Agreed about the standing for a while shift, that was likely one of the most grueling jobs, but making me do the job with zero benefits was not the correct solution. I do like the idea of grocery pickup, (delivery for those that can't get to the store) that was a good improvement. My only gripe there is getting the worst produce available everytime. Making pickup viable only to prepackaged goods. I'm also a social individual and have grown many friendships with cashiers through the years. Some greeting me by name as i enter a shop. Thats a level of welcoming that no technology will ever achieve. If a robot greeted me by name as i walked in a store it would be extremely creepy and off-putting. I'd likely avoid that place at all cost.

Self checkout doesn't eliminate that need though. It just pushes the labor onto the consumer. The job still needs doing. Now you are just the one doing it, for free.

BOOO!

Your idea is basically “make customers wait, not employees”

It’s not an actual improvement until they can eliminate human labor. Until then it’s just pushing work unto customers.

People still need to earn money, though. You advocate for all cashiers to lose their job.

(I have been a cashier in an electronics store and loved the task, minus the customer relations.)

That's one way of looking at it, and I respect it, BUT also think that self-checkouts are a way of eliminating jobs: stores just want to have fewer employees and more benefit. I avoid self-checkout not for convenience, but because I don't want to contribute to the destruction of jobs.

There was a time they all had cashiers. Not just during busy seasonal rushes either. Sometime in the late nineties this became no longer true.

I'm pretty damn old but I don't remember that personally. Just in movies. I do remember the glory days when every single register had a cashier, and a bagger, and that was much faster than self checkout. Especially as it is now, with a bunch of unstaffed registers and a line waiting for the self-service machines.

Thats something i could get behind. The only place around me that i know of that does anything similar is Sams club and you have to use your own phone to do that.