yeah I know you did not ask!
There is a big push in many stores to decrease the number of checkers and force the clients into self-service checkout. I have not problem with technology having spent the majority of my adult life programming computers. What I do have a problem with is the decrease in service level at many stores, especially Wal-Mart which has always had bad service. I also believe that the Waltons do not need any more money, and decreasing employees is a way to increase their profits. My other issue is the elimination of jobs for Homo sapiens.
One of the earliest Kurt Vonnegut novels is Player Piano. The Wikipedia synopsis sums up the book like this:
“Player Piano is the first novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, published in 1952. It depicts a dystopia of automation, describing the negative impact it can have on quality of life. The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers.”
I more and more wonder what will happen to our society when we automate so many jobs. Humans need structure and purpose. And while a checkers job is not the pinnacle of human fulfillment it is a reasonable job. I clerked at a liquor store while in college. It was work, even if if low paid. Philosophers have long dreamed of societies freed from drudgery. And certainly many jobs are better done by machines, and some work unwanted by most folks. But I am not seeing society and folks replacing work with some metaphysical wet dream of utopian enlightenment. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places.
Towards that end I just about refuse to use the self-service checkouts. I tell my wife it is a religious preference. Different Wal-Marts seem to have different policies about the number of checkers. The one closest to the house is fervently trying to push everyone through the self-service. There are generally just 1 or 2 human checkers at the times I normally go. These checkers are generally old, slow, and not efficient. In my cynicism I see this as a machiavellian move by management to increase my dissatisfaction with the human check out process to push me to the automated stations.
There is another Wal-Mart just a little further from the house that tends to have more human checkers. I try to make it a point to go to this one.
When it gets to the point that I cannot find a human checkout station, or they are so incredible slow that my limited patience runs out, I will stop going to Wal-Mart. I am nearly there now.