total shitshow today. completely packed and everyone's station was requiring constant intervention from the poor attendant. she was just running around and clearing every error without looking. i got about $25 worth of free stuff.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Do the savings on labor costs self-checkouts really outweigh the losses from shoplifting?

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i think its obvious. you're saving at least $300 a day, more like $600 if you had to have two checkout girls. and the cost of the machines is probably not much different than the cost of a regular checkout station. they probably paid for themselves within 6 months, even if theres 20%+ loss on product.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Probably not, but when MANY don’t feel the need to have a job, the self-checkouts are saviors.

My local place already had 12 SC stations. They never had more than 2 “manned” lanes open.
They just removed two more regular lanes for 3 more SC stations, and 2 more SC stations with a conveyor for larger orders.

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Not a mult.

You have to add on the losses though from web orders. My understanding is stores converted the cashiers to help pick and pack web orders, but apparently a lot of people can't read. There is a loss on product because the store lets you keep the item and then will send the right items as well. At least that's what I've seen from companies like Instacart.

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Sounds like it depends on where ike shops.

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

MANY executives right now are directly working on ways to eliminate any manual intervention in retail stores, restaurants, banks, etc. The local banks by us no longer offer any service, such as tellers. They just have an ATM machine in the drive through and an ATM machine inside. The only service representative walks you over to the ATM and shows you how to do things like deposit checks, etc. Restaurants are all moving to eliminate cashiers in favor of web or kiosk ordering.

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We get Walmart delivered all the time for basic stuff. Couple weeks ago they sent us all our stuff and then somebody else's order. We called them. They told us to just keep it.

Which makes sense. I wouldn't want to get food that other people already got and returned.

But we ended up with like $100 of free groceries. I'd never had Bran Flakes before, but, figured...what the hell....they are here. They aren't good.

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

I thought everyone over 70 ate nothing but bran flakes?

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Well, I'm glad I won't make it to 70 then because they aren't good.

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

I would guess that the stores I frequent--particularly home improvement stores--experience several hundred dollars loss per hour by using self-checkout lanes.

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Walmart does a similar thing if you use their pickup option. You can check whichever reason applies to an item you want to return (wrong size, damaged, poor quality, defective, etc.) and once you hit the submit button, they essentially tell you Walmart has enough money so keep your items and don't bother coming back to the store. They refund you within a few business days.

I think the issue goes beyond people "choosing" not to work. In Massachusetts (where I reside), for instance, there is a shortage of service workers across many parts of the state. But this labor shortage is paralleled by a shortage of affordable housing--and housing in general, for that matter (which helps explains the transformation of Worcester, a deindustrialized meth haven just a few years ago, into one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. and a key destination for early-career PMC wannabes who can't afford to live in an increasingly ossified and financially out-of-reach Bostonk or its surrounding suburbs). The cost of one-bedroom rentals has exploded here over the past few years, making basic housing unaffordable to low-wage workers in vast swathes of the state. People aren't going to work in an area if they can't afford to live reasonably close by, especially in a tight labor market.

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Off topic, but one of my kids is going to college in Boston next year and I've started thinking about housing after the dorms won't be an option. Any thoughts on renting an apartment vs buying a place as an investment?

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I was chatting with an employee at a local Costco in Tempe about how to make the self-checkout process as fluid as possible. You can't put a box on the scale anymore to put your items in after scanning, which is really dumb. Long story short -- that Costco alone lost $1 million the last 6 months in unaccounted inventory. There's other things that factor into that number but self-checkout is one of them.

Another thing that's hard to check is produce. Is the attendant expected to catch someone entering the code for regular onions vs the more expensive organic ones?

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No, they give no shits. I did that all throughout college and in my 20s. Scan the yellow, red, and orange peppers as the cheaper green. Enter in 3 peppers instead of the 5 that you have. Scan the fuji or granny smith apples as a gala apple. Maybe I still do it on occasion for the thrill.

Tall Midget enters Roma tomatoes when they’re heirloom

They suck if you have a full cart or booze. Targets system seems super sensitive and I double scan things quite a bit. I think they suck.

You really think they are making money off produce?

I was being a bit facetious about the no one wants to work thing, but that is also a small factor.

In the medical industry, a lot of hospitals are transitioning towards more automated testing, and one of the factors is that there are fewer candidates that want lab tech jobs. The good thing about it is that keeps me near unemployment-proof as the industry also needs people that fix that stuff.

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Not a mult.

How much do you think a checker is making?

MANY companies are listing jobs that they never intend to hire for. They do it for the morale of the few employees left at a store, giving them a false hope that help is coming when it isn't. Then they blame young people for not wanting to work in order to deflect the blame falling on them for not hiring.

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* ding ding *

It's also a way to justify hiring non-Americans.

Nonetheless, so many young people do not seem to want to work. Of course, that may have always been the case.

I manage young workers in the summer, so I am seeing the driven ones.

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Have you ever eaten at Ms. Worcester?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Walmart is shutting down self checkout lanes in some areas due to rampant theft.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I have Walmart plus because Walmart shoppers make me nervous.

I believe in due time, Walmarts will close their doors and deliver/ship everything. Essentially becoming a blue Amazon.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I wonder if they'll have their own delivery vans

Right now, they have some service they hire freelancers. Some dude in his personal car shows up, no indication it's Walmart at all. Back in the day this would have been considered a security risk but these days nobody fucking cares about anything.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.