A few weeks ago at a grocery store in New Jersey, Christopher Andrews reached a breaking point.

I was shopping at my local supermarket and I was

pushing the cart and I had probably between 30 to 40 items and when I got to the

checkout lane I saw several staff and associates and

they were standing around and I asked you know is this lane open and they said

nope but self checkouts open and I looked at my watch it was 9 p.m I was tired I was ready to go

home and I thought I'm not going to spend the next 20 minutes 30 minutes doing this after working all day I just walked

out of the store. If you've been in a supermarket in the past decade you've

encountered a self-checkout machine. The technology comes with a promise. Instead of waiting in a long

line operated by a human cashier, you can control your own destiny by scanning, bagging,

and paying for things yourself.

In its ideal form, it's faster and more convenient than sending your purchases down a conveyor belt to a supermarket

employee.

But is it really a good deal for shoppers?

It's essentially transferring what were paid tasks that cashiers do

onto unpaid customers.

I think a lot of shoppers are left asking,

you know, what's in this for me?

For the Freak economics radio network, this is the economics of everyday things I'm

Zachary Crockett today self-check-out there was a time when customers weren't allowed to do any work at a grocery store.

If you went shopping at the turn of the 20th century, you'd hand over your grocery list to a clerk.

They'd collect everything for you, put it in a bag, and tally up your bill.

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