“Those things take away jobs,” customers croak when I try to entice them to utilize self-checkouts instead of waiting in line for a cashier. But honestly, they haven’t. Not in our situation at least. I work at a CVS where four self-checkout machines were installed two years ago and it’s not hard to say whether or not they have affected the number of people that are employed.
But are people really concerned with the fact that a 20-year-old college student keeps her part-time job, or are they just too lazy to wave their items in front of a scanner and put them in a bag themselves?
Many times, this is the case. “I’ll still do it for you,” I plead, because I am not permitted to open up another register but am encouraged by management to do anything short of cattle prod people away from the “real cashier.”
And reluctantly they shuffle over with their baskets as I am just as polite and attentive as I would be if I were behind the counter. But machines have a mind of their own sometimes, so if something rings up the wrong price I am berated with insults of “I didn’t want to use these machines to begin with. I wanted a real person.”
America is about convenience, and about getting done what you need to do as quickly as possible so you can get on with your life. And we live in the 21st century where you can order pizza on your iPhone without ever speaking to a real person. Why is it so important then, for that interaction at a grocery or drug store?
Beneath it all, it is fear. Consumers fear the technology that is put there to assist them and serve them. They fear the science fiction fables that robots will take over the world. They fear that it is something they do not understand or know how to use properly so they degrade it instead of choosing to learn. They crave a human face, even if it is an annoyed one due to the constant complaints about said useless technology.
I am pro-self-checkout. At grocery stores and other places that offer it, I feel like I am clogging up the lines when I wait to purchase my Snapple and chips at a cashier when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. Certainly there are times, with a cartful of items and a handful of coupons that a cashier is more efficient, so by all means you can wait in line.
To the people who believe in refusing to store clerks to use self-checkouts because they will take away my job, the machines are already installed and are not going anywhere. Consequently, neither am I because of people like you who make it necessary to have an attendant walk you through the “self-service” checkout.
