I saw a self-checkout lane replace two cashiers at my grocery store in Springfield

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and they just took out the regular lanes to put in four more of those kiosks. The manager told me they 'couldn't find people' for the jobs, but the real reason was the new system cost less. It made me think, what happens to the people who used to do that work? Has your town seen something like this too?

4 comments

4 Comments

paige_owens52mo ago

Honestly, it feels like every store is doing this now. While it's a change, those jobs were often part-time with rough hours. Maybe the bigger issue is what kind of new jobs we're creating to replace them.

roberts.leo2mo agoTop Commenter

Yeah, it's wild how fast that became normal. I got stuck behind a guy arguing with a self-checkout machine for ten minutes last week, which felt like its own new kind of service job. Makes you wonder if the replacement is just us all doing the work for free while some engineer fixes a robot.

kim.nina2mo ago

Ever catch yourself trying to reason with a printer? I've spent whole afternoons at work basically begging a machine to just do the one thing it's built for. Maybe we're all just unpaid tech support now.

jamief671mo ago

Lol @roberts.leo said it so well with that self-checkout guy. Honestly I think half the battle is just accepting that machines are stupid and we're their unpaid therapists now. The real joke is we pay MORE for the privilege of doing the work ourselves these days. It's like they tricked us into thinking convenience was saving us time when really it's just making us work for free.