DON'T USE SELF-CHECKOUTS!
Welcome to the brave new world of more automation, less service and diminished quality of life, as more and more megamonopolist chains like McDonald's and CVS convert almost wholly to self-serve kiosks of one kind of another. The idea, as one chain employee told me, is to have no human beings working in the establishments, period. They're eliminating people.
Yep, figure out that order screen yourself. You can do it! McDonald's, Burger King, etc. doesn't want to pay cashiers, so they have you do the work, for free. Amazing that people fall for it.
No more entry-level jobs for young people to learn what work is about. (They can stay home and smoke pot I guess.) No fallback jobs for lower class individuals or seniors. No ways for anyone struggling to make ends meet to work a second or third part-time job to help pay the bills. Nope. My question is: If the monopolies don't need people, why do we need them? Isn't business supposed to be a two-way street?
Service? What's that? You want service??
I guess it's no surprise that fast food outlets are taking this option. They've always been about offering the shittiest culinary experience possible, have only increased the customer degradation a bit. But CVS, an alleged pharmacy? There to help people??
It's part of a push to isolate individuals from all possible human interactions. All exchanges of any kind economic or social will be done via our phones. No need to meet or speak to other actual human beings in real life. Ever.
Do we wonder why everyone is going insane?
Of course, some people love having no interaction with other people. Total technophiles pleased to become slaves to the Monolithic Machine.
(Meanwhile, the CVS CEO for 2020, Larry Merlo, received a mere $23 million in compensation, which was a down year. McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski lagged behind, with 2020 salary of $10.8 million.)
WHERE'S THE LEFT?
The so-called left meanwhile, who always seem to be, accidentally or intentionally, three steps behind in the game, are campaigning to unionize employees of these chains. But what if there are no employees to unionize? Maybe they'll unionize the kiosks.
INTANGIBLES
An interesting business book by Rory Sutherland, Alchemy, has a chapter titled "An Automatic Door Does Not Replace a Doorman: Why Efficiency Doesn't Always Pay." In the chapter, Sutherland points out the advantages to having a live human being greeting people in front of hotels. Among the ancillary benefits: "taxi-hailing, security, vagrant discouragement, customer recognition, as well as in signaling the status of the hotel."
We're actually seeing this with the CVS elimination of human employees, as evidenced by this Wall Street Journal article about professional gangs of thieves making away with billions of dollars worth of merchandise.
Well, the gangs figure, if no one's watching the store, why not?
The real story no doubt is that some CVS higher-up got conned by a fast-talking vendor into making a huge investment in self-checkout machines. Even though most customers hate using them, CVS is not about to go back on the decision. Not yet.
1 comment:
"Maybe they'll unionize the kiosks." is a great line!
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