Source: The American Prospect
by Gabrielle Gurley
“Marc Perrone stood in the line at his grocery store recently behind a shopper with a large order. A worker approached him and suggested he use self-checkout. Perrone said he’d wait for the cashier. The worker insisted, but he stayed with the cashier and let the woman behind him go ahead and use the machine. ‘I got out of there before she did,’ says Perrone, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Somewhere at the intersection of relentless corporate cost-cutting and traditional consumer preferences sits the current moment in retail automation: When a critical mass of customers express strong preferences for interactions with human workers, some companies take those inputs seriously. However, in many instances eliminating self-checkout is less about pleasing customers and more about theft.” (11/16/23)
https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-16-chucking-self-checkout/