Check It Out

From an article I read on AOL (so it must be true) Costco, WalMart and many other chain stores are rethinking their self checkout lines. They may be getting rid of them. Well, okay. Personally I like the process. I feel that it gets me out of the stores faster than traditional checkouts. But, whatever floats yer boat.

Many folks have complained that they don't like to use them because they don't work at the store. A-hem: you just spent an hour walking around the place to pick and choose the items you put in your cart, that is, self-serving, yet you're high and mighty about self serve at the register? I ain't impressed at the complaint. If you really mean what you say about not 'working' at the store then how about you move to Hooterville and have Sam Drucker collect your purchases from behind a counter, price them and bag them? Otherwise, you're just virtue signaling.

But here's what struck me about this 'rethinking' process. The stores in question are considering a return to human cashiers because, they say,  customers want it. Oh, and due to theft and/or loss because of wrongly checked foods and what not. 

A-ha. It ain't customer service concerns for them. It's about the profit margin.

I get that. As an essentially self employed man myself, you have to be in the black. You can stay home and go broke, me Pops used to say. No point working at it. Yet Big Box Stores are at the same time trying to sell (I love puns) the back to the past idea due to customer demand. People, at least some of them (curmudgeons such as I aside) like 'the human factor' and WalMart and friends are trying to appear empathetic.

I ain't impressed by that any more than the whining about self serve checkouts. Y'all just be honest about things, the both of you, and I may learn to respect you each just a tad more.