Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Grocers

Gotta love it: increased efficiency results in decreased sales! Talk about not thinking things through!

But the thing I hate the most about those self-service checkouts is that I never have enough time to giggle at the latest tabloid headlines. I miss reading about the adventures of Bat-Boy, Osama and Saddam's gay wedding and vampire cats drinking bowls of blood mixed with milk. Not that I'd ever really buy one of those rags ....

The law of unintended consequences is taking a chomp out of grocery chain profits as more stores transition from human clerks to self-service checkout technology, thus reducing the time shoppers spend in line and under the temptation of impulse items. That's the upshot of research being released tomorrow by IHL Consulting Group in Franklin, Tenn., which provides market analysis to the retail industry and its IT vendors.

(link) [Slashdot]

/Humor | 2 writebacks | permanent link

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On 7/26/2006 04:07:28
Bjorngrímnir wrote

Flip-Side

The other side to this is that more cashiers will find themselves out of work. What jobs will be open for them, when the groceries no longer need their services?

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On 7/26/2006 09:53:13
SB wrote

I hate those self checkouts. I've worked as a cashier pretty much all my jobs so I can handle a simple stripped down system of scan and key. Those self checkouts all have touch screens, they talk to you, and they go soooo slow. And there's always someone at them who never saw a computer in their life trying to check themselves out, which means that the manager has to come over and help them, slowing us all down. There's no point in having the system if it's going to be so complicated. Most grocery stores don't have issues with exceptionally long lines (in this area at least) and they take pains to open new registers when things get too backed up. It's places like Wal-Mart that keep you waiting for twenty minutes because they only have six registers operating out of 30. (Why would you have so many lanes if you never intend to use them all?)

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