{"id":953,"date":"2021-09-21T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T04:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/?p=953"},"modified":"2021-09-21T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T04:38:11","slug":"the-perceived-and-real-evils-of-self-checkout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/2021\/09\/21\/the-perceived-and-real-evils-of-self-checkout\/","title":{"rendered":"The (Perceived) and Real Evils of Self-Checkout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Self-checkout seems to be a fairly controversial thing, and we all know The Grump is all about controversy, and I’ve been thinking of writing on this subject for awhile.\u00a0 First off, let’s be real, some of the “reasons” for being against them are really dumb… as is the case with so many things in today’s society, not just in politics.\u00a0 Things from “I’m not employed here”, and so on.\u00a0 But if you’re as old as I am and you remember having to go inside to pay for your gas instead of pay at the pump that argument is specious.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s take a quick look at some reasons in the photo attached…<\/p>\n

1) They kill jobs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ok, I suppose they could.\u00a0 I mean, there are fewer people up front, and for some businesses that would be a definite boon.<\/p>\n

2) Self-checkout machines don’t contribute with payroll taxes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is really combined with #1, and like I said it could be true, but… as my good friend Lisa pointed out to me… if the store is now moving those people to be individual shoppers for curbside pick-up then nothing is being lost in either point.\u00a0 So much for those points.<\/p>\n

3) They are really not that convenient.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Convenience depends, both on the individual and the situation.\u00a0 When I have just a few items they’re very convenient.\u00a0 When I have a cart full of groceries they very not convenient… at all.<\/p>\n

Moving on with my commentary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

But none of that is why I don’t like them. Why I don’t like them is stores go out of their way to make sure using a human checker is so inconvenient I’ll want to give up and just do it myself.\u00a0 They… the stores… take away my legitimate choices.<\/p>\n

Look, I don’t expect every aisle open, but I also don’t want to see 6+ full carts lined up for a single human checker.\u00a0 I’m sorry, I want a reasonable and realistic option of using a human check per #3 above, depending on MY needs, not the store’s desires.\u00a0 It’s the way self-checkouts are used to make the shopping experience even more inconvenient and disrespectful to the customer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-checkout seems to be a fairly controversial thing, and we all know The Grump is all about controversy, and I’ve been thinking of writing on this subject for awhile.\u00a0 First off, let’s be real, some of the “reasons” for being against them are really dumb… as is the case with so many things in today’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15,16,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-life","category-retail","category-technology","category-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurmudgeon.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}