RSS feedsObservation.
I observed the self-checkout machines in the NYC supermarkets. In every cases the machines are available for a few quantity of products and there are 4 or 6 machines monitored by a supervisor.
In my opinion, the reason of these machines are used just for buy 10 products or less, is because the users are not fast enough to use and all the time there are problems that the machine is not able to solve, that’s why we can always see a supervisor next them. Also the system is pretty annoying and sometimes is very confusing too.
I think the people who prefer to use this system are the younger, because they are not afraid to technology or to changes. The oldest people prefer interact with a person directly.
The video shows some random images about self-checkout, but the sound is a mix of sounds that I recorded and edited as an audio file which manifest what you can hear when you are using the machines.
Anthony Giorgianni over at Consumer Reports Money ranted,
“
I predict stores soon will eliminate cashiers altogether, and we’ll have row after row of miffed shoppers in constant battle with machines, mechanical versions of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, proclaiming, “No produce for you!”
I like that the human cashier knows exactly what to do if I have a receipt for bottle returns, if the credit card machine can’t read my card, or if I’m eligible for a discount because I brought my own canvas bag, as I like to do.
And what about the jobs lost to those machines? Cashier is one of those good, honest jobs, the kind of job on which so many depend. For teenagers, it’s often the job that introduces them to the responsibilities of joining the working world.
Now, instead of hiring real people, the stores are expecting me to do the work – and for no pay.
”
via http://consumerist.com/
There are still a lot of problems using the self-checking machines, that’s the reason of the supervisor in front of them. I think the problem is when people think the machine could replace human interaction and we don’t understand this as an extension of body, which could help us to do things that we couldn’t be able by ourselves.