Current Events > Bill Burr's bit on self checkout is so true

(+) Yeah! (+)

ask yourself if anyone deserves to be a cashier. like, does anyone actually deserve that shit, to be paid that little for a task like that, not even allowed to fucking sit, and basically at the mercy of whatever asshole decides to pick your lane.

Have you been in hibernation since the industrial era? Those workers have never had trouble adapting, being assigned new task in their current job or finding a new one entirely. Hell our nation currently is at almost full employment. Frankly reality isn't reflecting your belief at all.

A very dangerous belief that's lead to stagnation in 3rd world country's because they refuse to automate their crappy sweat shops and create newer and better jobs for workers.

Unpaid worker for 5min. Oh no. I deserve that $1 of work.

Heavy old man yells at cloud vibes.

Keep in mind that the clip in the OP is from 13 years ago....

Unpaid employee

For giant corporations

That is self checkout

Heavier "cashiers are scary because I'll have a panic attack if they say hi to me" vibes coming from this thread.

Well grocery stores are taking a loss because people will scan only one item for two items they put in their cart sometimes so to me its a wash because theyre losing some money too

Cashier is a thankless, bullshit job and pushing for work for the sake of work is really not the anti-capitalist argument you are thinking it is.

Standard self checkouts suck. Those newer ones where you scan as you shop and then you just pay otw out are superior.

No one thinks to thank the garbage man, line workers, janitors, dock workers, so on either. Good thing they don't quit since I can confirm most of those jobs are way more bullshit than cashier work.

so if you think they're more bullshit, you'd want less people subjected to them as well, correct?

so if they could automate them or use robots to do them, you'd be down for that.

like don't get me wrong, i've done my time in work like that too, but there's a difference between what you listed and cashier. you can't reasonably be expected to be out on the street to throw your trash in the truck on their schedule. you can't walk into the factory and put together your own product. do i need to continue?

Cashier is a thankless, bulls*** job and pushing for work for the sake of work is really not the anti-capitalist argument you are thinking it is.

Why would you GLADLY work for free for those people?

(this is what mental gymnastics actually looks like)

You did a job they pay other people to do and you are calling this mental gymnastics?

LMAO

if it's self-checkout they aren't paying other people to do it any more. reality check served.

Pumping gas is a job they pay other people to do, better stop doing that.

If you drive yourself to the grocery store, you're doing a taxi driver's job for free

Don't know

yeah, you're not replying to the rest of my post for really good reasons lmao.

gymnastics. mental. get outta here with your ridiculous bullshit.

False.

You are both the customer and the owner. So it is not free. You paid yourself.

Nah self-checkouts are honestly great. They are always open and I am so much faster than any cashier though I'll still use the lines when I have a huge cart so I don't hold up other people

Scanning as you go sounds awesome though. Never heard of this before

Youve probably seen the meme going around social media urging you not to use self-checkouts because theyre putting store employees out of work. This is true, and the proliferation of self-checkout lanes irks me for that reason, but also for another: these big box retailers, who are already making billions of dollars of profit, are exploiting their customers by making them work for what they are going to buy.
The Prosumer
In our family, we jokingly refer to the process of shopping as hunting and gathering, alluding to the activity of non-agrarian civilizations. We are aware that shopping requires physical and mental exertion: searching for the correct item, comparing prices, putting purchases in the car, bringing them home. It wipes us out.
We may not realize it, but we are intuiting an important economic idea: every consumer is also a producer in some way or form. In fact, we may be more correctly called prosumers. The term prosumer is a portmanteau of producer and consumer and was coined in 1980 by futurist Alvin Toffler in his book, The Third Wave. Toffler used prosumer to describe how technology is blurring the line between production and consumption, but even he could not predict the extent to which those lines are dissolving.
Sociologist George Ritzer has applied the idea of the prosumer to our 21st-century technologies. Production of goods has always included at least a little consumption, he explains, even if its just the acquisition and use of raw materials. But todays electronic and digital technologies have tipped the scale: the process of consumption these days requires a much greater amount of production. Today we are primarily prosumers because, as technology has advanced, we have been required to become more involved with the production process. Were living in a do-it-yourself economic culture. The lines between production and consumption arent blurred; theyve disappeared. Ritzer indicates we are at the state where the interrelationship of production and consumption where it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish one from the other.[1]
Digital Work
Self-service shopping has been around for a long time consider the automats of the 1920s and 30s but the growth of electronic and digital technologies has increasingly shifted the task of production to consumers. Today, we use ATMs for cash, pump our own gas, book our own flights and hotels, order pizza, even use our smartphones to tour real estate. These are all tasks that, not so long ago, paid employees completed for us or helped us to accomplish. We know this, because we are old enough to remember the changes, or we know people who used to do these jobs.
But in the case of social media activities, we are performing work without even realizing it, just by participating.
When Canadian researcher Dallas Smythe studied the phenomenon in relation to television, he called it the audience commodity. The viewing audience, he argued, is performing unpaid work every time they watch a commercial. For the privilege of watching television shows, they provide the labor of their attention to the TV screen.
Perhaps it is a small price to pay for entertainment, but that price has increased since the world went online. Browsing the internet and using social media require not just our attention but our personal data: who we are, what we like and dislike, where we go, who we associate with. Social media companies and others collect and sell this data for profit.
Oddly, this hasnt deterred too many of us. More than 80% of Americans use YouTube and nearly 70% are on Facebook, according to the latest data from Pew Research. Worldwide, the total number of social media users is in the billions.
Not only do social media users pay with their personal data, they also pay with actual labor. Social media platforms exist only because of user-generated content. Without people posting on Twitter, there is no Twitter, for example. Sure, some people make millions as social media influencers, but most of the rest of us (including writers on Medium) earn little to nothing. We provide posts, record videos, create memes, manage groups, and so on without any expectation of remuneration.

Ritzer suggests that we dont mind because we are enjoying ourselves.[2] How can it be exploitation if we do it voluntarily and we are having fun while we are doing it?
Communication researcher Christian Fuchs agrees that the activity can be enjoyable but maintains its still labor, and capitalism is indeed using consumers unfairly. Our leisure time has become subsumed under and exploited by capital, he argues in a 2012 study. He asserts that the boundaries between play and labour have become fuzzy Exploitation tends to feel like fun and becomes part of free time.[3]
So why does the labor of self-checkouts bother us so much? Is it because its not as much fun as an Instagram post or playing Candy Crush? Or something else?
In-Your-Face Exploitation
Maybe scanning bar codes is fun for some people, at least for the first dozen times. But for most of us, its physically and mentally demanding. The process of unloading the cart, twirling the boxes and jars across the scanner, and placing them in bags takes exertion and concentration, especially when there are people waiting behind us in line and the scanner mechanism malfunctions or hiccups, as it often seems to do. We recognize it as work, especially since we remember that just a few months ago, somebody was getting paid to do it. In fact, as Ritzer points out, we can often see the few cashiers still employed, just a few feet away, doing exactly what we are doing. The exploitation is clearly visible.
Companies claim that self-checkouts save them money and that the price of goods would rise without the cost savings. Our work is paying off for us in the long run. But is it true? Ritzer says no, that supermarkets do not pass the full savings directly on to the prosumers who are doing the work, who are providing the free labor.[4]
How do we know? For one, while youre checking out your groceries at the self-checkout, you are paying the exact same prices as the consumers standing in the traditional checkout lanes. You have earned no discount for your work.
Moreover, its easy to see where the cost savings are going straight to the top, to corporate profits and to executive pay. Over the past couple of decades, the gap between the pay of executives and workers continues to widen, even as companies replace their employees with technology. The Economy Policy Institute reported a few years ago that CEO pay grew by 940% while the average workers pay increased by just 12%.

Technology is Not the Culprit
Although well-intentioned, the message in those memes going around, urging you not to use the self-checkouts, is futile. Your refusal to scan your own bread and milk wont solve the problem. Thats because the problem is even bigger than Walmart or self-checkouts: its a systemic problem caused by unregulated, unchecked predatory capitalism.
Simply put, we are being used. All of us, both workers and consumers. We are just a means to an end, and that end is profit. As Ritzer explains, Prosumers meekly, if not eagerly, do what they are led and are expected to do. In the process, they increase the profits of the capitalists.[5]
Sad part is, we are so enmeshed in the system, we participate whether we want to or not. Yet, on some level, some of us are beginning to realize it.

https://kshanson.medium.com/youre-working-at-walmart-for-free-b3865318101b

Youre Working at Walmart for Free

hey you needa not post whole articles like that you're gonna drive that website into the ground

As Ritzer explains, Prosumers meekly, if not eagerly, do what they are led and are expected to do. In the process, they increase the profits of the capitalists.[5]

Self checkout is a dystopian hell that we allowed to happen

you can always tell someone is really mad by how quick they are to try to tell everyone that the other guy is actually mad.

the greater irony is the defenders of it most frequently cite "it is faster" which is only true WHEN a cashier is still on hand and paid

the day will come when self-checkout is super slow because corps realize people gleely and excitedly work for free and why pay anyone to do work they will do for free? lines will be long but it will be too late