To me it’s a little bit like the convention of praising things that are handmade. Yes, a perfectly efficient world would factory-produce every item with clear-cut lines, but that gives people fewer meaningful jobs, and exposes us to fewer interesting flaws.
One other very tangible negative related to having mostly self-checkouts is petty theft. Many of us heard about the large rings of criminals that would steal massive numbers of low-value items from stores, no one would stopping them because there’s hardly anyone staffing those stores, and those that are there are overworked.
What I’ve seen happen is that shops around here bolstered security when they lowered amount of cashiers. Especially shop near me, which delayed adding self-checkouts due to high level of theft, simply puts either a security guard or normal employee at the self-checkout section at all times.
And about praising things made handmade - I believe there is a place for handmade things, but being a cashier ain’t it. Behind the cash register you’re nothing else than overpraised payment processor, and I both see of others and got to experience how souless that job is, especially in high turnout places. There’s only pain in there, mostly due to understaffing.
To me it’s a little bit like the convention of praising things that are handmade. Yes, a perfectly efficient world would factory-produce every item with clear-cut lines, but that gives people fewer meaningful jobs, and exposes us to fewer interesting flaws.
One other very tangible negative related to having mostly self-checkouts is petty theft. Many of us heard about the large rings of criminals that would steal massive numbers of low-value items from stores, no one would stopping them because there’s hardly anyone staffing those stores, and those that are there are overworked.
What I’ve seen happen is that shops around here bolstered security when they lowered amount of cashiers. Especially shop near me, which delayed adding self-checkouts due to high level of theft, simply puts either a security guard or normal employee at the self-checkout section at all times.
And about praising things made handmade - I believe there is a place for handmade things, but being a cashier ain’t it. Behind the cash register you’re nothing else than overpraised payment processor, and I both see of others and got to experience how souless that job is, especially in high turnout places. There’s only pain in there, mostly due to understaffing.