Most businesses that rily on unskilled labor are tripling down on automation / systems engineering.
The common explanation is cost savings, but I've observed another major driver : quality of service.
Our current unemployment rate is virtually the lowest in 20yrs and it's hard to hire ANYBODY as a result. (1)
And the low unemployment rate has had the interesting effect of upwards mobility for the traditional unskilled clerk / laborer / driver / server / etc.
As a result the labor pool that is showing up is less professional / educated than they have been in the past which is creating major quality of service issues, training issues, etc.
Automation in some of these jobs is a necessity, as the automation tech is a closer reality than availability of "professionalized" unskilled labor.
> Our current unemployment rate is virtually the lowest in 20yrs and it's hard to hire ANYBODY as a result. (1)
This observation is so weird in the context of flat wages and the proliferation of sub-minimum-wage "gig economy" jobs. If labor was really scarce, shouldn't that put upward pressure on wages? Perhaps what automation is doing is giving employers a way out of competing for labor. The long range consequences seem pretty obvious: massive, rising inequality.
There's a second option I just recently understood in the "high employment == high wages" equation - employers can just wait longer for hires at the wages they're offering. And, based on the way employers keep the jobs posted for months or years, it seems to be working for them.
I guess in a way it's just another signal that the jobs being filled aren't that critical.
I've always found it strange that the most 'critical' job positions are among the lowest paid / furthest down the totem pole.
I work for a medium-sized established tech company. We've been running without a CTO and Director of HR for > 6 months. Everything has run smoothly. We've even had open positions for mid-tier management that have gone unfilled for long enough that they were deemed 'unnecessary' and the req was closed.
However, we had two of our operations people (one step above entry level) leave, and our regional office almost tanked completely.
No, it is literally operations people who are around to prevent that from happening. (facetious:) C-levels are around to look pretty and offer pleasant platitudes during board meetings.
The other challenging issue is that what training people need changes over time, and I think it's hard for people to pick up on that versus thinking they just hired poorly.
For example, younger workers now may have never answered a shared phone line outside of a work setting, so they may need phone training previous generations would have gotten at home.
That's because wages aren't flat. All of the studies which claim wages are flat make one or more methodological errors. The errors primarily being 1) using different price deflators when calculating price inflation vs wage inflation and 2) not including the value of benefits in their calculation of wages. Studies which avoid those methodological errors have shown that wages have kept pace with inflation.
I think there's some confusion here because often when talking about "flat" or "stagnant" wages people are referring to the idea that inflation outpaces wage increases (which is wrong, and the point I was addressing). But even taking into account how you're referring to "flat" wages, the logic is still wrong. If we take a worker today who earns the same wage, in inflation adjusted dollars, as a worker in, say, 1985, today's worker has a hugely increased standard of living, better healthcare, longer life expectancy, etc.
> If we take a worker today who earns the same wage, in inflation adjusted dollars, as a worker in, say, 1985, today's worker has a hugely increased standard of living, better healthcare, longer life expectancy, etc.
Is this actually true? In the US, healthcare costs in particular have outpaced inflation meaning that a worker earning the same in inflation-adjusted dollars is getting worse care. This is backed up by the fact that life expectancy has started to decline[1].
Finally, saying that "you're better off than 1985" does not address the fact that the economy has not just kept pace with inflation. That growth is going somewhere and it's not into the wages of the middle class. Inequality is not just bad for the people at the bottom. It has a tendency to destabilize politics as people realize that the game is rigged and swing towards the political extremes.
It's pretty amazing how the narrative around labor has generate an expectation from employers that employees should get their skills from anywhere but them.
Skilled employees come from being trained and taught. They don't fall from the sky.
I don’t find it amazing, but it’s an issue I try to help solve where I have control. The trouble with an offer that includes training is that it is effectively a provisional offer. Candidates do not like that unless they think they’re getting training valuable enough. Meanwhile, employers don’t want it to be too valuable or else they’re just training people to work somewhere else. So, the offer needs to come with an expectation of 2+ (depending on industry) years of employment on both sides without actually being contractual (again, industry dependent) because of employment laws and because training costs can’t be clawed back as they’re just payroll going to an unskilled worker.
Navigating this, in my experience, takes a lot of emotional intelligence on our part and I don’t know how I’d scale that in a bureaucratic organization.
They don't have to train people to work somewhere else. It's perfectly legal to offer training to someone with a claw back on training costs if they leave before x years. The issue is that this creates a contract and every employer in the US currently wants to have at will employment at all costs.
I have had managers complain about turnover and offered to sign a contract with them if we could agree on set goals that would translate to a set raise if reached each year. They don't even entertain the thought.
Companies and managers want to just mine society for skilled labor but put zero investment into creating it. They can lie in the bed they made at this point. Most employees would prefer known stability. We didn't all start job hopping because the idea of working at one place for 40 years and retiring comfortablly became unpalatable to the population at large. We started getting treated as disposable and now employers are treated as disposable right back
Yes, I don’t think either party wants to be locked into a contract. Your personal example is interesting, though. I’d like to think we would entertain a contract if presented the idea, but that would require negotiation, as I mentioned, and I don’t see how training contracts with financial consequences to the candidate could scale effectively in a bureaucratic org —- but again, it’s a puzzle I keep trying to solve.
I respect but don’t generally share your dimmer view of the labor market, but I do agree that some companies have made it difficult for other companies to present themselves as stable places worth investing time into. I also think some employees have made it difficult for other employees. I try to improve the situations I can control.
Your point about the trust between employers and employees being poisoned by bad actors has been true everywhere I've worked. I've seen both management micromanaging employees out of fear because they had one employee burn them with poor performance. I've also seen employers try to tell their employees that there was nothing to worry about and no one was going to get laid off despite the rumors, _and_ mean it, but employees started jumping ship because that's exactly what a company that's about to lay off everyone says
> It's perfectly legal to offer training to someone with a claw back on training costs if they leave before x years. The issue is that this creates a contract and every employer in the US currently wants to have at will employment at all costs.
There is an obvious failure mode here (well, a related pair of them) -- I don't want to sign a clawback contract, get fired just before x years, and have to disgorge the training costs. This is a live issue with option vesting and it's only not a live issue with training costs because that sort of employment contract is rare.
On the other hand, once we've signed a multi-year contract making it difficult for you to fire me, I may not be inclined to work all that hard.
All 100% true points. That's still the buyers problem if they are going after a scarce resource, in this case labor. In every other market you get a better rate for a stable, repeatable transaction vs being able to buy as needed.
Employers are going to have to raise their rates a lot if they expect to have people maintain skills that are relevant to the employer while not offering stable employment.
> once we've signed a multi-year contract making it difficult for you to fire me, I may not be inclined to work all that hard
Right... Training, once paid for, is a "sunk cost." The decision to fire or retain an employee can't really be based on recovering costs associated with hiring the employee.
If the employees are only working just hard enough to not get fired, there are other problems with the company. Firings are all stick. There should also be some carrot.
The the easy way is to say that If you leave of your own will, then your get credited 1/24th of the training costs for every month you work there. (similar to cell phone payment plans in the US.)
If consumers don't show a willingness to pay for skilled employees, then it isn't an asset. In low margin, low skill businesses such as retail for everyday items, there simply isn't much value to be provided other than stocking shelves, keeping the place clean, keeping an eye out for theft, occasionally telling people where things are, and scanning items at check out.
I stay at Hilton hotels and they frequently have digital keys that use phone to open the hotel door. I don't even interact with any staff, just use the app and I'm out and in at my own leisure. Some businesses are just skirting the line between do we invest in employees or automate things, and of course automating things is the preferred option.
consumers don't always have the ability or the option to discriminate based on employee pay. And the lower you are the less you can discriminate which creates a vicious cycle because you are almost certainly in the same boat as the employees at $low_wage_employer.
People might not have been aware that by choosing to shop at Walmart and Home Depot, they would help create this cycle, but we're firmly in it and there's no way out. Anyone that tries to train and reward employees more than necessary is not going to survive as a busines, especially in retail.
Retail and other business that deal with the public also have the problem that people are a pain in the ass from the whole "customer is always right" attitude. No one with options is going to choose to work in retail, so they will always be scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of employee talent.
Difficult. Probably not impossible (they are already employing the sliver of people willing to accept the hours and pay and not immediately able to obtain a better job).
Not bad points, but I won't believe youre first statement (Re: "tripling down" on automation) without a citation.
The heart of what's going on (good or bad; I tend to think it's bad for society in general) does not lie on the surface, instead it's rooted on the flawed notion that profits to appease shareholders should be maximised and indeed prioritized over corporate goals that benefit society in general.
Increased automation and productivity are a good thing. They have the potential for increased standards of living for all. Unfortunately, the profits from increased productivity are not being redistributed/recycled into higher wages and a more educated workforce, they are instead being hoarded at the top by shareholders accumulating wealth.
That's certainly the prerogative of shareholders, but it's a foolish shortsighted bet. This faulty thinking is depleting a large consumer base because an increasing number of people have less to spend on taxes, and also products/services that these same companies sell. So, they're basically stealing from the future to eat heartily now. The future of our children, as a result will have a less educated and poorer populous, resulting in more crime, litter/pollution, and likely even a social atmosphere ripe for violent revolution thanks to the increasingly segregated wealth gap. It is what it is, and you can bet your sweet bippy that I'm not selling the stock I've accumulated for the good of the masses in the long term. However, I don't think it needs to end poorly.
If you want to dig into this deeper, I highly recommend "WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us," by Tim O'Reilly.(1)
It explains the philosophical shift that needs to occur to repair our societal trajectory, not just for the sake of the 99%, but also the 1% (and even the 0.01% where the worlds wealth reserve is truly accumulating).
There are still lots of folks who are chronically unemployed[1], whose skills have atrophied. It's nothing new, U-6 has gone up and down over the years, but we really have not put a good dent in it.
Many people forget about them altogether. They are not all un-retrainable.
I think the problem when you are on the lower end of the market, it doesn't make much financial sense to train you. Nobody is going to invest in these people. The only entity that can save them is the government (ie: social help).
Self-checkout. I got to the store, get my groceries, and see long lines of people standing waiting to checkout. There is only one clerk checking people out; everyone else has to go wait in the self-checkout line. We all stand and wait. One person has a problem finding a code for veggies. Another can't get their card to work. Another is wondering why their is a price discrepancy. And so on; each with a problem that could easily be solved by a clerk in no time at all, but now they have to stare at the machine, wait for the machine to tell them there is a problem try to figure it out themselves, they go to the clerk at the computer screen who can now come and take a look. That clerk, by the way, does not particularly enjoy dealing with customers and it shows, because they are all coming to her with stupid questions. Clerks in general now don't like interacting with customers because they see customers are looking at them as a kind-of self-checkout+.
When I get to the self-checkout, finally, I feel ten people waiting behind me. I can't make a mistake! I have to hurry! I scan items quickly, I see them rolling down to the end of the conveyor belt, piling up. No mistakes! Then I have to run down and pack all of my groceries before the next person begins, but it's too late, they are sending down their peanut butter, milk, etc.
That is not my experience with self-checkout. I guess I'm lucky. I love self-checkout because I can get through so fast. Yes, I run into problems sometimes, but the attendant is usually right on top of it.
After I leave the store, I realize another piece of my humanity is chipped off. The cold mechanical sheen and faceless voice of the machine does nothing to warm my heart like a "how's your day?" from smiling lips of warm flesh.
Food is now just another objective to tap onto the clipboard. A long passionless journey from farm to mouth, untouched by human hands. Tasteless mass production.
1. I go to a store where workers are paid bare minimum, they give me odd looks and make me feel as if I stole their bread or smth.
2. I go to premium stores, where I pay more but they treat me better.
So, I go to premium stores even though I am aware I am losing more money, because in Maslow hierarchy of needs - I am at the top where I want to be treated better not save more money.
Cost of negative interaction is much much greater for me.
I randomly have flashbacks of negative experiences but I forget all positive or neutral experiences.
Based on Exchange theory of Price, #2 price is justified.
Now, if you remove the workers in option #2, the interaction goes from negative to neutral and I'll prefer #1.
Oddly, I've found somewhat the opposite - I usually shop at a grocery store in a lower income area, not because it was cheaper but because it was more convenient. That store closed recently and I've started going to a grocery store in a more affluent area. I've had no difference in how I've been treated by employees at the store (I always try to be polite to them, it costs me nothing to say please and thank you) But the people in the more affluent store? I DREAD going to the store because of them. My other half is a bit of a punk, she has bright blue hair, multiple piercings, and visible tattoos. We constantly get glares at, have had multiple "can I speak to your manager" types make disparaging comments at us, and constantly have problems with people just being, for want of a better term, colossal pricks. One even going so far as to hit my partner with their cart and call her a "fucking bitch" to her face... If they treat us like this I feel bad for the employees of the store.
Multiple times we've debated going out of our way to go to a store where we don't have to deal with these type of people. Not to save money, just so we can be treated with some modicum of respect by other shoppers. I've never liked grocery shopping but the people in more affluent areas just make the entire experience something I dread.
The other day I dropped in on a local scuba store that I've patronised as a customer and/or instructor for nearly 30 years. They've changed hands recently, and had a few new folk behind the counter. I waited for over 5 minutes, unacknowledged, literally 3 feet away, while two of these bozos had a private conversation. Then, when they eventually dragged themselves out of their customer service torpor - it got worse! And not for the first time. So I walked out, and finally decided to never go there again - and to start bagging them (instead of recommending them) whenever I could.
Scuba stores have traditionally survived on markups from equipment sales. Everything else is a loss leader. But now, people can get a wider range, of better equipment, delivered faster, at half the price - via the internet! Yet STILL, bozos like those guys can not be bothered to service someone who's made the effort to walk in the door!
It makes me wonder how many small businesses go under because of good ol' garden variety hopeless customer service, rather than anything else.
Costco is a great exception to this rule. Its not a 'premium' store, but they pay their employees so well, that they have the 'cream of the crop' employees, and it really does make a difference. In our area, we have a grocery chain (WinCo) that is similar (discount prices, large warehouse feel). They pay very well, profit sharing, etc, and have some of the most helpful, knowledgeable, and fastest employees.
That takes me back to when I worked for Home Depot during the summers. So much "correct" terminology that it was easier for everyone just to ignore it. Unfortunately for the spokeswoman I don't think she'll get a pass like everyone else
The best is when they have a large portion of the store dedicated to selling things that cannot be bought without an employee helping. At a walmart I worked at when I was younger there were two aisles of paint to be used in mixing but we never had anyone on the floor capable of running the machine since the store opened until I left two years later. There was also the electronics section which had everything under lock and key and had an employee with the key available maybe a third of the time.
I also saw the deli open frequently with no one manning it. It wasn't closed, just had no one to run the machines
When the Fry's Electronics in Indiana opened years ago, they staffed one person per aisle, and even put a polaroid picture of them on the end of the aisle (in case you couldn't pick out the person in a white shirt and black pants). I don't think that staffing model lasted a year for them here, and having never been to a West Coast Fry's, I don't know if it was something they attempted here or the norm. But, in the case of other retailers (one of whom I work for), it is definitely not the norm in the US market, and is usually more like one or two per department, not aisle.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's this was a hugely successful model, its the period during which Fry's had its greatest expansion. On any given day of the week you could see a line of 30+ people waiting for a spot at one of 15+ registers.
More recently many Fry's seem to have become ghost towns - even the banks of registers seemed to have thinned out, likely due to an expectation of never seeing that volume of customers again. The most probable explanation? Amazon. It's all the same cheap electronics.
My Fry's opened in the empty shell of a former Incredible Universe, and had 60 register bank on opening day (as Incredible Universe did). Even in the heyday, I don't remember all of the registers open, and also have seen them since thin down from 60 to maybe 30, and even then there are only 5 or 6 open at a time, even on the weekend. I agree Amazon is killing Fry's, and every time I go and try to support something non-Amazon, I'm filled with regret at the state of the store, and usually just place an Amazon order while frustratedly walking out empty handed.
Not at all. There might be 3 people on the floor, in a huge Super Target which is between 135k and 175k square feet. That is between 12 500 and 16 000 square meters.
I'm not opposed to interacting with robots but I hate how these are all pushed out the door WAY before they are even at parity with a human. Self-checkout, robot delivery in hospitals, Alexa, etc. are absolute garbage
Most of the fruit and vegetables I get at the store these days have tiny barcodes on them that make the self-checkout easy. And the occasional need for intervention from the one staff person handling 4-6 self checkouts is almost always far less than the time I would have spent waiting in line for someone who's still paying for groceries with a personal check in 2018. I almost always prefer a self-checkout.
Depends how much I'm buying. If it will fit in one or two bags, self checkout is often faster. If I'm buying a cart load, the speed of the experienced cashier and separate person bagging in parallel is almost always faster.
That's true; for big shopping trips self-checkout is non-ideal. It helps that the cashiers don't have to wait for the items to be weighed in the bagging area. I think a CV implementation will eventually replace the weighing setup and speed things up since RFID tags for individual items never caught on due to cost.
This is also one of the reasons I prefer Kroger whenever I go shopping. Most Krogers in my area don't have conveyor belts, and instead the cashier personally takes all the items from the cart directly to the scanner. At Tom Thumb, Albertsons, and Walmart, there's a conveyor belt and I'm expected to unload my whole cart onto the belt before the cashier touches anything.
> there's a conveyor belt and I'm expected to unload my whole cart onto the belt before the cashier touches anything
I don't understand why this is a negative? I guess I usually optimize my shopping trips for getting out the door faster. Different people enjoy different things I guess.
Shopping for me involves so much loading and unloading that I'm happy to cut out one of the steps.
First, as you're shopping, you load everything into the cart. Then, you get to the cash register, and at most supermarkets you have to take everything out of the cart so the cashier can scan it (if you're at a Kroger, you can skip this step). After the cashier is done, you may or may not have to put the bags back in the cart yourself depending on whether or not there's a dedicated bagger. Then, you take your cart to the car and you load up the car. Now, the next step will probably be different if you own your own car; I don't, so I either go to the supermarket with someone I know or take Lyft. In either case, I take everything out of the trunk and put them in front of my front door. After everything's done and the driver has driven away, I unlock and open the door and take all the bags into my house. Then I sort through my bags and begin putting all the individual groceries wherever they're supposed to go.
It's exhausting. If I can cut out even one of those steps, I'm happy. At Kroger, I'll just wheel my cart over to the cashier's station, swipe my Kroger Plus card, stick my credit card in the chip reader, and play with my phone until the machine starts beeping at me to take the card out.
Sounds like a case of different strokes for different folks. I live within walking distance of my store, so I take more frequent trips with fewer groceries. I rarely buy more than can fit in a hand-basket.
Also, I grew up with the expectation of emptying your cart onto a conveyor belt, so it's probably socially programmed into me that it's expected.
Unnecessary movements. If you put rollers in the cart itself, docking the cart at the POST and spinning a torque rod with a tri-lobed docking coupler--like on those old Capsela toys--could move everything on the cart within reach of the cashier.
Ideally, the only movements the customer would make would be to place items into their cart, and move their entire order, already packaged for transport, into their vehicle at once. Unloading from the vehicle and moving to a pantry or refrigerated storage should also be easy and free of unnecessary movements.
My solution would be to make the carts a platform of elevated rollers, carrying several reusable bins, owned by the customer, and manufactured to an open standard. While shopping, the rollers are locked, and the bins are secured in place. The customer can choose to organize foods in bins according to their individual needs. Put all the dairy in one bin, and meats in another. Put canned and boxed goods in one, refrigerated and frozen into another (insulated, perhaps).
At the checkout, the platform docks. The cashier scans from the nearest bin into a sorting area, and a second employee, the customer, or the cashier can re-pack the bin in a sensible way, rather than according to the disorganized arrangement determined by the layout of aisles in the store. The packed-for-transport bin moves onto a second docked platform. The docking station spins its torque rod to move all the rollers, and the remaining bins move closer to the cashier. Process repeats until all bins are scanned and packed.
Customer pays, and rolls cart to their vehicle. They put the lids back on the bins (which are now stackable closed containers) and stow them. The roller platforms stay in the parking lot. When the next customer arrives, they load one up with empty, lidless bins, and enter the store, ready to shop. New bins sold inside the store, likely at a wafer-thin markup.
At home, the customer might have their own handtruck to move bins from vehicle to food storage. Maybe their pantry has roller shelves, and a special drill bit so a handheld drill can spin them. Or maybe they just have regular shelves, and stick PTFE pads onto the bottoms of their bins for easy sliding. Perhaps they unload the bins and stack the empties for the next shopping trip. Maybe they can plug some hoses from a cooling unit into an insulated bin to turn it into a miniature refrigerator. As long as the bin conforms to the external dimensions and weight standards, it can have any number of additional features included. Pelican, Coleman, Igloo, Yeti, Rubbermaid, etc. could compete on those special features, or on materials.
Wait...you have someplace that actually uses the conveyor belt? Pet peeve of mine is that most cashiers just turn it off even when there is a gap between them and the goods. (Poor design of many stop mechanisms exists, but doesn't excuse this case)
This is an aside, but I've never understood why people paying by check can't prefill everything but the dollar amount during the checkout process. It seems like people paying by check don't even take out their checkbooks and hunt for a pen until the total comes up.
Most stores I've been to in the past 10-15 years you can print out a scannable label/barcode for the produce right in the produce section. I didn't know this was uncommon.
The one in my local grocery store is the best because its main screen is big buttons of the most common produce plus a "lookup" option. 90%+ of the time I only have to put my produce on the scale and hit one giant button.
Yes this is how they do it in France. It's self-service but monitored by an employee... learned the hard way the first time I showed up to the register and they gave me stinkeye because I didn't measure/label my produce.
Have yet to see that in the US... instead we have shrinkwrapped everything (and barcoded stickers)
> What is the issue with self-checkout, I found it is actually faster.
Unexplained item in bagging area.
I have had so many issues with the self-checkout's sensor not working properly. If it's not telling me there's something in the bagging area that's not supposed to be there, it's telling me that it can't detect the item I just put in the bag. It's especially common if the item is lightweight. Usually the sensor fails to pick up the item I just put in the bag and won't let me scan anything else unless I either do or press "I don't want to bag this item". And then I scan the next item and then it finally picks it up and whines about an unexplained item in the bagging area.
Whenever I use the self-checkout, I usually end up having to call over the attendant multiple times to deal with these problems. And the attendant is busy with half a dozen other people, so the self-checkout ends up being slower than the regular one.
Regardless of the multiple technical issues, there is also the base presumption that every customer is trying to cheat the store on every transaction. So every item you scan has to be placed on the giant scale that is the bagging area, and remain there until your entire order is processed.
So the usage pattern goes: scan, bag, scan, bag, scan, stop and wait for employee, scan, bag, enter code, weigh, bag, scan, stop and wait for employee, scan, bag, process payment, move all bags, leave. You can't scan the bread and eggs and the watermelon and leave the fragile crushable items on the belt until the heavy items are already in the bag. Everything must be moved immediately to the bagging area, human! So if you don't plan your scanning, you end up moving some things twice. Weight discrepancy noted. Return items to the bagging area and wait for the store employee to verify that you aren't cheating!
For the regular checkouts, the usage pattern is often customer moves entire order to first conveyor belt, employee 1 scans all items and passes them onto the second conveyor belt. At this point, there may be an employee 2 that bags the scanned items and places the bags back into the empty cart as employee 1 processes payment, then both bag until the order is processed. That works fine. Not great, but it works well enough.
At some stores, the bagger employee has been deprecated. The cashier bags items into a bag carousel. At some stores, the conveyors are not used. Cashier scans items directly from the cart. The most efficient stores, such as Aldi (Aldi Sud, in US), scan directly from one cart into another, and don't even bother with bags. The customer can keep Tyvek bags in their vehicle, and bag directly from the cart to their trunk, if they even care about bags at all. (Maybe they keep specialized containers for specific sizes of cans, instead?)
Self-checkout doesn't work like that. It's almost designed to be annoying and frustrating. It could be so much better if they only designed the experience from the ground up instead of trying to make a drop-in replacement for the employee checkout lanes, which were designed for different criteria decades ago.
Self checkouts aren't automation, it's just making the customer do something (worse) that the store employees used to take care of. Otherwise gas stations have been automated for decades.
I thought this when I first started my gender transition and I was buying women's clothing while still presenting as male (in suburban Texas at that). I insisted on using the self-checkout for a while before I eventually realized two things:
1) At the self-checkout, I'm constantly calling over the attendant anyway because the machines are shit.
2) The cashiers don't give a fuck. It's a repetitive mind-numbing job and the customers all blend together into one long miasma of scanning.
Also, hilarious story: one of the first times I bought stuff, I had filled my cart with a bunch of stuff and then went to pay and found out the self-checkout was down, so I had to go to a cashier. As the cashier started scanning, I felt really embarrassed so I just blurted out "I lost a bet". That was probably the stupidest thing I could've done because now I called attention to it when it would've just blended into the miasma of scanning if I didn't. Hell, even if the cashier did notice what she was scanning before, they could've just thought I was buying stuff for my girlfriend or something, but I scuttled any chance of that happening...
Does that ever happen or is it just a fear of being judged for your purchases?
Cashiers scan hundreds of items during their shift. They are not looking at the product like you do when you select it from the shelves amongst a number of alternatives; they are merely glancing at it to get the barcode oriented towards their scanner. Your curiosity tends to take a back seat with repetitive work like that (you would be mentally exhausted in an hour if you did actually 'look' at everything).
Some cashiers are busybodies that make comments on your purchases. The majority don't but it can be very upsetting if you do experience it. I had one question me on what I was going to do with pizza dough, which was... weird to say the least, I'd assume that someone would be making pizza with pizza dough. I've had cashiers ask me if food I was buying was good or make comments on new products they havne't seen yet.
When I was a cashier I certainly looked at the products I was scanning beyond orienting to the barcode so I don't really know where you're getting that from. It wasn't "mentally exhausting" or anything either, that's a little weird to say. In fact, cashier are required to actually 'look' at the product in some amount of detail because some items need to be bagged a certain way and they need to check ID on some products, like alcohol.
I've had grocery store cashiers comment on my purchases, usually asking if a new product is any good. Possibly related to the fact that I'm a regular customer with a pretty regular shopping list; their attention might be focused by disrupted expectations rather than any effort to recognize each product.
Unrelated to product selection, I also had one cashier somehow steer the standard small-talk exchange into saying that I need to accept Jesus. That just shows that some cashiers have no idea what is or isn't appropriate to say to a customer.
Barcodes were introduced to automate the process of having to insert he price manually in the register, payment by cards to eliminate the necessity of having to handle chash and change.
The self-checkout in itself might not be considered as automation, but it leverages on innovations that made the contribute of the cashier really minimal.
That said, as a customer, self-checkouts are a worse experience than having a cashier doing it (faster and more efficiently).
The common explanation is cost savings, but I've observed another major driver : quality of service.
Our current unemployment rate is virtually the lowest in 20yrs and it's hard to hire ANYBODY as a result. (1)
And the low unemployment rate has had the interesting effect of upwards mobility for the traditional unskilled clerk / laborer / driver / server / etc.
As a result the labor pool that is showing up is less professional / educated than they have been in the past which is creating major quality of service issues, training issues, etc.
Automation in some of these jobs is a necessity, as the automation tech is a closer reality than availability of "professionalized" unskilled labor.
(1) https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...