Sainsbury self check out camera and screen

[Exit Stage Left]

As for the question of automation of menial jobs, that of course relates to how society is run; by and for the benefit of ordinary people or by and for the rich and powerful.

Most people's lives have menial elements. Mowing the lawn, looking after children, shopping et al. Many people get satisfaction from activities with manual components, gardening is a prime example.

The major division is between those who have control over what they do, and those who don't.

[Beardy]

I actually prefer the self check out; they are much quicker and you don't need to interact with another person.

I can't see why not having to interact with another person is an advantage.

Because you're deaf, don't speak the local language, or have some disability that makes it difficult. Or maybe you want to avoid the disapproving looks from the Gulf Arab/Southern Baptist checkout operator when they scan your booze and porn!

Those of us that are deaf often get disapproving looks from people just because. I really need a T shirt that says 'I'm no daft, I'm DEAF' but  worry that my friends would just take the piss. Not that they don't already^[1].

1.Unless I ask them to stop, which they will when I do. Mostly though, I give as good as I get 

[Beardy]

As for the question of automation of menial jobs, that of course relates to how society is run; by and for the benefit of ordinary people or by and for the rich and powerful.

Most people's lives have menial elements. Mowing the lawn, looking after children, shopping et al. Many people get satisfaction from activities with manual components, gardening is a prime example.

The major division is between those who have control over what they do, and those who don't.

If looking after children is menial, you're doing it wrong!

[Cudzoziemiec]

Going back to the loss of menial jobs and whether they're worth protecting – maybe if the job seems dull, the wrong person is doing it?

[Jaded]

On the topic of the self checkout in general, why do you need to scan item item individually anyway? You should be able to put your basket on the machine and it scans all the items in one go, like the machines at the library.

As for the question of automation of menial jobs, that of course relates to how society is run; by and for the benefit of ordinary people or by and for the rich and powerful.

Because bar codes are an established technology in retail and rfid is not, I suppose.

But linking the two together, it does seem that librarians welcomed the introduction of selfscan machines in libraries as it allows them to get on with the real work of librarianship as opposed to datestamping tickets. Perhaps the existence of that work is a key difference between libraries and supermarkets!

Actually it allows Libraries to open with fewer qualified staff.

[ian]

Dullest job I ever had was unloading 25kg blocks of sheep food off a conveyor and stacking them on a pallet. For twelve hours a day. That would be 70–80 tonnes a shift. There was one guy and he'd been doing that forty years. I didn't manage that quite as long. You didn't want to be punched by me after that summer. I was 90% shoulders and arms.

Night shift was worse. They'd turn up the machines so they ran double time on the basis that you could, having hit your quota, have a sneaky nap till clocking off time. Splendid plan as at that point you practically passed out.

[Cudzoziemiec]

On the topic of the self checkout in general, why do you need to scan item item individually anyway? You should be able to put your basket on the machine and it scans all the items in one go, like the machines at the library.

As for the question of automation of menial jobs, that of course relates to how society is run; by and for the benefit of ordinary people or by and for the rich and powerful.

Because bar codes are an established technology in retail and rfid is not, I suppose.

But linking the two together, it does seem that librarians welcomed the introduction of selfscan machines in libraries as it allows them to get on with the real work of librarianship as opposed to datestamping tickets. Perhaps the existence of that work is a key difference between libraries and supermarkets!

Actually it allows Libraries to open with fewer qualified staff.

Yes, by reducing the workload to something manageable with the staff left after the council's made half of them redundant because budgets. Though it only works once, in the end you close them all anyway. Perhaps something similar is at work in supermarkets? Not so much machines as a reason to get rid of people, but machines to keep the shop functioning after you've got rid of people anyway, and in the end it'll all be robots picking from a warehouse and loading on to autonomous-driving vans.

[hellymedic]

A disadvantage of the auto tills is that you can't play "how much do you think this lot will cost?" with the cashier. Hours of fun for all the family.

Mum had trained Small Brother to tot up groceries as he sat atop the trolley as a Very Small.

Hours of fun...

[David Martin]

Dullest job I ever had was unloading 25kg blocks of sheep food off a conveyor and stacking them on a pallet. For twelve hours a day. That would be 70–80 tonnes a shift. There was one guy and he'd been doing that forty years. I didn't manage that quite as long. You didn't want to be punched by me after that summer. I was 90% shoulders and arms.

Night shift was worse. They'd turn up the machines so they ran double time on the basis that you could, having hit your quota, have a sneaky nap till clocking off time. Splendid plan as at that point you practically passed out.

Dullest one I had was a cable making factory. Watch the machine and if a line goes slack hit the stop button and wait for the supervisor. The other chap had the interesting job at the other end, occasionally nudging a lever to shift the reel a bit right or left.

[Jaded]

I've had more than a several dull jobs.

Cleaning a factory was dull. It was sweeping it out and cleaning the loos. I could sweep the whole thing in half the time of the person I was replacing. The shop steward visited me and told me to slow down.
I did not like cleaning the loos in a sulphur smog so I used to open the windows. They’d shut them and then open their fetid bowels. Nice. The sexual harassment from the women provided a third antidote to the dull.

Mind you, packing Diesel engines in crates was pretty dull. Bits of wood, hammers, nails. I livened it up by calculating the total length of nails I was hitting in every day. 1/3rd of a mile. They livened it up in the canteen. Firstly by talking about the colleague who deflowered underage girls in his caravan, then by wondering buggering someone who had eaten cabbage was worse than someone who hadn’t and finally one of them brought in a used fanny pad he’d found on the road outside. Another worker grabbed it, opened it out and sniffed it, exclaiming ‘bloody hell, the woman that used this, she had BO’.

Sorry, it’s a bit off. Topic.

[Nick H.]

My local Sainsburys has a new model of self-service checkout which doesn't have scales and has a scanner which is very hard to use. You have to be very patient with it and keep your wits about you if you want to make sure you don't steal anything. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen in retailing.

[Pickled Onion]

They might be better off with a vegetable-recognition camera: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/avocados-carrots-self-service-scam-supermarkets-checkout-stealing-a8370621.html It's not clear why they didn't program it to raise an alert if someone buys 18kg of *anything* in one go.

Or how about an age-recognition camera for when you have beer in your trolley?

[Beardy]

All this talk of mindless jobs reminds me of some of the tasks I had to do as an apprentice and junior technician. In olden times automatic telephone exchanges were electromechanical with lots and lots of relays. Meter routines were dull. You’d have racks of electrically incremented counters, one for each telephone connected to the exchange. You then had a 'routiner' that you plugged in at the end of a shelf of these meters with a rotary switch and toggle switch. You look at the first meter on the shelf, flip the toggle switch and watch the meter as it is incremented by 10. You turn the rotary switch one click, flip the toggle and watch the next switch. And so on. If one of the meters doesn’t increment by 10 you had to fix it. Though 'bank' cleaning was probably the worst job but it requires quite a lengthy description to put it into context.
They really were wonderful technological masterpieces were old telephone exchanges. Steam punk imagination really couldn’t top the delights of an 'eleven and over final selector',  a motor uniselector or a personal favourite, a mechanical regenerator. Sigh. 

[Cudzoziemiec]

They might be better off with a vegetable-recognition camera: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/avocados-carrots-self-service-scam-supermarkets-checkout-stealing-a8370621.html It's not clear why they didn't program it to raise an alert if someone buys 18kg of *anything* in one go.

Or how about an age-recognition camera for when you have beer in your trolley?

Or in terms of things that might actually work now, a means of scanning your driving licence, passport or similar.

[Kim]

Or how about an age-recognition camera for when you have beer in your trolley?

Or in terms of things that might actually work now, a means of scanning your driving licence, passport or similar.

It's surely already equipped to authenticate a credit card?  That would seem like an obvious work-around.  They don't even have to use it for payment, just log that they've seen it (as per railway ticket machines dispensing pre-booked orange cardboard).

"You appear to be buying drinkohol.  Swipe your credit card or wait for assistance."  Small matter of programming, innit.

[Pickled Onion]

Or how about an age-recognition camera for when you have beer in your trolley?

Or in terms of things that might actually work now, a means of scanning your driving licence, passport or similar.

It's surely already equipped to authenticate a credit card?  That would seem like an obvious work-around.  They don't even have to use it for payment, just log that they've seen it (as per railway ticket machines dispensing pre-booked orange cardboard).

"You appear to be buying drinkohol.  Swipe your credit card or wait for assistance."  Small matter of programming, innit.

Except that it's all too easy to borrow a credit card, or "borrow" one. And even then, would the CC company be willing/able to return personal information to the merchant?

[Kim]

Or how about an age-recognition camera for when you have beer in your trolley?

Or in terms of things that might actually work now, a means of scanning your driving licence, passport or similar.

It's surely already equipped to authenticate a credit card?  That would seem like an obvious work-around.  They don't even have to use it for payment, just log that they've seen it (as per railway ticket machines dispensing pre-booked orange cardboard).

"You appear to be buying drinkohol.  Swipe your credit card or wait for assistance."  Small matter of programming, innit.

Except that it's all too easy to borrow a credit card, or "borrow" one.

Is that not still sufficient arse-covering for the retailer, which is what this is about?  "My robot didn't sell to a minor, it was a victim of fraud."

And even then, would the CC company be willing/able to return personal information to the merchant?

Does it have to?  Surely "yes, this is a valid card" (which it does anyway to allow payments) should suffice.

I note that $mobile-telco seem satisfied with the use of a credit card for top-ups to prove that you're not a minor for the purposes of unlocking adults-only content (ie. websites suspected to contain pr0n, gambling, bad words or useful information).

Unless pre-payed credit cards have since muddied the "you need to be 18 to have a credit agreement" waters?



Alternatively, they could put that loyalty card database to good use and use that.  Cashier check ID once, sets flag in database, mum's nectar card suddenly becomes massively more interesting to teenagers.  Throw in a touch of facial recognition to fix that...

[Mrs Pingu]

I actually prefer the self check out; they are much quicker and you don't need to interact with another person.

I can't see why not having to interact with another person is an advantage.

For some people the thought of having to speak to another person is tremendously anxiety inducing.

Personally, I hated those self checkout things until Kim pointed out there's a button on the screen so you can make it stop SHOUTING AT YOU , or just STFU altogether, so thanks Kim 

[Jurek]

I actually prefer the self check out; they are much quicker and you don't need to interact with another person.

I can't see why not having to interact with another person is an advantage.

For some people the thought of having to speak to another person is tremendously anxiety inducing.

Personally, I hated those self checkout things until Kim pointed out there's a button on the screen so you can make it stop SHOUTING AT YOU , or just STFU altogether, so thanks Kim 

^This.

[Kim]

I occasionally see mums with a (probably) 3 or 4 year old who is eating his way through something she has picked off the shelf. It keeps him quiet and occupied while she shops. I have seen a couple of times when mum has to explain to the cashier why she is paying for an empty wrapper. I wonder how self-checkouts would handle that.

It'll scan the empty wrapper just fine, then moan about you not placing the item in the bagging area.  Unless it's one of the ones that doesn't bother weighing the items, in which case no problem.  Or if you attempt to hoodwink it with a bag of sand like Indiana Jones, I suppose.

[Kim]

I actually prefer the self check out; they are much quicker and you don't need to interact with another person.

I can't see why not having to interact with another person is an advantage.

For some people the thought of having to speak to another person is tremendously anxiety inducing.

Or just difficult, if you've got a speech or hearing impairment.  Actually, that's one of the other cool things about self check-outs - some of them (eg. the Scottish Restaraunt's McOrder-o-Matic^[1]) can speak a multitude of different languages.  A technology that would be useful in Silly Oak when the international students arrive.


_{[1] That's what it should be called, anyway.}

[Mrs Pingu]

Ooh, that's a good idea,  so you can be shouted at in your lingo of choice

[Cudzoziemiec]

Where is the STFU button? And which supermarket's machines are we talking about, as I guess they vary a bit. I've never noticed it. (And is there a way of remotely operating it on all the machines in the shop?  )

[rafletcher]

As an alternative to manned checkouts or self-service ones, many supermarkets now have the hand held scanners. No need to interact, no bagging area, and suitable for a large shop. Given that you have to weigh and price your own fruit and veg, it may not save more than 2 or 3 minutes. And I don’t know how they deal with alcohol, unless it’s by dint of you paying by cc, but most supermarkets operate a minimum 25 years old policy these days.

[lahoski]

And I don’t know how they deal with alcohol, unless it’s by dint of you paying by cc, but most supermarkets operate a minimum 25 years old policy these days.

There's usually a minion in the vicinity to deal with alcomohols, security tags and random searches.

I like the hand held scanner things. It means you can keep a running total of spending without having to actually do the arithmetic yourself.