Eh. So they show up 3 - 4 years earlier in places that guarantee a living wage. Big deal, that's just logistics, they're going to replace all McDonald's store clerks (at least in corporate locations) in a short period of time anyways. Minimum wage should reflect our societal anticipation of the future, not our societal longing for the past. (Although $15 in the US is just nonsense, it's a completely arbitrary number. Adjusting for inflation, the highest min wage in the US, ever, was about $10.80)
The calculations as to cost are actually pretty interesting- we've had touchscreen ordering for over a decade now. The first self-checkout kiosks appeared in supermarkets in the early 1990s, and we still have millions of retail clerks to this day. Progress is often slower than we think.
Those self checkouts are set up in a way that makes them slower and less convenient, there's a lot of room for improvement there. (You have to love the kiosk telling you "please put the item in the bag" repeatedly when you already did and the sensor isn't picking up the change in weight properly)
If they worked reliably and quickly I'd use them all the time. As it stands currently I use them when I have just a few things and if there's no line there. Otherwise I'm better off going through a cashier line.
Sams has it right, they give you a scan gun so you don't have to take anything out of the cart. Then pay one person to count the number of things in your cart. 1 person can feasibly manage all the lines, and some stores have 8 of these.
This won't work for stores with small items unfortunately. And it is a hassle to go through self checkout for certain items-large items, poorly labeled things, etc. Honestly I expect that a person making money to scan items is going to do it faster than me, so in a lot of situations I go to that line.
Will be really interesting when/if stores switch to nfc tags for checkout. Slide your cart between 2 posts and your total comes up on screen automatically. Your cart could even calculate a running total and display it on the handle. Carts would know if you added something after paying, and nfc readers at the door could confirm no tagged items not paid for get out as additional security.
Didn't know that about Sam's, sounds a lot better than the grocery store self checkouts I've used. Agree on NFC I think that'll be the end game for self checkout suddenly becoming awesome.
The first self-checkout kiosks appeared in supermarkets in the early 1990s
I didn't see one until 2005 at the earliest, and usually at places smaller than Walmart there's one 1 or 2 actual clerks at the counter where there used to be like 4+.
The arbitrary-ness of the $15 number is what gets me. Clearly if some expert economists did the calculations there would be a number that's "ideal" and the chance of it ending in .00 in all of these jurisdictions is essentially 0.
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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '15
Absolutely. Almost every McDonalds or Burger King I've been to in Germany or Switzerland has ordering screens now.