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Comment by MarcusE1W | Hacker News Reader

See, and I see it quite differently. I don’t do other people’s job without being payed.

You are supposed to run the whole payment process yourself. Become an expert yourself over time how to navigate all the issues and fineries of the system. You are doing a cashiers job. But no advantage for you.

Human tills have been removed and only because of that the queues on the self checkout are shorter. I am sure for some tasks self-checkout can actually be quicker but more often than not there is no difference or it can be longer.

So now you are standing there and have been good and done their job, for no reward. And once a food price crisis comes up, will the supermarket remember your unpaid contribution to reduce their cost?

Really, don’t do other people’s job.

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> Really, don’t do other people’s job

Where do you draw the line here? Do you put your own gas into your own car? Because up until recently and still in one or two places that's someone else's job. ah you have an EV... ok do you buy your own clothes? That's the job of a personal shopper. do you prepare your own food? That's the job of a chef or a cook. Do you dress yourself in the morning? That's the job of a valet, hard t. Do you park your own car? That's the job of a valet, silent t. Do you locate your table and seat yourself in restaurants, cafes or at the cinema? That's the job... etc.

Fair point. I guess everyone has to make their decision themselves according to their situation.

Gas jockeys served the public. We don't grow/kill our own food, we buy from vendors who sell to the public.

It's poor form to invite someone to dinner at your house, then make them cook it when they arrive.

That's where the line is drawn. Not having a personal valet-silent-t isn't doing someone else's job. It was never a position to begin with.

I'm trying, but I can't fathom what point you think you're making comparing the living standards of plebes to the Queen of England's unless you were born to landowners during apartheid or are a current member of the Saudi royal family.

What if the "line" you draw is that you only support technologies that shift labor from human to machine, and not human to another human that doesn't get paid. Would that work?

I absolutely refuse to put gas in my car. Thank God for New Jersey. Gasoline is dangerous and I have no idea why we should let people pump their own. I can't imagine how many people smoke while pumping their own gas outside of lovely New Jersey...

Gasoline is absolutely not that dangerous, at least relative to the risk involved every time one drives a car. For igniting gasoline fumes, a spark is almost always necessary. Realistically speaking, a lit cigarette has a better chance of setting a nearby trash can on fire than igniting the gasoline fumes. If a person were to spark a lighter to light a cigarette that'd be a different story.

https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/2010/03/gas-pump_fire_that...

https://content.nfpa.org/-/media/Project/Storefront/Catalog/...

> for no reward

My reward is not having to stand in a long line. I avoid cashiers like the plague, except in the case where a register just happens to open up near me and I'm the first or second one on line.

Not to mention that self-checkout lets me decide what goes in what bag without having to put it on the conveyor belt in a specific order.

Self checkout is just all-around far better than cashiers.

I wish it wasn't limited in quantity. Most places cap it out at 10-20 items. They don't enforce it too strongly, but I'd love it if I could do my weekly bulging-cart 200-item grocery checkouts myself.

I get most groceries at the local Walmart. Their self checkouts try to limit you by having a small bagging area. I work around it by putting the bags directly back into the cart.

We also have an upscale local grocery chain in town with baggers that will take your stuff out to your car if you want, but I hate it because it simply takes too long. Never go there unless I only need a few items, or something that only they carry. Their olive oil is sublime!

So you’re one of those clueless people that I curse who try to bring a full size cart stuffed with items through the self checkout? There is never enough room so they spend lots of time juggling items between the basket to checkout and back to basket. They are never the ones who know how to scan quickly or how to pack efficiently. It clogs up the process for everyone!

You do you, I'll do me. One cashier scanning, one of me emptying cart, and if I'm lucky there is a bagger as well. Aside from trivially small purchases (one or two items), this is substantially faster than self-check and self-bag if you have a lot.

Even with lines, usually faster in the human-run checkout.

If you want faster lines, find one with only men in it. Men usually aren't the main grocery shopper in the family, so they're usually buying less, and usually aren't dealing with rambunctious kids, so they can focus on unloading and loading groceries. No purses either, so the credit card is usually in the machine right away.

I've pointed this out to my wife a few times and she simultaneously curses her fellow women and grudgingly accepts that I'm right and uses the logic. She's quite efficient, but I have to admit that if I saw her in line I probably wouldn't get behind her if she was smiling. (If she was wearing her resting bitch face, probably fine - typical sign of professional women who aren't inclined to spend any more time than necessary in the grocery. You find a woman in a pantsuit, she's probably faster than most men.)

Never get in line behind old people. They just love talking to the cashiers.

Hey, wait just a minute! — 75-year-old retired anesthesiologist

Don't worry, buddy. It'll be me someday.

Almost anyone in scrubs is fair to get behind. The fact that you haven’t ditched your polyester suit that is hot in hot weather and totally uninsulated in cold means you don’t want to be there.

Different people will value different things, and I see your point.

I like self-checkouts at the grocery store because: (1) It is one less person touching my groceries. A cashier has touched everyone else's stuff, which has been touched by everyone else. (2) I'm at least as fast as the cashiers at the stores I go to, and generally faster. And at the stores I go to, there is almost always a open self-checkout, so I don't wait in line. (3) I want certain things in certain bags, because the bags will go into different-sized coolers in my car. (4) Some cashiers don't bag things very well - heavy things bagged with bread or chips, cans on top of easily bruised fruit, cold stuff not put together, and so on.

But not everyone is as picky as I am. :-)

Many of the stores I go it is isn't possible to be as fast as the cashiers because the self-checkouts has painful "security" checks so you need to wait between every item by putting it on the scale and wait for it to stabilize and collect a weight. And God forbid you have more items than fit on the scale! It will just lock up until you can flag down the one attendant for an override.

> See, and I see it quite differently. I don’t do other people’s job without being payed.

To add to this: in any of the stores that have self-checkouts I walk straight past the person tasked with "checking the receipt against your (now paid-for) goods" at the exit. (looking at you, Wal-Mart).

For years, these retailers have insisted "No we're not treating you like a criminal after spending a couple hundred dollars in our store, we're just making sure the cashier rang you out properly wink wink". Well, you don't get to fire your trained cashiers and expect me to subject myself to that any more.

I'll agree here. I like self-checkout and use it whenever possible, but if a store actively checks receipts as you leave I'll do everything I can to avoid going to that store again. I've even been known to feebly protest to my wife.

I prefer self checkouts to manned ones, even if the line is shorter at the latter. I like scanning my own groceries, and don’t really like someone else doing it for me.

That’s interesting. I have not thought about it that some people really like it. Fair enough, hen the self-checkout is great for you.

Ya but it also influences where I shop. I don’t bother with Trader Joe’s anymore, because they don’t have self check out. Some people are the opposite, but in general I think self checkout is more popular than not.

The "advantage for you" is no need to interact with another human being. For people who are antisocial, who are listening to something over earbuds, who are only visiting a country and don't want to awkwardly be addressed in a language they don't understand, etc. all this self-service is liberating.

Do you also boycott grocery stores that don't bag your groceries? What about those that don't walk your bags to your car?

I have to say that does not exist in Europe and to the best of my knowledge never existed as a common pattern. So I don’t know ;-) I guess it’s an individual decision.

I don't go to the ones that don't bag for you when I can help it.

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