As the shopping process becomes more and more automated, we are seeing an increase in self-checkouts in big name stores, which I for one am a fan of!
Not for the infamous five-finger discount, but for the efficiency it brings, and truthfully on particularly draining days, the lack of social interaction!
I can keep my AirPods in, quickly scan my items, and be out of there in a couple minutes!
But not everyone shares my enthusiasm, like this Tiktoker Amir, @amirrors_world, who realized he was doing all the work of a cashier and still paying higher prices for his clothes!
In a video captioned, “Are we moving backwards? Supermarkets, retail, we need less and less employees but prices keeping going up.” Amir showed his recent shopping experience at Zara.
Amir had went into Zara for a quick errand to get a new shirt, only to find they had replaced their human cashiers with self-checkout machines.
But he was surprised at how involved the process to buy his clothes were, even joking that with the amount of work he was doing he should be getting an employee discount!
He had no problem with this, he said, until he reached the final straw: having to take the magnetic theft protectors off the clothes himself.
Personally I always wanted to use the little in table tag remover, but it definitely immerses you in the employee experience, to put it one way!
After that, he had to bag his own clothes and put the magnetic strips into a sorter. Oh the horror!!
I hope he took a nap after all of this strenuous manual labor.
But a valid point he raised is that even with companies like Zara cutting the costs of employee labor, the prices of their merchandise are still rising everyday!
You’d think without having to pay employees, they would be able to offer discounted prices to the customers they are making check themselves out and make sure their items are ready to leave the store!
Check out the video:
@amirrors_world Are we moving backwards, supermarkets, retail, we need less and less employees but prices keeping going up. #retial #miami #305 #florida #zara #employees #brickell #citycenter
Tiktok users were split, with some admitting that it was secretly fun to pretend to be an employee!
Another user said that people who complain about using self-checkouts tend to be the same people who mistreat retail workers.
This user foresaw an even darker future for retail experiences.
And finally this user expressed their sympathy for older customers who aren’t used to paying by computers.
What do you think?
Do you mind checking yourself out while shopping, or do you think that its more convenient to control your own payment experience?
Either way, if they’re having to pay employees, I definitely agree they shouldn’t be raising prices for us!
If you liked that story, check out this one about a Costco customer who got their cart stolen… so she hatched a plan to get it back!