General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Update: First they took the manufacturing jobs and I didn't complain [View all]Urchin
(248 posts)I avoid self-checkouts too.
For one, it's a form of "Shadow Work" where they are making you, the customer, do the work that a store employee used to do for you.
And for another, self-checkouts eliminate jobs for people for whom being a cashier may be the only job they can get.
And finally, technology is eliminating jobs for cashiers today, but tomorrow it will be your career technology eliminates, either by outright replacing humans or by enabling your job to be done on the other side of the world.
Thanks in large part to technology, the majority of Americans can no longer feel at all safe financially, not just because their job might be eliminated, but because their very career might be eliminated.
And it's hard to see it coming. You think those taxi dispatchers saw Uber coming? Those taxi dispatchers probably laughed at the thought of technology replacing them, "Oh," they must have thought, "I can see it now, a robot walking in the door and taking my place by the telephone. Ha, ha, ha."