What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
It's the same thing with sending parcels, where I must now sit on my computer at home filling in a complicated online form and printing out my own labels. This takes me like 30 minutes, but saves time and money for the Post Office (not for me!)
There's no downside for the company here, especially when they are monopolies so we have no choice.
This is the definition of "penny wise, pound foolish". Nothing is really "free"
Here's a good example: you know how every terminal begs for tips? And the percentage is increasing? (In San Jose I saw by middle number as 25%!!). It looks free, but guess what, I'm more likely to not come back and press "no tip" or enter a custom amount. The cost is the aggregation of these events but we just mindlessly set these values rather than testing. (Or just you know... caring about people and thinking about how you feel as a customer)
There's biases too and biases accumulate. Piss off enough people and they never come back. They tell people not to go there. This happens even if another restaurant goes too far. People just get fed up with "eating out" rather than just eating at one restaurant. That exhaustion accumulates, especially in times like this where money is getting tighter for most people
Or the supermarkets who replaced checkouts with customer self-service under the guise of convenience, and now subject us to more surveillance capitalism to try to protect their losses given people don’t feel so bad about stealing from a machine than a human.
> Nothing is really "free".
There are economies of scale though, plus expertise. That's why we normally buy clothes instead of spinning, cutting, and sewing textiles ourselves.
Don't forget self check out at the grocery store. I don't mind personally (I find ways to make it worth my while..) but it's a version of the same thing. Shifting labor under the guise of convenience. Like all the other versions of this, the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer. It's rare that the opposite happens.
My supermarket has the handheld scanners and they are a game changer. They fit handily into the trolley if you want and you just scan stuff as you go. If you want 8 of something, you can just tap the item and increase the quantity, none of the having to scan each one and add it carefully to the bagging area, etc... And best of all, at the end you just scan a self checkout screen (and they have special ones as well with no bagging area and no queue, but you can use the normal ones if the queue is shorter), so you scan the screen, click pay, click pay by card and hold your card on the machine. Done. Takes about 15 seconds all in, and the queues on those machines are basically non-existant as a result.
Best of all is that you put your stuff directly into your bags as you're shopping so there's no frantic packing stage.
Oh, and maybe Decathlon deserve a special mention here for their self-service checkouts. Every item has an RFID price tag usually sown into the care labels of their own-brand products. They don't have a self-scan machine, handheld or otherwise, you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.
> you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.
Well, not exactly. I saved a bundle of money inadvertently in a Decathlon in São Paulo. I read the instructions, but didn't understand the Portuguese completely. I dumped a ton of purchases into the bin, watched the screen scroll through the items, and paid the bill. When I got home I realized that I'd only been billed for about half the items. Next time I was there, I read the instructions more carefully and discovered that they said to put the items in the bin one by one
> Oh, and maybe Decathlon deserve a special mention here for their self-service checkouts. Every item has an RFID price tag usually sown into the care labels of their own-brand products. They don't have a self-scan machine, handheld or otherwise, you just drop everything you picked up into the box, it scans all the RFID tags and makes sure the weight is correct, and it's all done.
Uniqlo too. I guess it helps that they own their entire manufacturing and retail process.
And usually they have a dedicated checkout aisle so you don’t have to wait for the Boomers in front of you to pay in pennies or whatever it is they do to snarl a queue up.
Eh. This "Boomer" uses his Apple Watch, usually. I tend to blow through in about five seconds. I usually have the stuff paid for, before the cashier stops ringing them up.
I deliberately use the manned checkout, because I'm human, and I believe in helping out other humans. That seems to be a "quaint anachronism," these days, but it's the way this old fogey was raised.
I know that someday, I won't have a choice (Home Depot only has cashiers for contractors, nowadays, so I'm forced to use the auto-checkout), but, where one is given, I take the human.
Sometimes, I chuckle, as I go through fairly quickly, and see the long line, waiting for the auto-cashiers.
It's obvious that the only benefit comes to the company. If you aren't just getting a candy bar, then the auto-cashier tends to be slower (mainly because I am a lot slower at that stuff, than the cashier).
It's actually not possible to close the transaction before finalizing the items to be added to it. Generally as far as tap is concerned the pinpad won't go into the mode where it can collect money until the cashier totals it. It is actually possible depending on the software to go back to a prior screen after the pinpad has registered a tap and make a change and depending on timing have the original tap still go through but this is a weird edge case not the expected flow.
Drives me crazy watching people ahead of me try to do this. If the transaction hasn't been completed what precisely do they or indeed you think you are paying for again like handing the store an electronic blank check? I agree to pay...whatever the total ends up being!
No, it's often quite possible to scan the watch while the transaction is still open (depends on the store; not all of them support that). The payment method is still open, and is closed by the cashier.
Yeah, it's "trusting" the store, but it has never resulted in unwanted charges. I do it for the person in line behind me. I can afford it, if there was to be an issue, and the service desk is about ten feet away.
In Japan, they make a ceremony of giving you your goods before accepting payment.
> I know that someday, I won't have a choice (Home Depot only has cashiers for contractors, nowadays, so I'm forced to use the auto-checkout), but, where one is given, I take the human.
Just hit the 'I need help' button on the self-checkout and an employee will show up and you can ask them to ring up your items.
Yeah, I wouldn't do that. The self-checkout actually works fairly well.
The reason that I insist on using the manned lanes, has nothing to do with being uncomfortable with the automated process (I know that it may seem that way, with my gray pompadour, but I'm actually fairly comfortable with tech). It's just because I know that the reason the store uses them, is to fire cashiers, and it's sort of a "stay with them until the end" kind of thing, in my mind.
Like I said, not really the way people think, these days. We tend to be extremely selfish. I participate in an organization that encourages us to adopt a mindset that takes other peoples' existence into account. It's really just symbolic, I know, but I do it for myself; not for others. I feel that symbols are important.
Home Depot self checkouts are large touch screens with a nice wireless gun. It doesn't even check weight. It is one of the least shitty SCO experiences unless you have a bunch of bolts and shit in which case why are you even in self checkout when they always have at least one physical register open?
I don't understand why people do this.
Agree. Home Depot ones are quite effective. The only sand in the gears, is that, if I use my business card, it always asks me for a job number. It's possible that this is something that contractors appreciate, but they have separate, manned, lanes for them.
The ones that truly suck (in my area) are the CVS ones. They have a glass jaw, and it's quite easy to make a mistake that requires the exasperated attendant to come over, and get it unstuck.
That has nothing at all to do with the person using the machine, and everything to do with the geeks that wrote the software. Whenever I see someone (regardless of their age or "digital native" status) struggling with tech, I blame the designers; not the user.
In my experience, if we want to design stuff to be used by humans, then it starts with getting comfortable with our own humanity. Empathy is useful, when designing stuff.
If we don't like people, then we're unlikely to design stuff that people like to use.
For those who might be curious, The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman, is an excellent book for getting in touch with empathetic design.
We don't have home depot, but most self-checkout tills in the UK have scales and a separate bag weighing area. You can usually do everything at the till, but they also have scales and barcode printers around the loose fruit and veg areas too (and you have to print a barcode to scan if you're using the portable scan gun thing I mentioned earlier).
I'm not sure what labour is being shifted onto me that I wasn't already doing here. I already had to bag my groceries and swipe my card. Scanning items can be done in a single motion while bagging, so the overhead is non-existent to me.
Meanwhile, self-checkout removes a bottleneck in that there are now more places to check out, meaning I have to wait less and thus spend less time shopping. So all in all, no more labour done, and yet my time is saved. I call that a win-win.
Self checkout is absolutely more convenient if you're not buying a lot.
(I find ways to make it worth my while..)
If that means what it sounds like, congratulations on accelerating the descent to a low-trust society.
Blaming this individual for 'accelerating the descent' is like blaming a hobo for catching a ride on a runaway train going downhill. The ensuing trainwreck is already inevitable, at least you can get part of a ride out of it!
The trainwreck is only "inevitable" (which, incidentally, it isn't, but put that aside for now) because of individuals making choices that benefit them personally at the expense of the common good.
I agree with everything you're saying, except it's a handful of individuals. The top .000001% are responsible for 90% of the acceleration of the train. You can hardly blame someone for not paying for a tomato.
I don’t believe there’s any evidence whatsoever for that, and I refuse to adopt that kind of loser mindset, where the agency of 99.999999% of people don’t matter at all to how our culture and civilization develops.
so, essentially, you and the other commenter are arguing whether it is everyone that has a little fault for being naughty, or is it just a couple of psychos who are fucking everyone else over.
but even if it was just a couple of psychos that were responsible, it'd be hard to justify stealing from the grocery store, because you are not guaranteed to do damage to the psychos directly -- maybe what'll happen instead is that the grocery store employees will not get a nice raise due to the decreased revenue.
and this is why i think actions of this type are so dangerous to society. it's hard to find who is the victim and who is the criminal. so people feel like they are a victim a little, and then justified in being the criminal in a crime with invisible victims anyway. and so society degrades more and more in a vicious cycle and more people give up. it's disgraceful.
Those grocery store employees [at a national chain supermarket] were not going to get a nice raise regardless, and petty theft is either already accounted for or covered by insurance.
One outcome I can see though, is that if enough is skimmed off the top through self-checkout, then maybe the beancounters will realize that self-checkout isn't as 'efficient' as they thought, and will reinstitute human checkers.
Just like how we hope that the hotel that laid off the doorman eventually realizes their mistake and hires him back.
Pattern recognition is now a loser mindset
Using this alleged “pattern recognition” as an excuse for learned helplessness, and justifying theft from other victims of these top 0.000001% (if you believe that) is absolutely a loser mindset, yes.
The trainwreck isn't inevitable, though it's caused by mass theft, or in your analogy too many hobos on the train.
It's not at all caused by the train company hiking their fees while neglecting maintenance to increase profit margins to railway shareholders
It's people being dishonest that makes self checkout slower, with it having to verify the weight of everything. Some stores are higher trust and lack this, which makes it so much faster and smoother.
> the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer
How do you come to this conclusion without a deep dive into a supermarket's finances?
You don’t need a deep dive to see supermarket consolidation that keeps happening year after year. When there is less competition to drive down prices, it is very safe to say to assume that consumers will get less and less surplus for any change a grocery makes.
So what constrains the prices in supermarkets?
(I find ways to make it worth my while..)
I understand that somewhere is Australia is a supermarket which appears to be generating its own carrots in that it sells far more carrots than ever arrive, but is a black hole for parsnips; the store should be exploding with parsnips given the difference between amount delivered and amount sold, yet mysteriously there's just the one bin of parsnips visible.
I actively refuse to use self checkout. A number of stores have reported customers to the police for incorrect scanning. These are honest mistakes and you're now "a know shoplifter". I primarily work with companies that require a clean record, that includes "No shoplifting".
Self checkout is taking away cashier jobs, annoying to use and comes with an uacceptable risk to me as the customer.
> A number of stores have reported customers to the police for incorrect scanning. These are honest mistakes and you're now "a know shoplifter". I primarily work with companies that require a clean record, that includes "No shoplifting".
This sounds more like a 'horrible store' and 'authoritarian police' problem than a self-checkout problem.
Sadly it's happening in a number of stores, so I'm not taking the chance. One issue might be that so many are actually using the self checkouts to steal, that the stores just assume that's the reason and not leaving much rooms for honest mistakes.
It's not a great lose, almost every time I see someone try to use the self checkout, they need to get a hold of staff anyway, because of items that fail to scan or discounts not being applied.
Understandable in your situation.
> It's not a great lose, almost every time I see someone try to use the self checkout, they need to get a hold of staff anyway
I don't think I've needed to call staff for when using the self-checkout in years (ignoring the random spot checks, but those are rare and very quick), so this also sounds like 'horrible store' to me, with them opting to use dogshit hardware or software that makes it so people need help all the time. Then again, I don't buy tobacco or alcohol, and outside of that I probably end up in a happy median with my shopping, where I don't trigger any safety and security limits, so my experience might be overly positive just because the system never suspects me.
I love self checkout, let me scan what I want, not stand in a line with people who seemingly don't know what they're doing or don't have cash or their credit card declines etc.
Depends on the store. The one I go to, most people don't seem to want to use the self-checkout lanes, meaning I benefit from using it because I don't have to spend 5 minutes waiting in line behind three or four people. (Three or four people at each of the dozen checkout lanes, that is; it's a largish store). So instead, I go to the self-checkout lanes and get out of the store faster. Shifting labor to the customer? Perhaps, but the convenience is real, and I'm quite willing to do that small amount of work because what I get in return is five extra minutes at home with my wife and kids.
I love self checkout. It's usually significantly faster and I can keep busy rather than waiting (I still bag when I use a cashier). I can do shenanigans like do three transactions so I can use a coupon three times separately, without bothering anyone. They're an example of the benefits going to both parties.
I used to get paid to scan groceries. I have no intention of doing it for the same companies for free.
So you spend more time checking out and more time being idle waiting for it.
> Like all the other versions of this, the savings are absorbed by the company, not passed on to the consumer.
Grocery stores (at least here in the UK) are notoriously low margin and have been for a long time. I think this is the one sector where savings are indeed passed on to the customer.
Tesco (largest U.K. supermarket chain) has a razor-thin 2.23% profit margin.
It's a whopping (!) 4.3% according to [0] though maybe in the 90s/10s it was lower
[0] https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-prese...
> What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
It doesn't miss it. The whole framing of the article is the Dooman Fallacy - an organisation trying to save money by shifting [apparently] menial work to the customer ends up losing more than they save.
> What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
What? No, you're making the Doorman fallacy here, explicitly.
The company THINKS they're saving money by pushing the work to the customer/end user, but there's more to wait staff than just taking orders and payment - they provide the ability to smooth over any difficulties experienced during the meal, they signal status, etc, which would theoretically allow the restaurant to charge more than if they force customers to do all this work themselves.
Not to mention, if I had an experience this miserable at a restaurant, I wouldn't be back, which is a direct loss in revenue.
Restaurants aren't monopolies, except in really extreme cases.
I wouldn't go to a restaurant that used QR codes twice. But I can't go to a different supermarket as there's only one in a reasonable distance away, or use another train line, or avoid a government form.
Yes. If you create a straw man, you're very convincing. The real world isn't a static snapshot though. If people are unhappy enough with existing businesses, they will find alternatives or new businesses will see opportunities. Or you can move to a place with the type of businesses you prefer.
Someone giving a pretty basic idea a catchy name like the doorman fallacy doesn't mean that any replacement of humans with automation is a net loss for the company. Lots of automation can be very profitable, even if some positive things are lost in the bargain.
Incidentally, the vast, vast majority of residential buildings don't have doormen, and wouldn't be more profitable by the addition of one.
Isn't it named after the hypothetical scenario about a doorman? The doorman fallacy isn't even specifically aimed at what is more profitable, its just saying that there are softer roles that aren't well defined that aren't replicated when the role is automated away.
That fact doesn’t make it a fallacy. The fallacy part is the idea that the people choosing to automate that job are just stupid and ignorant, and don’t understand what the job really is. Which I’m sure is true for some automation, but doormen are a terrible example.
> that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
And somehow things are more expensive than ever. Self checkouts, order at the counter, bussing your own table, assembling your own furniture, filling out your or your pet’s medical history at a hospital, shipping labels (you mentioned this) and so much more. It’s a form of free labor that somehow society is okay with.
> It’s a form of free labor that somehow society is okay with.
It's very popular to say this in some places, but wouldn't you expect that the money that businesses are saving when they do this is passed along to the customer in lower prices? Since they're competing with other businesses?
When your grocery store gets a self checkout, do you see your grocery bills go down? What ends up happening is that the grocery store makes more profit, the other stores notice and they too get rid of self checkouts. Your grocery bill remains the same, you are more inconvenienced but all of their profits go up.
Yeah sure. That's the logic that elects Mamdani. Maybe you're confused because instead of going down, prices increased less than they otherwise would have.
Economics happens on the margins where the reality is that store A reduces its costs and lowers its prices to compete with Store B. Or are you paying $100 for a jar of peanut butter?
Ehh. Corporate profits are at all time highs. The idea that somehow if corporations replace workers or pay them less, will somehow ensure we see smaller price increases as consumers is the fallacy that’s brought us here in the first place. Trying to make this a political discussion is pointless.
In-n-out hires a large staff and pays people well, and somehow their hamburger is still $3 and top quality. The same time when every other fast food chain is charging restaurant prices. Costco hires plenty of staff and pays them well, their prices are some of the lowest in the country. Meanwhile Walmart, target etc. are always understaffed and somehow still more expensive.
We were told that $20 minimum wage would make our McDonalds burgers to be $100 (like your hyperbole about peanut butter). Our burgers are just marginally more expensive than the rest of the country.
I still remember when all the fast food chains raised their prices together even when they didn’t need to post pandemic. Makes me really skeptical of the claim about companies lowering prices to compete with each other.
>In-n-out, Costco, Walmart
Congratulations. You've identified different business models.
> I still remember when all the fast food chains raised their prices together
If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices? Adjust n to whatever value is lower than your hyperbole trigger.
> Congratulations. You've identified different business models.
So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?
> If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices
It is true. https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation
You’re also responding to a partial statement of a sentence and not a complete argument. The argument being companies don’t necessarily lower prices to compete with one another even if they can.
And finally, why do companies don’t raise their prices infinitely? (A complete tangent to the discussion) Because well, business 101. Prices increases are a slow drip. And there is a limit after which price increases hurt the sales. And you always want an external excuse to point a finger at to make the prices palatable. Some companies can increase prices faster than the others. Apple made hundreds of billions in profits last year and they just increased the prices of MacBooks by hundreds of dollars. They could’ve easily not raised prices but why would you not when you have a loyal customer base that won’t mind paying a few hundred dollars extra?
> So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?
It's a problem because the business models are providing alternatives of what their customers value. You're arguing that because Costco, one of, if not the most successful retailers in the world, can do it why can't all stores? I can assure you every business wants to be Costco.
But also, I've been to Costco. And they offer what they want in quantities that they want. And it's often not what I want no matter how well they treat their employees. Also the checkout lines were very long.
Business 101? Take a step back. What you're describing is the feedback mechanism of the competition that drives prices down. Supply, demand, price. Econ 101. The reason prices aren't infinite is not because the evil corporations are conspiring to increase them slowly enough that customers barely notice. It's because, if they increase them too much, they will lose business to their competitors.
Apple has the ability to raise prices because customers value its ecosystem. But, OK. Why didn't they raise the price by thousands? Do you think people didn't notice the few hundred dollar price increase drip? It looks to me like people did notice. It's because at a certain price, it's worthwhile to hold your nose and use a different operating system.
> That's the logic that elects Mamdani
Correct and increasingly popular logic? I agree entirely!
When I hear arguments like this I feel compelled to point out that the people running these businesses live in the same world as you.
I don't know how old you are or if you remember, but the examples you gave used to be the most common sources of complaints, delays, refunds, etc. when the employee would do a shitty job (fairly often). The world of the past really was objectively worse.
Ahh yes, having someone to wait tables at a restaurant, someone to scan and bag groceries, someone to take your medical history, having furniture already assembled etc. was really objectively worse.
Also known as the person who mistook your order, put the eggs in the same bag as something heavy, or messed up your chart. Flat-pack furniture is a different topic since that's always been a budget product.
Unless you think sitcom writers of the past were part of a conspiracy, people clearly argued about this then just as we do now.
I think the only difference is that we have managed to weasel in politics somehow. It's worth questioning where you get these ideas about "free labor". Obsoleting a job is not necessarily nefarious nor did it even mean anyone got laid off. It's ultimately a tradeoff that has to be more than mere cost cutting for it to succeed.
You’re equating ocasional inconveniences to what the entire experience was. I could also point to the current setup and say the same.
The times I scan in self checkout and the machine malfunctions, needing a manager. The times I added the medical history myself but the nurse/doctor missed it because they themselves weren’t taking it. Every single time I have to walk back and forth during a meal because I now serve my own table.
I’ve had to wait for help at a self checkout more times than I’ve had my eggs broken. It’s worth questioning why you’re so eager to defend corporations making you work for free.
A lot of this reads like you don’t like to deal with people because you think people, especially in the service industry are incompetent and are wrong majority of the time.
> equating ocasional inconveniences to what the entire experience was
This was highly dependent on the neighborhood you lived in. It still is to some extent. Full service is still around, but I wouldn't expect that in "the bad parts of town". You do not want those people doing those jobs, but now we're really heading somewhere politically incorrect and touching on systemic inequality.
> those people
I had assumed you have certain views about people in the service industry. This sounds a whole lot worse.
What's the point of discussing this if you're going to insist on reading everything in bad faith? You know very well I'm speaking from experience. Go ask anyone else who lived in that kind of place at that time. It's where the run down Walmart and McDonald's still are. That's where self-checkout was born.
You are trying to advocate for the disadvantaged who might work those kinds of jobs longer term, yet you don't understand those people. You do not understand the valid concerns of the shoppers at those stores either who had little alternative. You're complaining about self-checkout, but it's the same machines they worked with for at or near minimum wage. The way you get angry is the way they'd get angry too after a full day of that every day. As I said, you do not want those people doing that job.
I don't regret any of what I said, but I regret adding to yet more of this noise on HN. I tried to have productive conflict by sharing my perspective, but there's no substance left here.
Which people shouldn't do which jobs?
I never make the mistake to go to places with qr codes twice in my life.
I can live with giant tablets in fast foods, but there's no chance I go to qr code restaurants ever.
As the article points out, it's super inconvenient and absolutely breaks the mood for the night and cheapens and ruins the experience.
Even worse one of my favourite steak houses has removed phone booking and implemented a super slow and inconvenient form.
Another place that will never get my money again.
No web form can ever be worse than doing stuff over the phone like we’re still in the 19th Century.
I had a Korean colleague who remarked how backward the US is, you have to do everything over the phone, and you lose signal in elevators.
> No web form can ever be worse than doing stuff over the phone like we’re still in the 19th Century.
Yes, it can. Last year I challenged a Zoomer to try to order from the local ramen place for pickup. They were in and out in well under a minute, including looking up the phone number on Google Maps, whereas Uber Eats would still be loading... and scrolling... Sorry, updating, please stay tuned... Would you like to sign up for Uber Unlimited? ... [do I need to keep doing the gag] ... selecting... wait where did the list go... wait did the one selection take ... ordering ... you have rewards! ... confirmation ... etc They were shocked how much better the experience was. As compared to [paste number, wait 10s] 'Hello?' 'X Ramen, how can I help you?' 'I'd like A ramen and B ramen and C to go, please, name, Alice and Bob.' 'OK. Goodbye.' Even counting the register swipe on pickup to pay, it's night and day. And that is how a web form can be way worse than doing stuff over the phone, because a web form can just get worse and worse and worse - and they do.
I don’t know which country you’re in (and don’t disagree with you) but even if the estimate of 30 minutes to shipping labels were accurate, that would still be a net win where I am in Texas - the line at the post office is regularly longer than that.
Because staffing can/has be/been reduced since they made it possible for people to print their own labels. They aren't interested in making the queues faster.
Unless they're rebuilt the post office (they haven't, unless they went with "70s retro" as the design aesthetic!), every counter is normally manned.
Uh, the queues at the post office have never exactly been fast.
You still have to wait in line even with the shipping label because they have to scan it into the system.