Did Home Depot or the local grocery store give you a discount for self-scanning your items? You just increased their profit from your purchase. They are not giving you the service you paid for; they are able to cut their workforce as a result, thereby increasing unemployment. Scanning may be fun and convenient, but what about all the people who are going to be out of a job because of it? Don't be taken in by this ploy. How many people will lose a job over these things? The people at the bottom who really need a job.

I never used these things. Hate them.

I hate those little "store cards" that are aleged to give you a lower price. Its a load of crap. They are watching what you buy and when. Big Brother at the grocery store should be outlawed!

BTW, they have been working at it for years and are now perfecting a way to spy on all of us...


http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/09/beamed.barcodes.ap/index.html 

No, I am not paranoid, but I do keep a watchful eye on who's watching me.

If you tell the clerk at the store, that you left your prefered shopper card at home, she will generally use hers, or his, and you get the savings anyway.
Later
Dave

Dave, that is not always the case. On a rare occasion they will use their store card, but 99.9% of the time they have been instructed NOT to do so. Forcing the consumer to use their card is the only way the marketing scam will work.

This is what they do in the Dallas area anyway.

More proof...


http://news.com.com/2010-1069-980325.html 

and more...

http://www.nocards.org/AutoID/overview.shtml 

Where I live ... if you tell them you forgot your card, they ask you for your phone number ...

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"Don't be taken in by this ploy. How many people will lose a job over these things? The people at the bottom who really need a job"
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I've not yet seen a self-scanner ... I don't have any idea how well they work or what the +'s and -'s would be, either from the store's side or the customer's side ...

However, I've been around long enough to have seen resistance to advances in technology and change in society ... there's no end to the number of naysayers when change comes and it has always been so, back to the time of the advent of the steel plow.

Columbus, it was thought, was going to sail off the edge of a flat earth, innovations such as the printing press, the steam engine, cotton gins, the railroad, electicity, motor vehicles, airplanes, submarines, airplanes, the space program and computers have each in turn taken a whipping at the hands of those who feel it wise to resist change for fear that "someone at the bottom who really needs a job" would be displaced by the change itself ...

Not that it's a direct comparison, but to illustrate my thought, here, for your consideration, is a little excerpt from a book entitled "Light! The Industrial Age 1750–1900: Art & Science, Technology & Society " ...

Like the streetlight, computers are creating new forms and concepts of night life and sociability. Like the humble oil lamp, they are becoming the glowing centers of family life. Like the telescope and the spectroscope, they are producing scientific descriptions of a universe, or universes, of unimaginable size. They are acquiring new symbolic power, too, becoming (as light once did) symbols of democracy, intellectual power, and connectedness. Like gaslight in factories, they are changing work places and work habits. They are transforming the worlds of art, entertainment, and communication—as did limelight, neon, and the cinema over one hundred years ago.

Our local K-mart has these self-scanning registers. I tried them out a few times and learned that I would never be a good person for that job. They would never have me working in the express lane. It took me forever to ring up a sale for just a few of my items.

i thought self-scanning was like a new type of masterbation. my mistake.




get something like ad-aware, which cleans out the data gathering cookies. except for the one it puts in.

Wasn't gasoline cheaper when somebody earned an income pumping it for You? Hmmmm.....

RICKAMAVEN -

... you're close on your guess .... I hear that they're going to start putting these in Trojans .... by the end of a month ...
- they'll know how many you used ...
- how many used while actually with a woman ...
- how many strokes it took you ... and of course
- how far you unrolled it ....

People cry about automation taking jobs, but that could be said for just about every piece of equipment.
And last time I checked, my local supermarket had too few cashiers and several Help Wanted signs at each entrance.
As for Big Brother, he's well aware of your actions.
But what are we hiding? Marketing groups are not an evil empire, they're simply trying to determine what folks purchase so they can peddle their goods more effectively.
You're not a name or person to these groups. You are simply a number. I don't particularly like the fact that they know better than I do how often I buy the cheap toilet paper, but I'm not overly paranoid about it either.

tailgater

i am not an animal.

i am a human being.

[email protected]

unroll it?

We don't have these by me in WI but I wish they did. If a store can have 4 lanes of self check open as opposed to one lane of a clerk checked I'm all for it.

My time is valuable to me. I don't mean to sound harsh but I don't like wasting it so someone with little skills can earn minimum wage. Perhpas they should have higher aspirations for a career then check out clerk.

Besides as I understand these there is still a clerk at these self check out stations to monitor in case there is a problem.

I guess to put what I was saying in a less oblique way, you can either resist change or accept it ... but if change had always been successfully resisited, none of us would have very comfortable lives ...

As I say, I've not yet encountered the self-scanning option ... seems potentially risky from the store's perspective ... what if a customer just scans every other thing?

But, if you don't wanna take advantage of the technology change has brought, just haul a crate load of chickens or a few gallons of milk you got from the cows this morning on down to Home Depot and do a little bartering with the manager ...

Again I haven't encountered these either Steve. But my sister (Michigan) and my brother (Denver area) have and we were just talking about these during the 4th of July holiday.

As they explained it to me there is a scale that weighs your goods after you scan them. If the scanned goods weight doesn't match the actual goods weight it doesn't let you proceed with the transaction and check out person needs to see what is going on.

Also as I understand there is usually one check out person assigned to about 4 self check lanes and they watch to make sure things are going smoothly. So there is still an employed person in the mix.

I've never seen any place that lets you scan yourself...that news to me...

Mag