this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Wouldn't self checkout be the opposite? If companies had to pay a living wage, they'd be even more eager to replace the humans with machines
yeah I'm saying paying more would exacerbate that.
Also tbh, when you account for the extra theft those machines allow, they're not much cheaper than minimum wage workers, otherwise there would def be a lot more of them, including outside of big stores.
How do self-checkout machines allow for extra theft? Sounds more like a problem of cheaping out on employees to watch the check-out area if you ask me. You can hire one employee to watch over multiple self-checkouts the entire time, and end up paying less, many stores do that and it works.
I'm in a relatively rural area and pretty much every general store here has a lot of self-checkouts, and they're usually busier than the human checkouts (because it's way faster and more convenient).
Even without having people at self-checkouts, and assuming that allows people to steal more, theft is pretty much negligible compared to profits from additionally having the self-checkouts in the first place. Many people find it less of a hassle to go grocery shopping if it means they don't have to have a cashier check them out, and the throughput is higher.
A lot of times big box stores close down and blame it on theft, but in reality it's never theft, usually it's because the workers were about to unionize, or because upper management needed a scapegoat for below expected profits from the store.
If you don't pay the people watching over the self checkouts a living wage, then why would they care to stop theives? I sure wouldn't protect the corporation who is exploiting me
you can say the same about stealing in general. what's stopping them from just rolling out of the store with everything in their cart? or hiding stuff in their clothes?
The self-checkout should make life better because less workers are needed to perform the same work. However under capitalism everyone needs a job to survive. Additionally, the theft issue wouldn't be an issue if people were able to just grab what they need and leave the store, no paying a corporation before you go. But a non-capitalist society feels like a pipe dream.