I'm at CVS yesterday waiting, for the only open register, in a long line densely populated by unblinking imbeciles and people who appear to be dying.
It's taking forever.
"You can step over here," says the store employee whose job it is to usher people to the self-checkout kiosks.
As a curmudgeon, I don't like dealing with kiosks. I prefer to deal with humans working on getting their GEDs.
As an amateur linguist, I don't like language that cringes, and so it always grates on me to be told to "step" anywhere. I'd rather be told to get my ass over to the kiosks than to be told to "step over" to them.
And as a two-bit humanist activist, I don't like watching humans talk humans into replacing humans with machines.
She asked me once, and I said no, I'd stay in the line for the cashier (who was meanwhile arguing to the kiosk lady that a mutual girlfriend had been a "butthole" for kicking her boyfriend out the house when he hadn't so much as laid a hand on her).
Then on my way out she asked me why I'd stubbornly insisted on staying in line with the dunces. I said, "Because the kiosks put people out of work."
"I'm still here," she said with a smile.
"Not for long," I said, walking out the door. "Only until you talk everybody into using the kiosks."
It sounded harsh coming out of my mouth, even though I was smiling too.
But what the hell? It's hard to see it any other way. Back when we were unwittingly talked by the fast-food chains into becoming our own busboys, I think we trusted that every achievement in American efficiency would lend yet more opportunity. We assumed that grunt jobs eliminated from the growing economy would turn into more fulfilling jobs added later on.
I'm not sure we buy that today.
So why should we let these drug-store and grocery chains turn us into cashiers?
Next stop, the loading dock ….
This is one of the differences between us, David: you’re more of a curmudgeon than I am, but you also care more about people. I love the self-checkout kiosks. Why? Because the only grocery store in my neighbourhood that has them also has the most miserable cashiers. And they were miserable before the kiosks appeared – so miserable that I deliberately avoided going to that store because of it, even though it is the closest store to my house.
Then I discovered they had installed the kiosks and I started shopping there again. The cashiers are still miserable, including the one who has the herculean task of apparently just standing there waiting for someone to make a mistake with the kiosk so he/she can stomp over with a sigh, punch a few buttons to fix the problem, and then stomp away.
Now I’m the first to acknowledge that the store management would probably be much better off if they actually dealt with the employee engagement issues they clearly have. No doubt those are only inflamed by a new “they’re trying to replace us with machines” paranoia amongst the staff. But it’s hard for me to have much sympathy for those miserable cashiers.
As an added bonus, the kiosk also lets me avoid the two other categories of grocery store people who drive me nuts:
1) the ones who misunderstand/choose to ignore the 10-items-or-less rules of the express checkout.(And shouldn’t it be 10 items or fewer? That’s always bothered me.)
2) the little old dears who insist on counting out every last penny in their purse to get the exact change even though they apparently forgot how to count beyond 20 sometime back around 1986.
Sometimes the machines actually do make my life better. Not always, but sometimes.
Well, you make a good point, Rueben. At my grocery store, where I decided to make this doomed stand against retail automation, the cashiers are unfailingly polite. More than polite. The other day, one shocked me by picking up a lime I’d carelessly chosen, and showing me a brown spot.
“You’d better get another,” she said.
Jesse Owens never ran faster than I ran, in order not to slow that line down any faster than I had to.
I could go on about what we lose when we remove human beings from commercial interactions, but then I’d have to write a book, and you’d have to pay for it, and you wouldn’t pay for it because you would assume, correctly, that it would be boring.
I’ll close with this, from strictly a writer’s perspective:
No interaction with an employee yesterday, no blog post today.
Despite my love of the self-checkout in this one case, I will admit that I have a love/hate relationship with technology in general (especially social media). The love comes from the potential to allow us to focus on the better angels of human nature. The hate comes from the potential for it to do the exact oppposite. Regrettably we seem to favour the latter.
I’ve often maintained that the problem with humanity is all the people. But the truth is that the problem with humanity is that too many of us seem to forget what it is to be human, particularly in our relationships with one another and our communities. And i’ll include myself in that. After all, I’m the guy who just admitted his joy at having a machine that lets me avoid human contact. I’m increasingly a subscriber to the notion that technology is allowing us to have a much broader but much shallower human experience.
“…technology is allowing us to have a much broader but much shallower human experience.” Absolutely true, Rueben.
“… including the one who has the herculean task of apparently just standing there waiting for someone to make a mistake with the kiosk so he/she can stomp over with a sigh, punch a few buttons to fix the problem, and then stomp away.” Agreed. *In fact, I’m afraid of that woman.
Whenever I try to use one of those self checkout machines, a team of at least three people has to come over and help me.
So I think their jobs are safe.
Steve C.
Whenever I try to use one of those self checkout machines, a team of at least three people has to come over and help me.
So I think their jobs are safe.
Steve C.
Whenever I try to use one of those self checkout machines, a team of at least three people has to come over and help me.
So I think their jobs are safe.
Steve C.
Well, that’s the really subversive move.
To go into the store acting all drunk and stoned and drag the whole operation to a halt, trying to buy a pack of gum, and pushing buttons madly.
Every day.
“…technology is allowing us to have a much broader but much shallower human experience.”
Harumph. How insulting. Evidence? (I’d post evidence to the contrary, but I’ve become apathetic to such sweeping ignorance.)
There’s no need to be insulted, Tyler. I wasn’t saying that any of us who embrace technology are shallow as individuals. After all, that would mean I’m shallow and I like to think otherwise. Note I also said it has tremendous potential to make us better as a community – and there are lots of examples of that, some of which I’ve experience myself. I’m just not sure that potential is always being achieved.
But I also know this is a polarized subject of debate among people much smarter than me. And much smarter people than me have offered up evidence on both sides. My apologies for suggesting I might have a valid view on the subject despite my “sweeping ignorance” (an assessment based on ample evidence to be sure).