Will cashiers continue to exist? | Hacker News Reader

Will cashiers continue to exist?

andrewmcafee.org

18 pointsyummyfajitas39 comments

This is interesting because it is a great example of how technology is in the process of automating the world out of jobs. That is not a complaint mind you; it's simply an important indicator of the change taking place in the world at the moment. With every passing year, new, more advanced technologies become available and the ones from the year before get cheaper and with artificial intelligence and automation technology becoming more and more powerful and capable, I am 100% certain that most "dumb" jobs - the kind for which low wages are paid due to the lower skills required, are going to become obsolete and replaced by technology. This means we'll go through an ever-more-apparent period of politicians becrying the losses of jobs, the need to create new jobs and so forth and whatever they try, they will fail because jobs lost due to automation are going to dwarf those lost due to economic/recession-related reasons. Personally I think this will eventually bring about something of a new age where the masses (the 99%) end up forcing in a new paradigm surrounding how we live and work. I am not sure what that would look like, but it is certainly inevitable.

All automation is predicated on a machine being cheaper and more reliable than a human. As the cost of energy rises in coming decades, I'm expecting that we'll discover that some forms of automation only make sense in a world where conventional petroleum is dirt cheap.

Automatic checkout only takes electricity, so that'll probably be with us for quite a while. But manufacturing jobs will return to North America once it no longer makes sense to ship in consumer goods from east Asia. And I expect that as agriculture becomes more locally-oriented, there will be a lot of labour jobs associated with that—especially for tasks that might have been automated at the industrial scale, but are cheaper done by human hands at a farm 1/100th the size.

That's the wildcard though isn't it? Some, such as yourself, decry this form of futurism because it is predicated on the assumption that energy will become more expensive. I personally think it will become cheaper and personally am open to the possibility of breakthroughs making it negligibly cheap. See http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/, http://ecat.com. E-cat may or may not be real, but I do see interesting possibilities as a lot more time and research starts to be put into these sorts of technologies as conventional fuel becomes more expensive.

>But manufacturing jobs will return to North America once it no longer makes sense to ship in consumer goods from east Asia.

I think you'd be surprised how much shipping costs would have to rise for that to happen.

Counterpoint: Automated checkouts suck balls.

A significant portion of the time I attempt to use one of these, the machine gets stuck in some kind of nonsense about putting merchandise in the bagging area, or explicitly asks me to see a clerk or something for assistance, or otherwise basically does not work. I only use these now if there is a big line at the humans. I'm sure this all sounds like I'm just an incompetent checkout user. FWIW, I worked for a summer as an actual human cashier at a grocery store. I think I did a reasonably competent job at it.

They really need to get the near field communications stuff in there - eventually you should be able just push your basket, yourself and your wallet/phone through a scanner and everything gets tallied and charged.

I would like to see how this scanner tells the difference between a plum and a nectarine. Or stack of DVDs ranging from $9.99 to $19.99. This seems incredibly complicated with the existing "throw all of your groceries in the cart" process. I think that it would much easier (and cheaper all around) to design a warehouse where you give a computer your list and robot goes to the back and to fulfill your order.

The products would have tags like they do today but would be NFC tags unique to the product. Fill up your basket - push it through the designated scanner and you've got a list of the items in the basket.

That would not work very well with fresh vegetables and fruits: what people like varies a great deal, as does the quality on the shelf.

Case in point: my wife adores green bananas: can't abide them after they begin ripen. How do you tell a robot picker 'only pick the florescent green ones, please'?

I think the ideal is even simpler. You just go in, take what you want, and leave. The exit is the scanner.

That is only the case at short sighted stores that assume all customers are out to steal. The units themselves can be quite good - Wegmans has machines as quick as the ones I used to use when i worked as a cashier at a grocery store. As near as I can tell the main thing is the Wegmans self-checkouts don't weigh the items you put in the bags.

I see this all the time. People put their purses on the bagging area or lean against it or they'll remove stuff before they're done. Then when the machine tells them something is wrong, they freak out and think its broken, instead of moving their purse or hitting the "I don't want to bag this item" button.

Not saying this is your problem, but most people's problem is that they just don't pay any attention.

How does putting one's purse in the bagging area indicate a lack of attention? It's fully likely that I'm not using the machines correctly, but I didn't exactly go through a training course. I just use them as I'd expect them to work, because that's about all I have to go on.

At the stores I use, the bagging area has scales that total up your items to avoid people sneaking stuff out without paying for it. When my son would lean on that area it would prompt me to "remove item".

So putting your purse there indicates a lack of attention.

I wasn't there when they installed the scales. I didn't go through a training session where they explained the scales. If, for some reason, I could reasonably been expected to know about the scales, I might agree. But I do not. It's like saying you don't know how to speak fluent Italian because you don't pay attention. There was no expressed expectation that you were supposed to learn Italian.

I love using self checkout. I can almost always checkout faster than I would if I went to a lane with an actual cashier. Most of the time it's an older person that tries to make painfully awkward conversation with me instead of just scanning my shit.

This works decently well in a college town where most people are younger and educated. When I visit my parents and do self checkout it's maddening. Everyone is constantly setting things down in the bagging area or taking stuff off early. Or the worst thing happens and they try to pay with a check. Another problem is when a purchase requires cashier interaction, like buying alcohol. If lots of people are doing it at once (college town) it can really slow things down.

Eventually this will totally take over, but it will be awhile before everyone accepts it.

It also kind of stinks

Hmmm... A lot of time I have really appreciated the human contact with a cashier. Even now, despite being practically physically wired to computers at all time, I still avoid the self-checkout where possible. (It might help that the local supermarket is staffed by hot Polish girls)

Maybe especially because you spend time in front of computers? I do like to avoid computers in my off work time, so prefer human cashiers (as well as film cameras not digital etc).

Maybe indeed.

It's OK if you are buying a small number of items. For a cart full of items it's absolutely slower than a traditional checkout where you can be unloading the cart, the cashier scanning, and the bag boy putting items in bags all at the same time. With self-checkout you are doing all three in a serialized fashion and it's slower. Also if you are buying more than will fit on the bagging area you're stuck, because the machines complain if you remove anything before you've paid.

Also the cashiers are practiced at holding the item at the proper angle to the scanner so the reader picks up the bar code on the first scan. In the self-checkout area people are picking up items, looking for the code, scanning, scanning again. And produce that is priced by weight is another bottleneck. The experienced cashiers know all the produce codes by memory so they don't have to take time looking up the code for green leaf lettuce vs. romaine.

Self checkout has its place, but it's not ready to replace human cashiers at the supermarket yet.

As much as I wish we had nice fast automated checkout technology right now, having a shop like this would drive me mad.

These things have become infamous here in the UK for "Unexpected Item in Bagging Area" and similar.

What would be really nice is RFID or similar instant scanning of everything in your basket (a local library has this for piles of books), but that may be a way off yet.

It's just a case of technological progress. I find these things (I live in the UK too) work for me 98% of the time and when they don't, you only need one store assistant amongst 8-10 self-service checkouts in a busy supermarket to assist customers when these issues crop up. Ultimately the technology will get good enough to alleviate this for the most part as well.

You're right, and they are improving. I mainly hit issues in smaller stores (e.g tesco express) where the staff are more confused by the automated checkout than I am.

Not my experience (I shop in Sainsbury's mostly). I get the "unexpected item" problem almost every single time. Cashiers in my town are so used to it, they don't even look at the baskets anymore - I actually got confused and packed one item without scanning one day - approved with no questions asked (I scanned it later, got another weight error, approved again). Those are becoming as useful as SSL warnings or UAC - just click ok, because in 99% of cases, it's bogus. That's pretty much all they do - almost all the time they're near checkouts, they're busy accepting errors.

There are also products which do change weight. Electronic protection on clothes or wine bottles weight enough to confuse the scales sometimes. Condoms are packed in a plastic container which is taken off after purchase, but the weight is set for the condom pack only. I also get the error quite often because I'm thirsty/hungry and empty half of the bottle, or half a pack of brioches while shopping. (yes, that's my fault but I don't see any reasonable automated solution for it)

Then again, even with all those issues, I can still self checkout faster when doing small shopping alone (15+ items usually means some repacking so I think it's faster only when I'm there with my gf).

Maybe you need more practice ;)

Seriously though, every now and again I've noticed some supermarkets upgrading to newer machines and invariably the newer machines are much less prone to these sorts of issues. In one supermarket where I sometimes shop, I had experienced the difference before and after the upgrade and it was significant.

Ok, maybe that's the difference then. I don't think Bath's Sainsbury's got an upgrade of checkout machines since ~2005/6 (they look the same, there's just more of them now).

Counterpoint: Auto-cashiers have been in existence for a decade, and some chains have decided to replace at least some self-service stations with human clerks:

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/supermarket-self-checkouts-...

I would say cashiers will continue to exist for a long time but the number of cashier jobs will decrease dramatically especially as near field communication becomes cheaper and cheaper. The reason I say they will still exist in some form is that there are probably a small number of cashier scenarios that will be very difficult to automate in the near term.

I don't like to see anyone out of a job but I think eliminating these jobs may be a good thing for society in the long term. I'm not sure ultimately how satisfying repetitive, automate-able work actually is to anyone. I'd say the more we can push society into having to go into creative intellectual disciplines, the better off we'll be. I'm not arguing that that out of work cashier is going to start studying to be a scientist but maybe the next generation of would-be cashiers will realize they need to hit the books and become something that is more of a satisfying and engaging discipline.

There just aren't the 'creative intellectual' jobs, though. Universities can churn out scientists, journalists, artists, designers, programmers and so on. But if we're all creating, who is consuming?

We already have a surplus of people with creative industries degrees (especially media-related, TV, film and so on) who work in call centres, checkouts and other unrelated jobs because the demand isn't there for their skills. We don't need thousands of new radio producers every year, but we have them coming off the end of the university conveyor belt.

I don't know what the answer is, but I see a quite scary future if these jobs which have provided a low, but livable, income for millions are eliminated. We can't all be at the top of the tree.

Good points... I think its a social problem that we in the US have been failing at especially during the last few decades. Right now we have this dynamic in society where the all the spoils go to the 'winners' even though everyone is contributing in some form (usually by means of competition). This ends up encouraging somewhat of a macro-trend where everyone works very very hard to beat off others to get a piece of the pie but most inevitably end up failing to get wealthy and live 'luxuriously'. As a result of this feast or famine attitude, people end up getting over devoted to work and labor while ignoring many other very important aspects of life (in the sense of actually living)... culture, child-rearing, fun, relaxation, etc. (- note that these are the descriptors of 'luxury')

I think as a society we shouldn't be looking at automation as "Oh my god that machine is going to eat those people's jobs" - we should be looking at it as "Wow, we collectively don't have to do that crap anymore" Similarly to how somebody looks at a Roomba and says goodbye to pushing a vacuum around for an hour. But what fucks this all up - the distribution of money. Because the way distribution of money works in America, we look at it as those cashiers are now going to starve and die.

MBA thinking has morphed us into thinking life is about production and consumption (full stop). Its not (full stop). The majority of the population is relatively starved of the 'other things' in life and we should be reevaluating how automation can help us all focus on the things that make real life a better experience. Unfortunately were too busy all miserably hoarding money from each other like a bunch of dumb apes.

So back to your question about excess creative production - we shouldn't care about who consumes it in an idealistic scenario. If people genuinely enjoy the creative process, they should be doing it because they enjoy it and hopefully that can be more afforded by automation.

The flow of money is a very important point I think, and I think the global elite who are somewhat dependent on the existing world economic structure are going to ultimately see it forcibly evolved into something new over time. If nearly everything "dumb" can be automated in the future, there will simply not be the practical requirement for everyone to have a job and that leaves the existing structure as a relic of an obsolete past. Society will have to come up with new ways to think about the majority of its citizen's roles within itself.

>I would say cashiers will continue to exist for a long time but the number of cashier jobs will decrease dramatically especially as near field communication becomes cheaper and cheaper.

Yes, in the same way bank tellers still exist. I occasionally go into my local bank, which was built in the 1970s. There are ten or twelve teller windows, and at the busiest times the bank has three tellers working.

And then when there are no cashiers and customer service is at an time low someone will say hey let's put dedicated staff on the line! Customers will be happier and sales might go up!

Honestly we need to strike a balance.

I absolutely hate dealing with cashiers. I'll wait in a longer self checkout just to avoid them.

It seems like they always try to make small talk with me or they're just slow at their job. I just want to get in and out as fast as possible.

The point though is to look at why the customer service is needed in the first place. The ultimate user experience is one that never requires the user to seek any support or assistance of any kind. Having human-driven help is of course important while seeking that goal, but as we get closer to it, the need for humans becomes less and less.

The only place I've seen this is Fresh and Easy stores, other stores have automated check out but still have the ones with cashiers too. I think it works great at Fresh and Easy, they have an attendant who goes around, as needed, to check Id's for alcohol purchases, etc. I've never had to wait in line at one of these stores, they aren't all that crowded but I still think it definitely makes things go faster.

They built a new Walmart here about 7 yeas ago. Going with the current trend, it was about 60% self checkout. Same with the three local Albertsons supermarkets. All of them have now removed their self checkout stations, and replaced them with cashiers. I've heard it was due to rampant theft.

For big business the feed back loop should not be just sales.

I like self checkout. I would prefer a checker if they're competent (Costco) or interesting (crazy old Asian dude at the Rockridge Safeway in Oakland), but usually they're zoned out and slow, or make inane comments.

What amazes me about self checkout is how creatively awful the kiosks are. For example, receipts come out on the left, coin change comes out the middle, while cash change comes out from a black-on-black compartment hidden below the scanner.

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