He had me explain the things he had to do, and he wrote them down on paper, step by step. He was pretty quickly able to do all the things he needed to do on his desktop.

        Never got fast typing down, so I got him dictation software. Anyway, I’m pretty convinced as long as your determined, you can stay hip to new technology in a way that at least allows you to work with it.

        • @[email protected]
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          17 months ago

          The difference is you. You enabled him and helped accommodate his needs. Without you, how’s he going to cope? Also you’re a good child.

  • @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    So this is pro-self checkout? Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items, I recently read an article saying that even for the companies they haven’t worked out: besides the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc), they’ve lost more to theft and are having to spend more money on adding more anti-theft tech, etc. One company they interviewed is phasing them out.

    (edit after reading some comments) The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.

    • Blyfh
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      147 months ago

      I LOVE self-checkouts for small shopping. No human interaction bullshit. Just beep your stuff, whip out your card and go. Rarely do I encounter technical problems.

    • Crazazy [hey hi! :D]
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      137 months ago

      For me it’s not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it’s the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway

      Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I’m walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.

      • @[email protected]
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        7 months ago

        Also over here cashiers don’t bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway

        I’m a lot faster at bagging when I’m not also scanning. The human cashier divides the labor to two people, which makes it faster.

    • @[email protected]
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      97 months ago

      Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that the mighty MBA class are actually just short-sighted, trend-hopping, avaricious shitbags?

      Yeah, if you can’t pay people enough to notice and/or care if I steal from you, I get to steal from you. Them’s the rules.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        “If you aren’t able to stop me, I get to rape you. Them’s the rules.”

        That’s how fucking stupid you sound.

    • @[email protected]
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      87 months ago

      I just like the feeling of privacy. When the staff redirects customers to the cashiers because there’s less queue than at the self checkout, I pretend not to hear with my headphones on.

      • @[email protected]
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        137 months ago

        Same. I’m one of the few people that prefers self checkout. Covid was a magical time for me while grocery shopping. No one awkwardly had to smile after eye contact, everyone gave space and avoided each other, just get in and get out without ever taking out my headphones. Self check out is always faster where I’m from too.

        • @[email protected]
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          137 months ago

          As a hermit forced to live and work in the modern world, COVID is the high I’ll never get again.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            Ditto. Then, when we went back to “normal,” I felt like I had to pretend to hate it because everyone else hated it so much. For me, it felt like freedom and relief.

      • @[email protected]
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        67 months ago

        I only prefer self checkout when I’m buying rubbers and lube. Anything else I’d rather have the checkout person scan and bag for me.

        If you have social anxiety, the checkout person conversation is one of the easiest interactions for you to practice those skills on. “Hello, here are my items, thank you” is about the gist of what’s necessary.

        • @[email protected]
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          47 months ago

          Oh I have absolutely no social anxiety, I just prefer to keep what I’m buying to myself when I can, rubber or not.

    • @[email protected]
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      57 months ago

      Why would you be pro self checkout? Besides the extra time and effort for the customer to check out if they have more than a couple items

      In what alternate reality does self-checkout take more time and effort?

      • If you go to a cashier then you have to wait in line. At my local supermarket there is one cashier vs. 16 self-checkout machines. Even if you go at an extremely busy time there is almost always a self-checkout machine available.
      • With self-checkout you simply scan the items from your basket and put them in your bag. With the cashier you have put all your items on the conveyor belt, wait for them to be scanned, then put them in your bag.
      • If you have more than a few items you simply grab a hand-scanner or just use the app on your phone and scan the items as you put them in your cart. Then you just go to a self-checkout machine and pay. No unloading the cart at checkout, you just pay and take your cart to your car.

      the problems and delays they cause where they have to provide employee assistance anyway (“Unexpected item in bag”, etc)

      What do you mean unexpected item in bag? The self checkout machine can’t look into my bag.

      The article also talked about people getting in trouble for accidentally not getting something scanned.

      Never seen that happen. You get random bag checks before you pay (so at that point it’s technically not theft). If you missed something, they simply re-scan all the items and you pay the correct amount, that’s all.

      • @[email protected]
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        77 months ago

        In the name of theft prevention and legal compliance, they do not give self checkout customers the same powers as actual cashier employees:

        • Self checkout customers cannot verify their own age for age-restricted items.
        • Self checkout customers cannot scan something and report the number of duplicates (e.g., scan a can and punch in that you’re buying 8 of them).
        • In most stores, self checkout customers are policed by the system to make sure that each item is placed onto a scale that weighs everything, and stops the process if weights don’t match up.
        • The ergonomics and flow of self checkout doesn’t allow for a conveyor belt style rapid scanning, because a self checkout station is a tighter space and tends to require bagging as you scan, instead of scanning and bagging separately and independently.
        • The frequency of produce code entries means that customers tend to be much slower to enter foods that don’t have bar codes.

        As a result, self checkout tends to be slower for customers who have more than 20 items. That might be offset if there’s a longer line for regular cashier, but if there’s no line the employee cashier is much faster.

        • erin (she/her)
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          17 months ago

          Self checkout isn’t supposed to be for more than 10 or 15 items in most stores… obviously it would be less convenient in those cases.

    • @[email protected]
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      37 months ago

      They are HUGELY advantageous to shoplifters. My local grocery store did it for a few years and stopped all together.

  • @[email protected]
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    277 months ago

    I agree with the boomers on this one. I’m not in the habit of providing free labor to a corporation I don’t even work for.

    • @[email protected]
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      287 months ago

      I agree! I was at a Walmart one time and some chick ran out right by us at a high speed. We had no idea what was going on but apparently she was stealing. The one worker said as they walked by us “you got all these people standing around doing nothing and they couldn’t stop her?” It was a smart ass comment. Did that employee really believe that I would risk my life for Walmart, of all places? I don’t work there, I’m not security, I’m not a police officer. Not my problem.

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        If it was up to me, they wouldn’t be forced to stand all shift or be underpaid, but since I’m not in charge of shit I can’t change their company’s policies.

    • @[email protected]
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      137 months ago

      Boy, you’re not gonna be happy when you learn how food stores used to work. They’ve been offloading things labor used to do onto the customers for a century.

    • @[email protected]
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      77 months ago

      have fun waiting in line i guess? while i zip through the self checkout in a fraction of the time

      also, do you live in jersey? if not, then you’re pumping your own gas, bless your heart

      • @[email protected]
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        47 months ago

        The lines are usually minimal (1 or 2 people) during the time of day I typically go shopping, and I drive an electric that is charged in my garage.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      Then pay for delivery and get it right to your door…

      Cashiers and baggers are underpayed and forced to stand, if you want someone to chat to, you should pay extra. But you don’t want to pay more for groceries to pay people a living wage, the solution is to pay for delivery, sorry that still removes the ability to chat, but they aren’t obligated to, they only need to scan your groceries. Why do you think they need to do more?

      • @[email protected]
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        87 months ago

        These people being forced to stand all day in the USA is pure insanity looking from the outside.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        I don’t think, nor did I say, they needed to do more. I’m also not particularly fond of small talk, so I dont typically chat with them. They’re paid to do a job, so why would I offer to do that job for free?

  • @[email protected]
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    247 months ago

    Not wanting to do free work for a company (they don’t even give you a discount if you use self-service) is being a boomer?

    That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “boomer” on the opposite side of the word “sucker”.

    • @[email protected]
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      7 months ago

      Exactly! Back in my day, people used to fill up my gas for me and carry my things up to my hotel room. Young people are getting lazy and entitled! Corporations need to make them work harder. Makes it hard to humiliate the poors if they make ME do the work.

    • GladiusB
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      27 months ago

      I am and I’m not. If it’s like 2 items, give me a self checkout. If it’s over 15. Bring on a cashier.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        I always prefer self checkout because too many people suck at bagging.

        Don’t put a leaking pack of meat with my deli you dumb shit. All while I see people pushing full carts that have meat touching produce…

        The only place I trust to bag for me is Trader Joe’s. Tetris masters over there.

  • @[email protected]
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    197 months ago

    Boomer uncle literally drives his electric bill payment to the local office to pay it when they have a perfectly fine online portal.

    Same exact response ‘that’s someone’s job’ like the employee actually has a say.

    • @[email protected]
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      257 months ago

      There’s no justification from a pure convenience standpoint, but I could respect the pettiness if the electric company ran their shit like one local government office in my hometown, where there was this small annual fee they charged like $9 for…but then to pay it, you could either mail in a check, hand deliver cash or check or card…or pay online…where they added a $5 “convenience fee” to a sub-$10 payment.

      You bet your ass that I paid that shit in person every year, in loose change, and requested a receipt (which they had to write up manually because they didn’t have a system to process and print one).

      • Sippy Cup
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        7 months ago

        I live by this philosophy

        If you charge me more to make both our lives easier, I will make both our lives harder out of spite.

        It will cost you more than the fee you tried to squeeze out of me, and I will have spent nothing.

      • @[email protected]
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        57 months ago

        My city’s water bill went from a free online portal to a shittier one with a fee. I pay it by check now out of pettiness.

    • Ricky Rigatoni
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      37 months ago

      Most corporate bill portals I’ve personally used were terrible and charged me a significant convenience fee for using them.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Well…fuck em, I guess!

        If they’re charging so much that the local govt needs to pass that on in the form of a $5 fee on a $9 payment, they’re either gouging, or have an unsustainable business model.

        Either way, fuck 'em.

      • @[email protected]
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        17 months ago

        Most of them are useless and horruble ti use. Don’t get me wrong I love the cinvinience, but they need to hire competant designers/dev.

  • @[email protected]
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    187 months ago

    I feel like most memos in Walmart break rooms are this kind of fodder for shitposting material

  • @[email protected]
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    167 months ago

    I don’t get it. Why would you ask a customer if they want to use the self checkout lane?

      • @[email protected]
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        277 months ago

        If the customer wanted to use the self checkout they’d be going to the self checkout …

        • @[email protected]
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          387 months ago

          Everyone is aware of everything all the time. No need to provide potentially useful information. Nope.

        • @[email protected]
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          7 months ago

          They tend to move faster, so maybe it was full and now isn’t while they waited for a cashier.

          Or maybe they just didn’t notice them either? People aren’t very perceptive, especially as they get older and start to lose their vision as well.

          Edit, they also seem to think the cashier is obligated to chat with them forever, the people want to talk, cashiers just want a paycheck.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        I had an employee direct me to self checkout at a fucking gas station were I was the only customer in the store. Shits pathetic.