Self Checkout Machines: Tearing our Community Apart!
There Are No Girls on the Internet
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 820 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In our last news roundup, Bridget and Mike had conflicting and surprisingly strong feelings about self checkout machines. And it turns out, listeners do, too! We got more emails about this seemingly low stakes topic than any other. Why did this touch a nerve?! We don’t know but there’s something there, and we’re here for it. We read some listener emails, which make great points for and against. Are these machines dystopian symbols of our crumbling social connectedness? Or are they convenient devices for buying groceries, and maybe the real dystopian symbols were the capitalist overlords we met along the way? You be the judge!
Self-Checkouts Often Inaccessible to Disabled Shoppers: https://foodinstitute.com/focus/self-checkout-often-inaccessible-to-disabled-shoppers/
LA Times report on self checkouts and loneliness (paywalled): https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-08-28/some-skip-self-checkout-to-combat-loneliness-build-human-connection
TikTok Lawyer explains why you should avoid using self-checkouts in stores: https://scoop.upworthy.com/lawyer-explains-why-you-should-avoid-using-self-checkouts-in-stores-576190-576190-576190-576190
Washington Post piece: Dear grocery store owners: I don’t work for you! https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/31/rick-reilly-self-checkout-rebellion/
Walmart reveals it's tracking checkout theft with AI-powered cameras in 1,000 stores: https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-tracks-theft-with-computer-vision-1000-stores-2019-6
Feeling lonely? Too many of us are. Here’s what our supermarkets can do to help: https://theconversation.com/feeling-lonely-too-many-of-us-are-heres-what-our-supermarkets-can-do-to-help-211126
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. |
| 0:17.7 | Okay, so Mike, as you know, in our last news roundup, you and I got a little bit heated about our respective thoughts on those self-checkout kiosks in retail stores. |
| 0:27.5 | I was surprised. I thought certainly everybody hates these things as much as I do. |
| 0:32.1 | I was surprised to find that was not the case. You had a different position. |
| 0:35.2 | So my position was that those self-checkout kiosks |
| 0:39.1 | in Target, Walmart, grocery stores, whatever, they generally need to involve a human to work properly. |
| 0:45.9 | I don't think they're that much more efficient or that much more fast. And I also didn't think |
| 0:50.8 | the old system of just human cashiers was that bad, although I have come to sort of update that position since hearing the feedback that listeners have. |
| 0:58.9 | So that is my position. |
| 1:00.4 | When I sat down to do that episode, I was surprised to find that you have a completely different position. |
| 1:06.4 | Would you like to articulate it? |
| 1:07.8 | Sure. |
| 1:08.7 | It's not completely different because your first point that the machines |
| 1:11.5 | require a human to operate them, we agree on that. I think everyone agrees that a human still needs |
| 1:17.5 | to be involved, even if it's a self-checkout. However, we disagree that I think that those self-checkout |
| 1:25.9 | machines or some sort of self-checkout system have a place in polite society and that they are not inherently bad. |
| 1:36.4 | They are not destroying the fabric of what makes us who we are. |
| 1:40.3 | They are just a useful tool that can help us check out with our items. |
| 1:47.2 | So that is something that I want to get into today because that episode was just one story of a larger news roundup with other stories. |
| 1:55.1 | And so I wanted to revisit the issue and highlight a few of the angles that we didn't have time to get into. |
| 2:00.0 | And also hear from some of you listeners on your thoughts on self-checkouts versus human checkouts. The thing that you just said about whether or not self-checkout is sort of tearing at the fabric of who we are as people, for whatever reason, I realized after doing some deep thought that I carry that as like a world view. |
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