So called “shadow work” is becoming more prevalent. When you choose to self checkout at a grocery store you’re essentially doing work for free (scanning and bagging your own groceries) in place of a paid cashier and bagger.
So the claim that "shadow work" is becoming more prevalent doesn't make a ton of sense, especially when you net it out with the types of labor that are becoming newly salable (through taskrabbit and all the other forms of the gig economy).
“Please remove the last scanned item from the bag and scan it before placing it in the bag.”
“Please wait, help is on the way.”
I really wonder whether that system actually helps prevent theft, or if it was originally put in place because stores suspected that theft would be a problem, and we're just stuck with it now.
Plus, in the couple stores I frequent, there's always an employee standing at the ready to clear out the errors. Which, I imagine, would go a long way toward reducing theft on its own.
Either way, they seem to be universally bad. I can only hope a store tries to buck the trend by turning off the weight check and finds that it causes no problems. Maybe if that happens, the other would follow suit.
With Walmart specifically I haven't gotten "Unexpected item in bagging area" in a couple of years at least. It's probably a combination of an improved system on Walmart's part and learning how to place items in the bagging area appropriately on my part.
There's obviously a long way to go to make these kind of systems ideal (the UX of entering in produce items is probably the most common frustration for me nowadays) but the all-too-common refrain that I hear that these systems are basically unusable without some employee to constantly babysit them is false, at least at the stores I frequent that have them.
I severely doubt it's the case. Besides, businesses aren't typically interested in having a competitive market anyways. It's probably more profitable to not lower prices at all and lobby to make it harder for competitors to lower prices . . . or just conspire with major competitors to keep them higher. Both actions have a strong historical precedent in US markets, at least.
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-public-thinks-the-average...
While price fixing obviously happens, it usually only happens in markets with a small number of producers. And even then, it will inevitably collapse.
Look around, goods are very competitive nowadays. Computers are competitively priced, all goods on Amazon, nyc $1 pizza, food, gasoline, cars, clothes, etc.
Very few businesses have the fat margins you claim are the norm. And the businesses that do are usually not producing goods, but renting services: telecoms, advertising, etc.
[1] In particular, rewarding consumers who reduce costs by passing on the cost savings.
How is that remotely analagous to the buzzfeed situation or self checkout
See the analogy now?
If you choose to not drive to a job that you signed up for knowing that your only option to get to work was driving, then you’ll just not earn income. The company won’t otherwise pay to transport you there.
I mean, long ago, before the invention of the department store or grocery store, the customer wasn't allowed to just roam around in the aisles grabbing products. A clerk had to go and fetch the inventory from the shelves for the customer.
Shoppers today do a tremendous amount of shadow work for the grocery store but think little of it. We actually like it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly#History
> At the time of its founding, grocery stores did not allow their customers to gather their own goods. Instead, a customer would give a list of items to a clerk, who would then go through the store, gathering them. This created a greater cost, and therefore higher prices. Piggly Wiggly introduced the innovation of allowing customers to go through the store, gathering their own goods, thus cutting costs and lowering prices.
> Customers at Piggly Wiggly entered the store through a turnstile and walked through four aisles to view the store’s 605 items sold in packages and organized into departments. The customers selected merchandise as they continued through the maze to the cashier. Instantly, packaging and brand recognition became important to companies and consumers.[5]
- You can keep headphones on and keep listening to a podcast without being rude to the cashier
- You can scan and bag stuff in an order that makes sense (e.g. so you don't get eggs at the bottom) at your own pace