Capitalists do not understand you are paying people not so they do work, but so they don't steal your shit. This is like psychopathic behavior 101: pay half the population to kill the other half so neither of them go after you.
Why does everyone who runs a store or shop write like this? Are they marking off their loose paper and sharpie budget as a business expense?
I've put many signs up when working construction for warning of all sorts. People don't read signs. There's so many everywhere now trying to throw some sort of product down our neck that we've gone sign blind.
They're too stupid to use software and printers to do it.
Lol, awesome.
Where's my discount for doing your labor?
As much as I dislike online shopping (because it puts too much control into an even smaller group), this crap is driving me to it.
Spending 10 minutes looking for “sweet potato” in the alphabetical selection screen, only to not do it fast enough and get yelled at by a robot while the store has 10 closed registers and everyone on line is giving me dirty looks.
No discount
Robot tills unironically good. We need people renovating houses and providing healthcare not making the same small talk day in day out.
Having a couple staff to help elderly, etc should be the norm.
However the problem is ppl aren't getting those other jobs, so the robot till just allows for layoffs.
Usually there are, not everybody needs attention and I frankly dream of the day you just walk out with your stuff.
Always taking a peek at the self checkout worker as im shopping to see if they're bored or a little too into being shopping cop. If they go to wipe down baskets or chit chat with someone, that's when all my bulk bananas and onions are getting bought
yeah if they are staring hard at their little spy phones, tapping away as they scroll through the cameras and screen mirrors i fuck off
before those devices it would be a good sign because it was a personal phone and they were checked tf out
I had to use all my inspiration on deception rolls the first time i realized they were watching me on that thing. Luckily it wasn't a necessary heist that day and i was able to absorb the cost but i was shook
If you weigh stuff where you pick up vegetables you can get away with pretty much anything. Not that I do myself since there's no self-checkout here
The new devices they have will show the clerk and they can look to verify you actually have vegetables on the scale. Hence why i now try to wait till they're distracted
Ah, I thought it only showed on your screen, that's how the ones I've used worked
As always, this makes the faulty assumption that under capitalism, unemployed till workers will go do those things.
We already have vastly more than enough people to do those things, and people working tills is not the reason those things aren't done. So until we fix that reason, I'll take the extra 2 minutes opportunity to get to chat to a fellow human being thanks.
Love to wait in a line a dozen people deep because the parasite class is too cheap to hire more than one checker
Im going to be real i would be very tempted to walk out with my shit at that point
Man, am I part of a minority that vastly prefers self checkout? I just scan my shit, pay, and leave while everyone else is waiting in line for a person. No awkward small talk, no one in front of me holding up the line with a mountain of coupons or anything, just efficiency. They're honestly not hard to use. Barcode go beep. Carrots under C. Stuff goes in bag.
I've had some finicky ones, but the only reason I would ever choose a person instead is if I have alcohol, and that's not really by choice. Most times, I finish shopping and walk out the door within 2 minutes. I've waited in line for like 15 before. I don't see why it's more popular other than the desire to "be serviced."
I wonder if self-serve gas went through this, too.
Nope. I prefer them too because it’s easier to steal from corps.
You still have to scan stuff, but 500g of potatoes is cheaper than 500g of cheese. Just match the weights and give yourself a discount.
Had an idea to pre-print barcode stickers for various items that ring up the product as something similar, but cheaper. Then slap em on as you shop and checkout at either the self checkout or with a cashier.
Not sure if a database of products and their barcode IDs for certain stores exists, but you could also make a trip to do the scanning. I'm sure we could find at least one comrade at each major store to leak a database of barcodes.
its trivial and happening way more than you'd think
people were doing this with human cashiers decades ago
This would work as I’ve done this, but not printing my own but as you said returning with the barcodes from a previous trip and sticking them on as I walk around the store.
Now I want to print my own so I’ll be looking into doing some testing.
Just buy a cheap thing and take a picture of the barcode for next time
I prefer just leaving stuff at the bottom of the trolley than alt-scanning personally.
If I'm scanning groceries for somebody else then sure but if it's just my own stuff, it's not work. Take pumping gas, some locations do it for you but if I'm pumping it myself, I'm not doing work for fre.
You're performing labor vital to the store's goal of selling you shit. Either someone else does that labor and gets paid for it, or you're doing that labor for free. Doing it "for yourself" doesn't make it not-labor and pushing the labor costs onto you are literally the entire point of these things from the business's viewpoint. You're choosing not to be bothered by it.
Just curious, how do you feel about ATMs for banking instead of the tellar? Although I agree labor is labor, freeing up a task for a cashier/grocery worker so they can focus on something else is a win. If I see a grocery cart far from the return stack, I'll move it. That's somebody's job, but I don't see it as free labor.
That's somebody's job, but I don't see it as free labor.
That's how you choose to see it, but you also did work for the bourgeoisie for free
Look at it this way: nobody has ever had their workload lightened by it. Companies have just cut positions and hours instead.
With the cart example, yeah, cool, that's good. I could fold every messed up shirt I ever see in a store and that would certainly make some workers day easier, but I'd also be doing work for free
To be clear since people seem to regularly confuse arguments for endorsement, I use self checkout, but it is what it is. I'm doing something someone was paid to do, for free. That's the facts. And if you think about it, when i do so, I do especially valuable free labor because I used to work retail and can easily deal with it. Even if it's slight it's still a form of exploition and it's galling to think of my past exploitation providing value to this current form. I was a good little retail worker long enough that I can add to walmart's throughput by not clogging up a checkout, yay
ATM: push button, receive money
Self checkout: you scan, look up, and physically manipulate and bag dozens of items
You: these are equivalent
The task of the ATM used to solely be performed by bank tellars. Looking up accounts, checking balance, taking out the money, depositing checks, etc. It was all automated for self service, which is good as it frees up tellars responsibilities, but necessary labor before.
But the use of the atm requires no labor other than press button
I'm not talking about the use of the ATM by pressing buttons, I'm talking about the functions it serves. The functions that an ATM performs were once functions only a bank tellar did but we're not against ATM because it was automates task for the better. Self checkout requires nothing but scanning a barcode for me (before self checkout, I bagged for myself and paid for myself; things I carried over).
My point being, ATM have been around long enough that we don't even regard those task as labor anymore, which is okay and will be how self checkout looks. Bank tellars can focus on people who have other questions. Grocery workers can focus on stock, albiet most stores I go to still have checkout lanes open. The grocery owner will underpay and price gouge.
Maybe, but this principle feels still reactionary in this case, depending on your presented solution. For now, we are more progressive towards our communist goals and better off with the self-checkout. It is a more centralized and efficient option in general. The problem isn't the fact that we are doing work for free that someone else should be paid for, it's that we should socialize the results of that free work in dropping prices and investing that labour elsewhere. Otherwise we're just re-privatizing the half of a process that's closer to socialization.
I don't think I'm necessarily complaining about your position here, you could just be using this phrase and agreeing, but I often see this phrasing followed by the reactionary "we can finally have normal lines and clerks like we used to have". Giving them that job back now (in full amounts, like before self-checkout lowered the amount) just results in even lower pay for those people and decreases every other benefit from it. There's never a going back in these cases which won't result in much worse things and further from a workable position strategically..
Of the three stores near me, all of them have switched over the years from having most of the checkout stations staffed with someone, to having 0-2 and forcing everyone to go to the tiny self checkout stations instead
Edit Also the stations always yell at me and call the staff for doing it wrong somehow
Agreed, way more efficient and convenient. Where I live customers always bag their own groceries anyway so the only difference is taking 2 seconds to run it through a scanner before putting it in your bag and you never have to stand in line for them or anything. Like I couldn't care less if the convenience store isn't giving me great customer service I just wanna grab what I want and get out asap.
I'm on your side on this. Usually when I'm grocery shopping it's at the end of a long day, and I just don't want to deal with other people in any capacity at that point.
No awkward small talk
Oh god so much this. Especially from other people in line. There's something about my face that seems to invite conversations from strangers. I have no idea what it is. And it's always the last thing I have any interest in doing. Especially when they're offering recipe advice. Self checkouts are a godsend.
Wait till they find out that it's the staff stealing all the shit and not the customers. Then wait until they find out that all the staff that are ripping the place off are all in management.
Ok I guess I can go back to stealing the old fashioned way. I almost got caught more often at the self checkout anyway
I always pocket things in aisles without cameras, all of the surveillance at checkout is too sketch.
why yes, i do need to go from the makeup aisle to the bread aisle every time i go shopping
Stuffing your coat full of cinnamon raisin bagels but only paying for mascara, hahaha THE FOOLS
Yeah, love the pillars and merchandise stands in the middle of the aisles for this reason too
Why don’t you just forget to scan things in your reusable bag?
I need to get some new ones that are more floppy and easier to conceal objects in.
Me: "Every time your machine stops my self checkout transaction because I moved my shopping bag too close to the cameras I will 'forget' to pay for one item."
Company:
Me:
As always, the problem isn't inherently with technology, but with its usage by capitalism. We could implement this to free workers for other more necessary jobs, or to reduce the working hours. Instead it just creates extra profit for the capitalist and more unemployment.
Right, way back to the mischaracterization of the Luddites it was never fear of technology but who got to apply it and the following impacts of its use by capital
Its true
i get awful fired up about self-checkout, guilty.
Self-checkout is one thing I proudly say the baby boomers were right about.
Hope this energy stays with all other AI bullshit. Look, porky wants to disguise us working for him as a service he’s providing us and charge us for it. Porky is lazy, not us.
Worked retail and I can definitely agree.
Sucked being an unpaid, unlicensed therapist especially as an autistic person.
The Dishonesty of inflating grocery prices until people felt the need to steal them, absolutely. Your apology should be much longer, perhaps its own separate sign.
The same way Aikido is, in theory, the most effective martial art, but the human body isn't capable of harnessing it to its full potential so it ends up laughably bad, this middle manager's methods actually make for a mindblowing business model, but their customers' morals fail them so the store ends up unable to use technology.
