The author of this article is speaking out of both sides of their mouth, though. The context of the first statement is “they want to reduce staff and it’s not even working!” and the context of the second statement is “they want to reduce staff and in many cases it’s working!”
If the author intended to say what you said, they should’ve said that instead of trying to have their cake and eat it too. Either it’s a bad thing for labor, taking away human jobs, or it’s a bad thing for companies, requiring more workers to do the same job. Or it’s a bad thing for consumers, because companies should need more workers but aren’t. But the author needs to make one of those points, not simply suggest all three at once.
I think the article is bad because it’s not actually written to convince someone who likes self checkout, it’s written for people who already agree with the author that self checkout is bad. But the problems aren’t with the self checkout, it’s corporate greed. I think there’s a compelling argument that all three points can be true at the same time (due to the staffing cuts that self checkout was used as an excuse for but were actually across all departments), but the author doesn’t make a compelling argument for any of them.
Regrettably, I work big box retail. What you don’t see is the stock rooms. There’s stuff piling up back there that’s out of stock on the sales floor but the store hours have been cut so severely that there’s nobody to pull them from the stock room and get them on shelves, and the too few people who are actually scheduled to do that are instead working on the check lanes because corporate has cut staffing there too and that’s an immediate fire to put out rather than a slow burn. And that causes the store to have empty shelves which ultimately leads to less sales because you can’t find what you’re looking for - and good luck finding someone to go check the back that’s not running around like a chicken on fire because they’re on a stupid short time limit grabbing an order for pick up (and that person is probably also supposed to be stocking the floor, and they’re slower than someone who does it all the time, not to mention the wasted labor hours of management calling for backup that either doesn’t exist or isn’t on walkie). And understaffing is an awful experience for employees too, so our wages are higher than fast food because when the store does want to replace someone they can’t because the job sucks, which leads to more understaffing… if someone brought in a blank stack of union cards tomorrow with the promise of adequate staffing, my store would be unionized by next week (and probably closed by next month…). And if you could figure out where I work, that chain would probably go out of business because of how awful it ultimately is for the end consumer, but you can’t because basically all of retail in the US is in this same death spiral that ends either with unionization or another company being formed that doesn’t actively suck this bad. None of this actually has anything to do with self checkout, however, that was just one of the excuses these companies used to cut way too much staff, and an excuse the writer can use to weasel his way out of saying the actual reasons why retail sucks - decades of anti labor practices and unfettered capitalist greed.
Yeah, and see…it’s the fact that the author is doing the grocery stores’ PR spin for them that makes me most frustrated. Like, they want everyone to think that it’s this completely insurmountable problem caused by external factors, so they have to close self checkouts; but this would all be eminently solvable with hiring.
Every store in my city that installed these systems reduced checkout staff by 75-90% (in the checkout lanes). Walmart, grocery stores, you name it. I bet if we pulled some stats we’d see a major drop in hours, which means a huge drop in insurance, taxes, HR overhead, etc, etc. No matter how much labor rates went up (they didn’t), those cost reductions are massive in comparison.
Just consider their software contracts - systems are often licensed/supported at rates determined by scale: transactions per minute, # of objects being stored, etc. If there’s an HR system that handles hours, scheduling, pay, etc, etc, they likely pay annually for a system scaled to employee count (it’s BS, but it’s a metric companies use). Drop your employees by 75%, and on support contract renewal you can drop to a lower tier support. Source: I’ve been responsible for doing just this - reducing footprint so we can reduce support contract costs. I’ve save my company somewhere between $70 and $90 mil on one system this way. Not for HR, but it doesn’t matter, this is often how support contracts are done in the enterprise world.
I have two grocery stores that had 6 lanes staffed at busy times. Since they installed self checkout, there are two… TWO checkout staff. That’s a 33% 66% reduction during rush hour. And for off hours they’d have 2, maybe 3. That’s now 1 or two. That’s 50% or 66% reduction, depending.
It’s not like grocery checkout attendants do much more than that - shelves are stocked by the vendors themselves, maintenance by others (Walmart is retail, so different).
I never see more than 2 or 3 checkout attendants these days, some stores have even removed the “extra” checkout lanes, so they couldn’t even bring people back in if they wanted to.
And let’s not get started on other retail chains, which can be even worse.
They’re correct though? Retailers expected them to be able to get rid of employees, but they didn’t and in fact increased the cost of employees.
The author of this article is speaking out of both sides of their mouth, though. The context of the first statement is “they want to reduce staff and it’s not even working!” and the context of the second statement is “they want to reduce staff and in many cases it’s working!”
If the author intended to say what you said, they should’ve said that instead of trying to have their cake and eat it too. Either it’s a bad thing for labor, taking away human jobs, or it’s a bad thing for companies, requiring more workers to do the same job. Or it’s a bad thing for consumers, because companies should need more workers but aren’t. But the author needs to make one of those points, not simply suggest all three at once.
I think the article is bad because it’s not actually written to convince someone who likes self checkout, it’s written for people who already agree with the author that self checkout is bad. But the problems aren’t with the self checkout, it’s corporate greed. I think there’s a compelling argument that all three points can be true at the same time (due to the staffing cuts that self checkout was used as an excuse for but were actually across all departments), but the author doesn’t make a compelling argument for any of them.
Regrettably, I work big box retail. What you don’t see is the stock rooms. There’s stuff piling up back there that’s out of stock on the sales floor but the store hours have been cut so severely that there’s nobody to pull them from the stock room and get them on shelves, and the too few people who are actually scheduled to do that are instead working on the check lanes because corporate has cut staffing there too and that’s an immediate fire to put out rather than a slow burn. And that causes the store to have empty shelves which ultimately leads to less sales because you can’t find what you’re looking for - and good luck finding someone to go check the back that’s not running around like a chicken on fire because they’re on a stupid short time limit grabbing an order for pick up (and that person is probably also supposed to be stocking the floor, and they’re slower than someone who does it all the time, not to mention the wasted labor hours of management calling for backup that either doesn’t exist or isn’t on walkie). And understaffing is an awful experience for employees too, so our wages are higher than fast food because when the store does want to replace someone they can’t because the job sucks, which leads to more understaffing… if someone brought in a blank stack of union cards tomorrow with the promise of adequate staffing, my store would be unionized by next week (and probably closed by next month…). And if you could figure out where I work, that chain would probably go out of business because of how awful it ultimately is for the end consumer, but you can’t because basically all of retail in the US is in this same death spiral that ends either with unionization or another company being formed that doesn’t actively suck this bad. None of this actually has anything to do with self checkout, however, that was just one of the excuses these companies used to cut way too much staff, and an excuse the writer can use to weasel his way out of saying the actual reasons why retail sucks - decades of anti labor practices and unfettered capitalist greed.
Yeah, and see…it’s the fact that the author is doing the grocery stores’ PR spin for them that makes me most frustrated. Like, they want everyone to think that it’s this completely insurmountable problem caused by external factors, so they have to close self checkouts; but this would all be eminently solvable with hiring.
Lol, not by my observation.
Every store in my city that installed these systems reduced checkout staff by 75-90% (in the checkout lanes). Walmart, grocery stores, you name it. I bet if we pulled some stats we’d see a major drop in hours, which means a huge drop in insurance, taxes, HR overhead, etc, etc. No matter how much labor rates went up (they didn’t), those cost reductions are massive in comparison.
Just consider their software contracts - systems are often licensed/supported at rates determined by scale: transactions per minute, # of objects being stored, etc. If there’s an HR system that handles hours, scheduling, pay, etc, etc, they likely pay annually for a system scaled to employee count (it’s BS, but it’s a metric companies use). Drop your employees by 75%, and on support contract renewal you can drop to a lower tier support. Source: I’ve been responsible for doing just this - reducing footprint so we can reduce support contract costs. I’ve save my company somewhere between $70 and $90 mil on one system this way. Not for HR, but it doesn’t matter, this is often how support contracts are done in the enterprise world.
I have two grocery stores that had 6 lanes staffed at busy times. Since they installed self checkout, there are two… TWO checkout staff. That’s a
33%66% reduction during rush hour. And for off hours they’d have 2, maybe 3. That’s now 1 or two. That’s 50% or 66% reduction, depending.It’s not like grocery checkout attendants do much more than that - shelves are stocked by the vendors themselves, maintenance by others (Walmart is retail, so different).
I never see more than 2 or 3 checkout attendants these days, some stores have even removed the “extra” checkout lanes, so they couldn’t even bring people back in if they wanted to.
And let’s not get started on other retail chains, which can be even worse.