Sometimes in Sainsbury’s/Tesco/Asda/B&Q you will see the self scanning till standing near the door, usually with some supervisor encouraging people to stop queuing at the real life flesh & blood human till operator to come over to the state of the art computerised self service till. Being independent and all part of me likes using a self scanning till as
1) I feel like I’ve been given responsibility by the supermarket to use some piece of machinery I would not normally be allowed to use,
2) that I can do things myself without anyone else helping me
3)the supermarket is showing me some type of trust, that I will pay for the items I have picked up without a having to give a human being my money.
Yet when you think about it the self scanning robot till is designed to help the supermarket make more money by getting us (and the machine)to do the work of a till operator.
If we’re doing that work instead of a till operator that means that the supermarket doesn’t have to employ as many till operators, which will help them save money at the expense of someone who could be doing the work.
So the next time we’re in a supermarket (if we have to be)or B&Q and someone encourages us to start using the self scanning till just refuse to do it, say you’d rather have an interaction with an actual flesh & blood human being before the robots take over…
canal ways 