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GenXCub t1_j6ow1wm wrote

The job was removed before you used it. The company took away the job. The question is what happened to that worker.

I work at a gas utility. When gas meters became wireless, we no longer needed the fleet of meter readers we had. Nor the auto department to keep that many trucks maintained. My company, seeing that coming, made it known to the meter readers so they could be placed in other jobs within the company. It that doesn’t cover everyone. They may not want to do customer service, for example.

At the self checkout, how many people are replaced? 10? (Across all shifts) do they have an opportunity to be the ones who maintain the self checkout? Some stay in the area to help people using them. It is going to depend on the store.

I remember seeing a tweet from a Texas politician talking about McDonalds becoming fully automated and saying “this is what happens with a $15 minimum wage”

Except they never raised their minimum wage. The change happened anyway. The point I’m making is that the car took away the jobs of horse ranchers, farriers, etc. it was a societal change. That could also apply to your question.

Trader Joe’s (owned by Aldi these days) doesn’t use self checkout. If you move all your shopping there, even if won’t change the rest of the industry, it may make you feel better about your shopping.

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Little_Noodles t1_j6oxw3i wrote

It’s also worth noting that in many stores, the self checkouts aren’t actually replacing more lane space than the checkers on hand used to occupy.

In my grocery store, they removed 2 checkout lines to put in two rows of self checkout, each with 6 stations, each row headed by an employee.

I get in and out if there faster, especially with small orders, since there’s less of a bottleneck at the registers. But it’s the same number of people per lane as it was before

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GenXCub t1_j6p6ufp wrote

And on the other side of that, how many grocery stores have offered free pickup since the pandemic. That's how I do all of my shopping now. So there is a person who is putting stuff in a box for me that wouldn't have been doing that before.

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