Supermarket Automation at Wal-Mart
We hate shopping at Wal-Mart but since the prices at the Wal-Mart Supermarkets are up to 20% less for the same items at Publix, and we are on a very limited income, we would be fools not to shop there.
No, we don’t want to give our money to the Walton family, but we really can’t afford not to shop there. Bittersweet reality, more bitter than sweet.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t ever shop elsewhere. Wal-Mart doesn’t carry everything and some of the stuff they carry isn’t edible/, so, yes, we stop at Publix for some things and Trader Joe’s for others, and occasionally break down and sneak into Whole Foods, but we spend the bulk of our food budget at Wal-Mart while making loud comments about how much we dislike the company.
Today, however, we were quite shocked by one of the changes they have made to the store.
There are no more cashiers. None.
Instead, there’s a row of self-service checkout counters and a single line of customers. Each customer gets sent to the next available checkout kiosk.
It’s very efficient. The line moves very quickly.
All of the older workers, the ones who were usually assigned to the cashiers’ stations, are gone. I knew them all by sight and I didn’t see even one of the older workers.
We almost always used the lanes with the human cashiers. It’s a shitty job, but it’s a job with benefits and we figured that, by using the staffed checkouts, we were helping to preserve those few jobs.
This leaves me wondering about how older people, people with infirmities, and people who have certain mental issues are going to be able to shop at Wal-Mart. They aren’t, because they can’t.
Those scanners can be finicky, and there are lots of products that have to be priced by weight, which requires searching for the relevant item on a look-up table, and it takes a certain amount of manual dexterity to scan and bag a shopping cart full of food.
This is a sign of the times, the disenfranchisement of people who, for one reason or another, cannot function in a computerized economic ecology. It is also a sign of corporate capitalism forcing shoppers to assume the roles formerly performed by employees.
This is an ongoing process, with automation invading and overtaking one occupation after another, but it really hits home when the “friendly” cashiers disappear from the retail environment.
Wal-Mart isn’t unique, of course. Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s have all installed self-service check-out kiosks in their home improvement stores, keeping only one or two cashiers available for unusual purchasing problems but, so far, Wal-Mart appears to be the only retailer that has eliminated human cashiers.
Awhile back, Whole Foods was tinkering with an idea that involved installing RIFD scanners on your shopping carts so that your account would be charged for each item that you put into the cart, allowing you to walk out of the store without even stopping at the check-out.
One wonders if the cost of installing RIFD readers and RFID chips on every single product really makes sense…but it would seem to make sense in order to inhibit shoplifting.
On the other hand, the self-service checkout systems actually encourage shoplifting since shoppers are actually being asked to honestly scan each and every product on the honor system because there is really no way to police self-service checkout lines.
The Wal-Mart self-service checkout kiosks all have built-in cameras that actually show you checking out your merchandise on the monitors attached to each kiosk.
The theory behind that video system is that it will prevent customers from shoplifting by reminding them that they are under surveillance, which is where the automated economy meets Big Brother technology.
People make honest mistakes. They forget to scan items because they never take them out of the shopping cart, and there’s no way – other than by establishing a pattern of behavior – to prove that someone intentionally “shoplifted” an item rather than honestly forgetting to run it through the scanner.
So, the question is whether human cashiers are more or less expensive than the increased amount of “shrinkage’ resulting from either accidental or intentional failures to run everything through the scanner.
Wal-Mart, obviously, has determined that the losses from shoplifting will cost the company less than the salaries and fringe benefits for the cashiers.
However, on our last visit to Wal-Mart, we noticed one very odd fact: While the older cashiers have all disappeared, they seem to have the same number of employees in the store at any given time, so it isn’t really clear how the self-service kiosks are saving money for Wal-Mart.
We contacted Wal-Mart customer service to ask that question. They had no idea what we were talking about.
We haven’t been to a “regular” Wal-Mart department store in years and we don’t consider it to be a worth the pain and suffering to visit one to see if the automation has spread that far yet.
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10/22/2020 @ 6:16 pm
Oh well. Wal-Mart was more responsible than any company in the country, probably in the world, for replacing full-time jobs with benefits with part time jobs that leave workers poor. They have essentially murdered communities.
When you’re that big and you eliminate employees, you eliminate customers. Unless, I guess, people can’t afford to shop anywhere else.
10/22/2020 @ 8:08 pm
Take 2. Left a comment earlier, must not have taken.
So Wal-Mart is doing what they’ve always done: Destroyed jobs. In the first round, they singlehandedly ruined America by replacing full time jobs all across the country with part-time jobs with no benefits. The price savings have not been worth it.
10/23/2020 @ 5:38 am
Must be about a light year already >sic< [This is a sign of the times, the disenfranchisement of people who, for one reason or another, cannot function in a computerized economic ecology. It is also a sign of corporate capitalism forcing shoppers to assume the roles formerly performed by employees.] When the articulate/prolific A/K/A~~OPEN SALON~~when he buzzed and blogged @the demise of the so-called 'pump-jockey' Oregon ordinance.
Gasoline stations were required to employ attendants to aid and assist drivers. Cross-selling presumably … 'Sir your ladies' side wiper about had it….' '…well if yall gone dat far get the RainGuard and don't forget to pick up that turn signal…yeah hot damn…!' 'Catch the whitewalls for 1/2 buck…?'
Make work w/o conforming to bottom-line (what's IT) competitiveness. Whereas growing up in the half-lit late '60s every service station had fast-paced hard working teenagers ear-buggin'
the Beach Boys and what?! Dreaming of glory….Hell Chesterfields were a quarter a pack; best
rolled and shown snug up against buffed deltoids. Clutch popping indeed was a rite of passage…TEE-HE…! Sea to shining sea!
!ALL4GEARS!
"In the year 1965, the United States minimum wage was $1.25. This is equivalent to $10.30 in 2020 dollars."
Fast forward to the Beavis & Betheads 'Lost in the Big Box'…only in 'dis day-N-age would headliners such as the great Helen Reddy and Winston Groom ascend to the other side without much mention at the kitchen table….Somewhat oft topic but my wish upon a star would 'red-line'
the ubiquitous poll Kathmandu (category) 'non-college educated whites'. No doubt there's a subculture of non academics who react with chagrin to an unabashed condescending profile.
Divided we stand. United we fail safe? How's it go: sandbag? Sandbagging? Gigs-gotchas & Gatorades to the crocodile rock!?
Long ago I'd posited that Walgreens ought have solar enabling stationary bikes 'twix the tar and cement. No kidding my conduit @Goldman-Sachs wound up in San Marino a good while ago.
Otherwise I'd vet her retail 'soundings' and exceptional trend sonar 'gardin' your most recent.
Good glimpse Sagemerlin thank you!
10/23/2020 @ 5:37 pm
GAH the dreaded self checkout! I avoid it like the plague! Except now, when there really is a plague. One of the checkers at our Market Basket was the first person in my city to die of covid. I’m growing to appreciate contactless tasks. Like it or not, the technology is changing. One of my 70 year old friends is paying for almost everything with apps on her phone, even a quarter for the parking meter goes on it.
You know what Abbie Hoffman might tell you I think? He might point out as you did the Waltons are 1%, so save your money on that sixty pack of toilet paper you put on the bottom rack of your cart. A multitude of things get swept aside when you use your scrawny old senior citizen disguise. If any militia boys try to watch me vote, I bet I can kick their shins purple with two pounds of Doc Martens on my tiny old woman feet.
10/25/2020 @ 8:47 pm
Thanks for the nod JP.
“articulate/prolific” is a fine compliment.
12/11/2020 @ 1:03 pm
@lan Milner,
Vox Media has several apt essays aligned with your elegant (sorry. toes and fingers numb. Might be the thermostat. Onset Renaults’?) essay.
Wherein Dane Co. WI profiled prominently with long-range urban planning Performa as our oft utopian ‘hub-nexus’ mall$ main $treet$ decline, diminish, disappear.
It would be fascinating to have a Charles Rose type exchange with say, John Edwards and Howard Dean.
Tough time of year.
Hey good buddy pass the hat at will. Many here among us will be writing more in a week or two. Modicum of food fights with a fortitude that glimmers on flamboyance.
I am trying to ph0t0-0p an avatar alongside the Bronze Fonz on the MKE River.
coldas: HEDOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS
b4 the snow flies
either that or lean into (T) Brothers Karamazov …