Subj : Re: Hola
To   : The Godfather
From : Adept
Date : Wed Apr 26 2023 01:28 pm

 TG> I'm not so sure that 90% of the customers are using self check out by
 TG> choice these days. The faces on the lines look awfully familiar to what
 TG> made self check out unique.  When it no longer is convenient, nor fast,
 TG> I suppose I'd prefer the more experienced cashier as so many suck at
 TG> finding the bar code.

Yeah, my preference does tend to be, "If I can go to the self-checkout immediately, and there's a line elsewhere, I will. If I have to wait a bit, I'll preferentially choose self-checkout. If self-checkout is fairly long, I'll go to the other lines. If I have a lot of stuff, I'll go to the other lines."

If there are no lines, I think I mostly just get anxiety, as I need mental preparation time for doing things, since I'd hate to hold up the line.

 TG> My fear is that tech is not taking into account that there are quickly
 TG> becoming more people then will be jobs.

Yeah. If we don't find replacements for this (and there really might not be actual replacements, here -- you can't just immediately go into plumbing or direct care of humans, and anything low-skilled is ripe for automation.), it'll... be hard.

So far as I've heard about or thought of, Universal Basic Income is about the only thing I've heard of that would deal with the problem usefully, or something similar, where people are given jobs that aren't things that are economically justifiable. But I think any debate about that would be political, so if anyone has _any_ objection to the thought exercise, I'm pre-emtively apologizing and will happily drop the topic.

 TG> part of the self check out resistance as Blockbuster and now Redbox had
 TG> and now have disappeared too quickly for me.

I like self-checkout, and Redbox is definitely still self-checkout. :)

But Redbox is ending? That's sad. I liked Redbox, and would use it if I lived on the right continent for it.

I'd _also_ still be a subscriber to Netflix DVDs, but that service offers a lot of movies that you can't stream. Copyright law allows for a little more functional service with DVDs than with streaming.

Anyway, I also remember doing self-checkout stuff at the library, where at first there was a _strong_ push to have us actively walk people over to the self-checkouts. But they walked that back (claimed they never pushed that hard), and I know a variety of people who used the people because of trying to save jobs.

I'm not sure it would've made any real difference. But I liked self-checkouts as an additional feature, including doing a variety of things with them that one couldn't do with in-person checkout. Well, namely having the machines do funny voices, text, and graphics.

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