Humans are Better than Self Checkout Machines!

Clifton Chadwick

The same thing is true when I go to the grocery store.  It's no coincidence that Self-Checkout Machines started appearing in our stores just as the economy faltered. I always go to the Person who's got a family to feed and not the Machine that's just enriching shareholders from far away.  So Imagine the thrill I got when I saw this today from the Wall Street Journal!

Humans 1, Robots 0

Cashiers Trump Self-Checkout Machines at the Grocery Store

The article has this wonderful paragraph; "The human supermarket checker is superior to the self-checkout machine in almost every way. The human is faster. The human has a more pleasing, less buggy interface. The human doesn't expect me to remember or look up codes for produce, she bags my groceries, and unlike the machine, she isn't on hair-trigger alert for any sign that I might be trying to steal toilet paper. Best of all, the human does all the work while I'm allowed to stand there and stupidly stare at my phone, which is my natural state of being."


Now, the author of the WSJ article prefers to engage with their computer rather than a human for their banking, and I acknowledge there are times (after the bank closes and before it's open, specifically) when I use the online system, but really, let's do business eyeball to eyball because even it's less efficient for the economy it will prove to be more efficient for our shared humanity.