'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology

ooli@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 513 points –
'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology
bbc.com
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I don't like to interact with people, but I also don't like to work for free for the owner of the chain, so I take one for the comrades and interact with the cashier.

If you work for free, you're bound to make mistakes. Sometimes a pound of fish might get rung up as a pound of oranges.

I bought a potato yesterday that should have cost 79p but it only rang me up for 30p as the scale was broken. I'm a proper little criminal me.

Nothing tastes better than ever so slightly erroneously discounted potatoes.

I don't see a problem with that

  • Sent from a country where oranges are like 1 dollar per kilo.

Grocery stores used to have you bring in a list of what you needed and the grocer picked it all out for you from behind the counter and packed it up. If you walk through a store and put your own groceries in a cart, you're already doing free work for the owner of the store.

I wouldn't change that, and I wouldn't change self checkout. I prefer both. It's not work if I'd rather do it.

(The first paragraph is a true story, but also a joke. Doing "work" is all relative.)