The last couple of trips to Wal-Mart have featured cashiers with shorter lines, of which I took advantage.
Our nearest store is a large one and features a number of the self-scanning stations that have been cropping up in a wide range of stores in recent years. Now, I mostly like interacting with people, so if the lines at those lanes are reasonable, I'll use them. But if they're clogged, then it's self-scanning for me.
I've read some people say that we should all use the human-staffed lanes all the time in order to save cashier jobs, and force stores to keep them on the payroll. Maybe. But I'm pretty sure the stores can outlast us. If there are six cashier lanes open at midnight, then it's a simple choice. But if there are six open at 5 PM, it's also a simple choice, because everyone in those lanes has carts holding the product of a small nation-state and it will be midnight before they're all checked out.
Another gripe has been that the stores are making us do their work for them. It seems running a purchase in from of a laser scanner is a burden most onerous, one that we customers are far too refined and important to carry for ourselves. This idea is used to justify theft, as I have seen a number of posts in different news stories and Facebook threads that scanning our own items makes us store employees and so we are entitled to take our wages in trade. I look for these people next to figure they can walk their restaurant tickets if the server doesn't cut up their meat for them and dab their faces after every bite.
Moreover, the loss-prevention officer, who will be watching you "stealthily" move an item past the scanner without actually scanning it via the camera mounted on every register, will also be unconvinced.
Either way, the idea that the store owes me either someone to scan my
items for me or it owes me some of those items for free is more or less understandable unless the person expounding it is
two digits in age.
Here's what a store owes you for your money: The item you give them money for. Sure, stores do thing like clean up and arrange stock attractively and have clerks who answer your questions about where things are, but they do those things in addition to stocking the goods you want to buy. I don't go to stores so people will do things for me. I go to stores to buy things. If the store operates in a manner I don't like, I decide whether or not the shortfall outweighs my desire to buy that item, and if it does I buy from another store.
And I know I will; I've seen me do it. I kind of hope these folks who believe they're entitled to freebies will shop somewhere else -- them being arrested holds up the line.
2 comments:
1. I'd like a discount, though (it could be something truly minimal, though) for using the self-check lanes, to reflect that, yes, I am doing work they might pay someone for. (My local wal-mart is terribly understaffed; I understand they have a bad manager and a hard time keeping employees. At this point I'd just be happy if they restocked a little more often, forget having enough checkouts)
2. I don't like self-checkouts because it seems about every third time I use one, something goes wrong - I scan too fast, or the item is too light and it doesn't recognize I've bagged it after scanning, or something - and the system clamps down, and I have to wait for one of those too-few employees to come and fix it.
I dunno. I expect a future where we're handed a boxcutter and sent into a warehouse and told "good luck, most of the boxes are marked," and then the self-check lanes will seem positively halcyon.
I think if a store wanted to offer a percent discount that would be great; it might be one reason to shop there. Like the discounts that gas stations used to have with cash vs. credit.
When I lived in Texoma we were lucky in that our little town's WM had good management. Didn't rest on the laurels of being mostly the only game in town.
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