Technology

I hear you, but scanning in store means I save a lot of time. Queues at UK supermarkets are really long. It also allows me to keep an eye on how much I'm spending and spot it when discounts are correctly registered. Unlike what you're describing about how self scans are received there, they have been accepted a long time ago here.

One more - what about produce? Most produce I encounter does not have any way to scan it and I'm not going to sit there and look up a bunch of stuff. Good checkers know the produce codes by heart and makes that process so much more efficient.

I wonder if anyone has become injured during self checkout and attempted a workers compensation claim

If lower operating costs doesn’t lead to lower costs to the consumer, it’s not the fault of the self checkouts. Then it’s a lack of competition which would keep margins low. It’s your government at fault for not regulating the market properly.

In my neck of the woods grocery stores all operate with razor thin margins. So I’m fairly sure they’d cut prices if self checkout allows them to. There’s so many people chosing grocery stores primarily based on price.

Why would I care about doing the cashiers work? We don’t have baggers where I live. The work is essentially the same as bagging. In many cases I explicitly want to use self check out because it’s more convenient and saves me time. If I need three items I can scan them and put them in my bag and be out of the store before I’d get half way through the checkout line.

As for theft, in principle I see the problem. In practice I’ve never heard of anyone being charged for it around here.

If we can operate shops with less labor I think that’s just good. We should instead focus on creating other more meaningful jobs. Again, a government issue IMO. We need more teachers and nurses but we don’t pay them well enough.

reduction in labour requirements is good, scanning errors should have updated legislation so that the company is responsible for reasonable mistakes, capitalism incentivizes improvements in efficiency and rewards it with increased profits.