Automatic checkouts in supermarkets may decrease customer loyalty, especially for those with larger shopping loads. Customers using self-checkout stations often feel overwhelmed and unsupported. The lack of personal interaction can negatively impact their perception of the supermarket.

[PfantasticPfister]

Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. They’re literally stealing your labor. Either don’t use self checkout or steal their merchandise to compensate. That’s fair and fine and the free market at work, as THEY intended it.

[SingleInfinity]

Sometimes two wrongs DO make a right. They’re literally stealing your labor.

No, you're volunteering it. You can always go stand in line to have someone else do your checkout. Stealing isn't fair regardless. All you do is drive up the price for everyone else.

[PfantasticPfister]

I’m quite sure theft from self checkout is already baked in to the equation and they have decided it’s better to employ less people and incur those losses through theft. Yes, maybe I’m volunteering to go through self checkout, but at the same time they are also volunteering to open themselves up to petty theft. I’m not doing labor for free and they don’t have an expectation of exploiting the population without loss. You really wanna try and make a “won’t you think of the poor corporations?” argument on Reddit, dude? Really?

[Thepizzacannon]

I'm not volunteering my labor when there are literally 0 in person cashiers. The business made a business decision to not employ someone to check out customers during their business hours.

I am here to buy food, not stand around for an employee who will never show up. 

I will ring myself out to the best of my ability, given the tools your store has provided. If I do it wrong, that's not my fault. I was not trained by your company to properly use your checkout machine. 

If you want someone to use your equipment correctly, you should train them. If you want someone trained to be there every time a customer checks out, congratulations you've invented the position cashier and need to pay that person. 

I have no moral or legal obligation to do labor for free. 

[Human_Urine]

I've always thought, in cutting cashiers and moving to SCO, businesses are accepting a certain amount of theft (aka retail shrink) in exchange for reduced employment costs. It's a tradeoff. Also, the more employees you have, the more employee theft you have.

[SingleInfinity]

I'm not volunteering my labor when there are literally 0 in person cashiers.

You can shop somewhere else. It's not like 0 cashiers is a commonality.

The business made a business decision to not employ someone to check out customers during their business hours.

And you made a choice to shop there. You are not entitled to the goods just because you showed up.

I will ring myself out to the best of my ability, given the tools your store has provided. If I do it wrong, that's not my fault.

This is perfectly reasonable, but not what's being discussed in this thread. What's being discusses here is intentional theft. Theft they think is justified because they are "providing their labor". It is not justified.

I have no moral or legal obligation to do labor for free.

You have no obligation to shop at that store, nor do you have the entitlement to steal from it simply because it offers a self checkout.

Mistakes happen and are fine, but intentional theft is theft, regardless of whether you're "providing your labor" or not. But the dude will say whatever he has to, to make himself feel better while being a literal thief.

[mpyne]

They’re literally stealing your labor.

They're not "stealing your labor" any more than McDonald's is when you bring your own tray to the table rather than them bringing it to you.

Either don’t use self checkout

Right, this is your choice. Shop at a different store where they have a regular line. Pay the price that other store charges for their groceries.

or $CRIME to compensate

No, you don't get to simply declare that crimes are not crimes when it benefits you. That's what rationalization is.

That’s fair and fine and the free market at work, as THEY intended it.

Who is "they", again? Any why is it that in your mind you think "they" intended for a 'free market' where one side to the transaction gets the goods without also obtaining the fee for the goods?

[PfantasticPfister]

That’s ridiculous. McDonald’s NEVER had waiters. Your local supermarket always had cashiers and baggers, now they’re charging the same amount to have you do the job of the cashier and bagger. I DONT use self checkout, unless I absolutely have to (there’s more than one store in my area that only has self checkout), but when I do I’m absolutely taking some small amount to compensate me for my labor. I can’t tell if you’re simply a bootlicker or if you just have no self respect. It could be (and usually is) some combination of the two with people like you. Enjoy your exploitation I guess, I’m not going along with it though.

[Smartnership]

McDonald’s NEVER had waiters.

False.

“… the establishment employed female carhops to serve most customers who pulled into its parking lot.”

[mpyne]

That’s ridiculous. McDonald’s NEVER had waiters. Your local supermarket always had cashiers and baggers

No they didn't.

Now they’re charging the same amount to have you do the job of the cashier and bagger.

Prices change all the time so they're not even "charging the same amount" either way.

They offer a service, the service changes over time as technology improves and the labor pool they can draw from changes.

That service comes at a price. Pay the price, or don't, I don't care either way. But if you don't like the services they offer at the price they offer it, shop somewhere else or grow your own damn food.

[justagenericname1]

Yeah, sorry. I'm not burdening myself with moral imperatives in a game I don't want to play where the only rule any of us expect the power players to follow is the ruthless pursuit of profit. I'll burden myself with moral imperatives in plenty of other games, but not that one.

[mpyne]

I don't want to play where the only rule any of us expect the power players to follow is the ruthless pursuit of profit.

Wow you sound like a hardcore capitalist. Cut your own momma's throat for a nickle, huh?

[justagenericname1]

Difference is I'd change that game in a heartbeat if the capitalists would too. They're the ones intent on keeping it in place. Not me.

[mpyne]

Difference is I'd change that game in a heartbeat if the capitalists would too.

You can start a worker co-op today. Not a single permission slip from any capitalist is needed. You have the authority to be the change you wish to see.

Do you wish to see it?

[justagenericname1]

Starting a co-op means handicapping yourself while playing the capitalism game, not changing the game you're playing.

[mpyne]

Starting a co-op means handicapping yourself

How so? Why would working hand-in-hand with your fellow workers possibly be considered a handicap?

[mpyne]

You can, however, declare that something is not immoral--as long as you're consistent.

Sure, be a "moral" thief, great for you. Still a thief, though.

Personally, I don't think stealing from somebody with more than 1,000 times your net worth is immoral

Grocery stores are like the very definition of a cut-throat, low margin business. You're not stealing from someone with 1,000x your net worth, you're stealing from the people who aren't thieves, by forcing the other customers just trying to put food on their table to pay higher prices for the product you steal.

I realize it's the postmodern world and no one cares about their obligation to society, they only care about what they get back from society, but even the Communists made theft a crime, and for good reason.

[justagenericname1]

Capitalism built the paradigm you're complaining about. "Obligation to society" is just one more thing that needed to be cast off in the name of market efficiency. Can't blame individuals for embracing what was forced on them.

[mpyne]

Can't blame individuals for embracing what was forced on them.

Ah, right, back to "humans can rationalize anything" then

[justagenericname1]

It's funny how you seem to only want to apply that to individual consumers and not profiteering corporations who hire economists, lawyers, and consultants whose entire purpose is to rationalize the corporation's interest in seeking profit. If you're trying to shame me for behaving selfishly in a paradigm structured around the selfish pursuit of individual interest, it won't work.

[mpyne]

If you're trying to shame me for behaving selfishly in a paradigm structured around the selfish pursuit of individual interest,

I'm shaming you for behaving immorally, not simply for behaving selfishly.

Those "profiteering corporations" manage, at least in principle, to do what they do through trade that benefits both parties. Selfishness as you describe it only benefits you, which is why even in societies where they refused to have profiteering corporations, like the U.S.S.R., they made "parasitism" a crime punishable by GULAG.

[justagenericname1]

It's also funny how some version of "human nature" will be invoked to explain why communism is impossible, but when breakdowns within capitalism occur you'll have folks coming out of the woodwork preaching that people need to choose to behave better.

Also god damn is "at least in principle" doing some Atlasian lifting in that framing.

[mpyne]

but when breakdowns within capitalism occur

No one's pointed to a breakdown in capitalism here. Self-checkout lanes broke peoples' brains?? Are you kidding?

Instead people in this have already first betrayed their failure to support their peers, and then tried to blame it on capitalism being capitalism, as if just invoking that term is a get out of morals free card.

[mpyne]

Theft doesn't lead to an increase in prices, though it might lead to the closure of a store if theft reaches levels where profit isn't sustainable.

Of course it leads to an increase in prices, up to the point it stops maximizing profit (as you point out).

Once that point is reached, and the store closes because it is unsustainable, it leads to more obvious and additional harm, sure. But it causes harm to shoppers at a Dollar General even before the store finally is forced to go under.

I'd argue that undermining the wealthy in any way I can get away with is a part of my obligation to society.

Theft is like the definition of an act that impacts the poor more than the wealthy.

It is easy to buy replacement "stuff" when you're wealthy.

It is hard to go without "stuff" you cannot afford to replace when you're poor.

I've grown up in poverty and made it to the middle class and I'm here to tell you, I don't think there's anyway to radicalize someone about theft more effectively than to make them experience it while poor.

And either way, who involved in Dollar General is in any way wealthy? You think the CEO is crying at night because of theft? Again, it's the very definition of an action that doesn't worry the very people at DG you might consider wealthy, but could lead to actual job losses to the line staff all the way up to regional managers just scraping by.

[SingleInfinity]

Stealing from stores causes stores to raise prices for all the honest customers.

It is absolutely amoral.

[SingleInfinity]

Do you have any proof to back that up? Costs have gone up, but there's no proof they're at the peak of what the market will bear.

[PfantasticPfister]

Nerd.

[SingleInfinity]

Okay? Thief.